<p>The there is this:
</p>
<p><a href=“https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/pdfs/premed.pdf[/url]”>https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/pdfs/premed.pdf</a></p>
<p>The there is this:
</p>
<p><a href=“https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/pdfs/premed.pdf[/url]”>https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/pdfs/premed.pdf</a></p>
<p>idad: Yes idad. I did read that pdf file, but I am aiming for the top medical schools. I want a school that can out reasonable grades and encourage learning at the same time.</p>
<p>I am looking at</p>
<p>UC Berkeley
Cornell
Brown
Northwestern
etc</p>
<p>For what its worth: <a href=“WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights”>WSJ in Higher Education | Trusted News & Real-World Insights;
<p>If you are aiming for top med schools, then you will have to compete with others who also have the same goals. If you are smart enough, work hard enough and can get into WashU, JH med schools, then you can earn a high GPA anywhere, including U of C. If you take a premed biol course, somebody has the highest grade in the class. Shouldn’t he(she) be the one who goes to the top med school, not the one who went to a school where everybody gets an A. (exagerating to make the point) If you think you have the ability, then why can’t you make the highest grade?</p>
<p>Said differently: if you think you should be playing in the super bowl, then should you have to beat the best teams to get there?</p>
<p>I want to reiterate what I said before on this topic: U of C is SUPERB for placement in Doctoral Programs and Business School, and it LAGS but is GETTING BETTER in placement for med school and law school. </p>
<p>Also, on the med school front, I want to emphasize one crucial point: getting into an elite medical school is about as hard as it gets in the world of admissions. Unfortunately there is no way to quantify this, but from what I’ve seen of some very exemplary medical schools (Pritzker, Penn med, Hopkins), the students are not at all what you’d expect. I thought I’d see a LOT of nerdy brainiacs who concentrated on maximizing GPA and MCAT score. Instead, the nerds and minorities such as south asians or asians are not as prominent as I would have thought. Instead, you get a lot of wildly successful perfect score ivy league athletes seem to frequent this world. Think the kid with the near-perfect gpa and MCAT score who also captained the Dartmouth soccer team and climbs mountains for fun. The med school world, from what I can see, is still populated by the alpha gunners who excel at a LOT. Sterling academics is just the baseline.</p>
<p>With this mode in mind, it’s no surprise U of C lags. Remember, interviews mattered, and I routinely saw my “quirky” U of C friends with high gpas and mcats get battered during the interview process. All else being equal, qualities like charisma and appeal matter, and when numbers are just a baseline, med schools select for stuff like this. Again, if you look at a top med school class, you might be surprised by what you find. It’s not stereotypical studious and quietly scholarly types. Instead, it’s the Princeton rower who conducted medical checkups in the Congo mingling with the Groton and Harvard educated college ice hockey captain. </p>
<p>If you want to get into A med school, all of these college are fine. If your goal is a truly top med school, well, you might already be out of the running. Maybe pick up squash and a penchant for world travel?</p>
<p>One other quick point - I really wish the U of C would be more transparent about this stuff. Have any current U of C prelaws taken a glance at the Chicago law school placement list? We have this info on Cornell, UPenn, Yale, etc. What about Chicago? At Yale, around 45% of its law applicants go on to top 10-15 law schools. At UPenn, it’s around 30%. At Chicago when I graduated, I’d say it’s about 10-15% of law applicants got into top schools. Now, I’d guess it’s around 20-25%, but I would REALLY like to see the hard numbers on this.</p>
<p>It’s garbage the U of C hides this information. My hunch is its because - just like w med school placement - law placement lags because of a LACK of savvy amongst the U of C student body. I wish Chicago would follow suit and release this info, so the school could make the changes necessary to get placement at least in line with Cornell and UPenn. It’s ridiculous that my year, Chicago sent maybe 3 kids to Harvard Law (UPenn routinely sends 20), maybe 3 to Georgetown (UPenn sends about 20), and maybe 2 to UVa (Duke sends, say, about 10 a year to UVa). </p>
<p>The lack of transparency bothered me then, and it bothers me now. It’s like U of C has something to hide, when they should expose the issue and then deal with it. I’d assume Chicago is getting better as the classes get stronger. What is, though, the real deal here?</p>
<p>So, as a final point, original poster, if you want to get into a top med or law school, look elsewhere (Princeton, Brown, Duke, etc.). I don’t really mean this as a bash against Chicago, it’s just that, if you really want to do law or med, Chicago does not place as well as its peers. From all the information I can see, this is just a fact high school applicants should consider. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if you want to study Anthropology or sociology or physics - i.e. if the academics really matter - then come to Chicago. If you’re a true pre-professional though, it makes no sense to pick Chicago over its more palatable peers.</p>
<p>This is pulled from another thread for 07-08 numbers:</p>
<p>Yale Law School Per Capita Ranking:
Rank Name YLS Ratio
1 Yale University 15.36
2 Harvard University 18.43
3 Princeton University 36.15
4 Stanford University 38.88
5 Dartmouth College 82.62
6 Brown University 84.65
7 Columbia University 92.17
8 Duke University 132.62
9 University of Chicago 171.86
10 Brandeis University 184.75
11 Georgetown University 221.57
12 University of California-Berkeley 256.31
13 Northwestern University 278.86
14 University of Notre Dame 280.86
15 University of Virginia 311.20
16 Emory University 314.75
17 Massachusetts Inst. of Technology 332.00
18 Rice University 361.00
19 University of Pennsylvania 425.33
20 College of William and Mary 448.00</p>
<p>Harvard Law School Per Capita Ranking:
Rank Name HLS Ratio
1 Harvard University 6.80
2 Yale University 11.69
3 Stanford University 20.67
4 Princeton University 22.76
5 Brown University 29.98
6 Dartmouth College 30.69
7 Columbia University 36.07
8 Rice University 40.11
9 Duke University 42.05
10 University of Pennsylvania 44.77
11 Georgetown University 48.47
12 Brandeis University 67.18
13 Cornell University 69.07
14 Massachusetts Inst. of Technology 71.14
15 University of California-Berkeley 85.44
16 Emory University 89.93
17 University of Chicago 92.54
18 Northwestern University 97.60
19 University of Notre Dame 98.30
20 University of California-Los Angeles 113.38</p>
<p>Now, while the data is there, one thing to point out is how many students are interested in attending law school from each institution in the first place. In this regard, U of C has a pretty interesting student body:</p>
<p>1) Many students head to doctoral programs, one of the highest percentages in the nation
2) Most of the international students head back to their home countries because they are on some sort of unique scholarship program - this is particularly true for South East Asians.
3) Econ is the most popular major here - most of those students are heading straight to the work force</p>
<p>Most Popular Majors:
Social Sciences (which includes Econ): 36%
Biology: 10%
English: 6%
Foreign Languages and Literature: 6%
History: 6% </p>
<p>I think this breakdown paints a blurry picture of post-grad goals for students…I remember reading that about 25% of students major in Econ. Maybe 15% of students shoot for jobs in banking/consulting. From the looks of it, probably around 10-15% aim for law school - which is only about 150 kids each year. Pre med is probably around 10% (we have one of the highest placements of bio PhDs, so many of those bio majors are not premed) which comprises of science majors for the most part.</p>
<p>Raw numbers don’t necessarily give the best indication - a lot of it has to do with what students want. I would say for anything but pre-med, going to U of C is an advantage.</p>
<p>akx06 - thanks a lot for the substantive post. As suspected, thanks to stronger admissions, more recent Chicago grads do MUCH better than the peers from my class at U of C. </p>
<p>A quick note though - Chicago certainly has its share all-stars and top students that can win Rhodes Scholarships, get into Yale Law, etc. What interests me more is the per capita break down at the rest of the very good law schools. Does Chicago keep up appearences at NYU law, Penn Law, Duke Law, etc? </p>
<p>Also, unfortunately, as I said in my last missive, U of C lags behind its immediate peers in law school placement. Your stats only validate my statement - for HLS, Chicago ranks well below Columbia, Duke, Dartmouth, etc. For Yale Law, again, Chicago once again finishes behind Columbia, Duke etc. For a college that many consider to be at least in the top half dozen in the US, even recent placement is not all that impressive.</p>
<p>I do agree that many top chicago students have no interest in law school, but if you look at schools that are Chicago’s academic rivals (Princeton, Yale, Columbia, etc.), their undergrads across all spectra do extremely well (med school admissions, doctoral programs, law, etc.). Put another way, most princeton kids who want grad school go to a top grad school. Most princeton kids who want a top law school go to a top law school. Is Chicago at that level?</p>
<p>I found an interesting piece of data from LSDAS: Average LSAT scores for undergrad institutions. Harvard tops at 166, U of C is not far below at 162, Michigan is at 158.</p>
<p>*This is user complied data, there are obviously institutions missing (Princeton, Swat, Amherst)</p>
<p>U Michigan 158
Brandeis 158
St. John’s College (NOT St. John’s University) 158
UDallas 158
Georgia Tech 158
Vanderbilt 159
Bryn Mawr College 159
BYU 159
Colby College 159
Emory 159
Berkeley 159
Johns Hopkins 159
William & Mary 160
Georgetown 161
Haverford College 161
Washington & Lee 161
Northwestern 161
Notre Dame 161
U Chicago 162
Rice 162
Claremont McKenna 162
Columbia 163
Dartmouth 163
Duke 163
UPenn 163
MIT 163
Stanford 164
Pomona College 164
Yale 165
Harvard 166</p>
<p>can someone post the placement numbers for business schools?</p>
<p>I think one of the issues is that Chicago has never seen itself as a preprofessional training institution, but instead as dedicated to the expansion of new knowledge. A friend who (many many) years ago graduated in chemistry at Chicago, and who has been very involved with the school, has had a running discussion with a succession of chemistry chairs on the this issue. Whereas other schools understand the role gen and organic chemistry plays in med school consideration, Chicago provides courses directed more toward research. Many U of C premeds actually take chem or organic chem over a summer at Harvard (whole year credit) and other schools because it is more “practically oriented” than Chicago’s sequence (S1 did this, and found a stark difference in approaches to teaching science at this level between the institutions, and the student’s approach. He once asked a question only to have two Harvard students ask him why he was asking about that since it wouldn’t be on the MCATs.) From what I understand there are now discussions concerning this very issue at The University. The argument is that Chicago needs to be more preprofessional friendly and having tracks in chemistry where the requirements might not be as great would not be the end of the world. After all, there are lower tracks in calculus and physics. Also, beefing up preprofessional advising and prep is on the agenda. There are those who do not see this as The University’s mission. They believe there are other schools that cater to the preprofessional, and students who want to do that should simple go there. They argue that few schools today are dedicated to inquiry and ideas over career preparation and Chicago needs to remain as perhaps the sole institution so dedicated, and that it should recruit and appeal to students accordingly. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, there are strong feelings on both sides.</p>
<p>akx06 - thanks again for providing this hard data. This again proves what I’d been thinking - recently, Chicago has made significant strides in improving their pre-prof placement. When I was at Chicago, I think the LSAT avg was around 160. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, again, in a hard ranking, Chicago comes out below every single school it considers its immediate peer (Duke, Columbia, etc.). Again, for the not insignificant minority of students now who are committed to being a pre-professional early on, Chicago would not be the best choice. Go to Penn or Duke or Columbia or Stanford before you consider Chicago.</p>
<p>For the students that really want a superb liberal arts academic environment - perhaps the best anywhere - then Chicago is a wonderful fit. If you are hell-bent on elite law or med placement, again, look elsewhere.</p>
<p>I would say though - if career/academic/grad school advising was funded more and better, U of C could easily maintain what it holds to be it’s mission. </p>
<p>I think my own case is a good representation for this: I love the core, I love the education. I took Greek Thought & Lit, have taken some great electives (most notably the human rights class “Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Beyond”) and even added on Near Eastern Languages and Civ as my 2nd major to Econ. I’m pumped to take European Civ and go on my study abroad program - I have enjoyed my academic experience and look forward to what is to come.</p>
<p>On the other side, I have invested a great deal of time to my career. It really has nothing to do with school - I never took a GSB class like accounting or finance. I worked with the career office people, networked, spent time preparing for interviews and luckily, even in this market, landed the very best job (internship in my case) a college student can ask for. I think 10 of us are heading to Goldman Sachs this summer - which is probably more than NYU Stern or Michigan is sending, both schools with 3-5x more students applying for the position.</p>
<p>I do admit though, a lot of my career work was done on my own - it was a lot of initiative and the U didn’t help that much. I think the administration put more money into CAPS and had a better system of post-grad advising, the U of C can easily maintain its academics and do better to help kids going forward. It would attract the same type of student - someone that enjoys a liberal arts education (which doesn’t necessarily have to be someone who wants a PhD).</p>
<p>On idad’s note: I don’t think WHAT is being taught is the issue. Kids at U of C perform great on the MCAT regardless of the different approach to chem or orgo. The issue is more just how it’s graded (I would argue this is an issue for people who love Math but don’t want grad school as well). Certain departments, particularly the hard sciences and Math/Stat just grad very hard. I think this is something that is easily fixable. Adjust the curves. If BioChem is curved to a C average, then half the kids are C- or below. That’s obviously going to hurt people going forward. If that were changed to a B+ average, along with other pre-med classes, I think U of C students would have some of the best placement in the nation. </p>
<p>Honestly, I think this whole idea of grading hard is entirely stupid. It just hurts people going forward. U of C is demanding enough that it’s never going to attract people who don’t care for liberal arts. Plus, those kids wouldn’t fit in. All grading hard does is turn away people who love Math from taking math because they want a career after graduating or turn away aspiring doctors who could benefit from the U of C education and go forward to help a lot of people. I have seen kids work day and night for a class like BioChem and then get destroyed on the exam by getting average. Average for a bunch of U of C students is not average for everyone else - people here are very smart and it’s very dumb and shortsighted to punish them for that.</p>
<p>akx06: You are arguing pretty much what my friend has argued directly with those involved in making the decisions for nearly …30 years. The one compromise that has some support is to have a preprofessional sequence. I like the idea of simply changing the grading curve myself. As to what is taught, I was simply reporting the differences S1 has observed taking courses at both Chicago and Harvard.</p>
<p>akx - do you think the problem is really the grading curve in the sciences? From what I’ve heard, outside of a few exceptions (Brown, Harvard, maybe Dartmouth), the grading curve for some of the pre-med sciences at Chicago’s peer schools are also notoriously hard. At Northwestern, Penn, Cornell, etc. students routinely bemoan the difficulty and brutal curve in organic chemistry or physics. The key difference is, kids at Penn or Stanford or Northwestern can then balance that with easier humanities classes, and thereby bump their gpa. </p>
<p>At Chicago, easy, breezy humanities classes just don’t exist. The curve may be gentler, and the days of grade deflation are gone, but Chicago students need to work hard for all their grades across all disciplines. I had pre-med friends who concentrated in art history who still had to work hard in the art history classes. At Penn, on the other hand, you had kids whose semester-end grades were: A, A, A, C+ (in the pre-med class). This just doesn’t happen at Chicago. At Chicago, most students in the humanities still get somewhere in the A- to B range - the As are reserved for exemplary work. </p>
<p>The same problem affects the U of C for law school admissions. Again, it’s gotten a LOT better, but as your lsdas research showed, the U of C LSAT avg. is lower than every single one of Chicago’s peers. Couple the lower LSAT with a lower GPA (not by as much as in years ago, but still lower), and Chicago students simply do not do as well as their peers. </p>
<p>I agree, CAPS could get better, but changing the machinery to drive Chicago into closer competition with its peers would require more than just minor tinkering.</p>
<p>When I was at Chicago, they fed us a lot of propaganda about how much grad schools love Chicago students. In the numbers-based and cut&dry world of top professional schools admissions, though, Chicago faltered in its competition with its direct peers. Sure, the Chicago rigor may be preferred over the high-achieving student from a “lesser” school, but, all else being equal, the 3.7 from Duke beats out the 3.5 from Chicago every time. </p>
<p>Having listened to all the propaganda of how grad schools “love Chicago students because Chicago students have learned how to think,” I was then disappointed with the results for Chicago in comparison to Duke, Stanford, Columbia, etc. My only advice to the pre-professional types is, if your goal is top professional school admission, Chicago is NOT the optimal institution for this by any stretch.</p>
<p>idad,</p>
<p>A friend of mine did the Harvard summer as well - it makes sense for students who want to prepare for the MCAT vs. go on for their PhDs. It seems the students who need it end up finding a way to do it, I don’t know how big of a compromise it is to offer a professional sequence.</p>
<p>I’m going to try to follow up with some of the administrators about this - I think it’s a problem they are aware of but I’m curious to know what they are doing about it.</p>
<p>idad - you raise some interesting points, but I think at some point, Chicago will have to capitulate to the general concerns of the market. When I applied to Chicago, there wasn’t that much hard data on pre-prof placement for different undergrads. Chicago could keep their propaganda machine from the advising office going, and no students would really know until it was too late.</p>
<p>Now, with more transparent information and Chicago consistently coming in behind its peers in pre-prof placement, the school will soon either need to change or watch as many more capable students choose to go elsewhere for their college years. </p>
<p>I think, as long as Chicago maintains a spirit of rigor across all disciplines, and doesn’t succumb to the rampant grade inflation found at other schools, the U of C will be fine. Investing in more pre-professional advising, creating tracks in chem (just like in physics or calc), and making sure students are well-informed about pre-prof options are all sensible options. The humanities classes should maintain their high standards, but pre-prof students should not face punishment for their goals at Chicago. If you look at the numbers, the same percentage of students from Chicago apply to med school, law school, etc. as their peers at Brown and Dartmouth. The only difference is Chicago grads generally fare worse than their ivy league peers. Chicago will always attract a strong core of committed future-academics. Being a “training school” should not be derided as readily as it is in some circles around Chicago. The U of C should get on board and offer the services and flexibility found at Chicago’s immediate peers.</p>
<p>As stated by Ben Franklin in the mid-1700s: “Join, or Die.”</p>
<p>I’m not sure the days of grade deflation are entirely over. My second year took a philosophy class last quarter that had a midterm and final, both graded by a TA. At the midterm he had a C-…without a single comment given. S, loving the course and wanting to know where he wasn’t grasping the material asked for a meeting with the TA. TA balked a bit and then agreed to sit down with son…bottom line, his first essay was “maybe a little vague”, the other three essays were quite excellent. TA then told son that a C- was “a fine grade for a Chicago undergrad”. Son ended up with a C+ in the course. I ended up paranoid over grad student TA’s attitude towards the college.</p>
<p>My son loves Chicago, loves the core. But he is preprofessional. At this years advisor’s meeting the room was full of parents whose students were all preprofessional, all of them concerned. My son did very well 1st year, almost a 3.7 but finds the work involved with getting A and A- very stressful.(He’s been on antibiotics every quarter save his first…and this kid has never been a hot house flower) From the discussion at that advisor’s meeting, some parents aren’t buying the grad schools love Chicago students. It’s probably a sign of the times but people don’t just want to know that their students will get into ‘any’ grad/professional school, they want their kids to get into the better/best grad/professional school. Just saying.</p>
<p>Hmm, I may have made it sound like parents had sharpened pitchforks and torches in their hands at the meeting…it wasn’t like that at all. Everyone seemed very happy that their students were at Chicago, there was just a sense of general nervous nailbiting. I understood their point more clearly when son met up with the TA. I had never heard excellent and C- used in the same sentence before.</p>
<p>Hekau,</p>
<p>This is simply the nature of the beast. The only difference is, however, when I was at Chicago in the mid-late 90s, it was rumored the AVERAGE GPA at U of C was around a 2.8 or 2.9. I think that’s improved a bit now. Overall, though, you are right, Chicago is still more rigorous than its peers.</p>
<p>This is why I WISH there was MORE transparency on this issue, and I’m glad that gradually, more information is coming out. The truth of the matter is, a Chicago student must work harder, endure more stress, and face a more grueling environment than a student at Penn or Duke to earn acceptance to the very same graduate school. For students at Penn applying to say, law school, the grades come easily, and the only real concern is the LSAT. At Chicago, a 3.6 or so (the bare minimum for top law school acceptance) is a very strong, admirable performance in a humanities or social sciences concentration. </p>
<p>Again, the only thing that really frustrates me is the lack of information on this. Princeton, Brown, etc. have all published detailed reports of the grading curve set at these institutions. Penn, Cornell, etc. make their law school placement public information. Chicago keeps this information VERY close to the vest, and I don’t understand why. My growing suspicion is because - despite the stronger student body - Chicago students still lag significantly behind their peers in pre-prof placement (in law and med, not business, which has always been strong bc GPA doesn’t matter as much). </p>
<p>Now, to argue the other side, I do NOT think that Chicago should be a breeze, and it would lose its essence if it mirrors the environment at a Duke or Brown. At the same time, as long as capable students are working diligently and with an eye to improvement, good grades should come with time. I have too many memories at Chicago of my friends and I working very, very hard, receiving a C+ or B-, and not really knowing why.</p>