^ OK, I thought it was referring to buildings within the campus. It looks like apartment buildings outside of campus.
If you guys ever head up/over to the South Loop, get the Rubin’s Reuben at 11 City Diner. And a malt (mine was vanilla – lovely). Just order that and thank me later. 
Anyhow, Chicago’s food scene is just superb. So – that might provide some additional fuel for the rocket that is carrying the meteor out of our atmosphere. If few kids are aware of it beforehand, I’m sure they learn quickly.
Chicago’s food scene is just superb, but Hyde Park’s food scene is considerably less than that. Most of the walkable off-campus offerings strain to achieve mediocrity.(Shout-out to the exception: the French bakery on 55th somewhere. But people can’t live on croissants alone.) Also, as is true elsewhere, even in livelier areas of Chicago it’s a lot easier to find superb food than it is to find superb cheap food.
The IM Pei toasters sprang up as part of the urban renewal efforts in the 60s. Not campus housing. I believe it’s run by an association so it must be a group of condominiums. 30+ years ago it provided quite a bit of graduate housing because they allowed renters. Not sure if that is still the case. Despite efforts to improve the look of the property, it has remained a major eyesore.
@JHS - it’s been a long time since I was in on the Chicago restaurant scene, but I remember superb cheap food in Pilsen (Mexican town) and Chinatown (a short red line ride away from U of C!).
I think the biggest compliment that can be given to Hyde Park’s food scene is it’s moving from “lacking” to mediocre. From what I’ve heard, a couple cafes on campus offer some good-to-delicious fare (Plein Air Cafe and Dollop, coming to mind), and some college staples (like Insomnia cookies) are opening up.
In greater Hyde Park, you at least have places that can check boxes (outdoorsy music/bar restaurant - Promonotory - Check. Passable restaurant for a graduation dinner, besides the excellent La Petite Folie - A10 - Check. Staple greasy spoons - Valois and Salonica, Check, check. Fairly good options for sit-down meals - Medici, Pizza Capri, Piccolo Mondo - check, check, check.)
There are some more casual places opening up too, which is nice - Chipotle, Five Guys, etc. It’s not as barren as it once was.
At least around lunch time, I hear there’s a fairly good food truck scene on campus too - so maybe good cheap eats are to be had there.
Agree on Pilsen, but it’s off the beaten track for UChicago students. (I didn’t say superb cheap food was impossible to find.) I am sure there is superb food to be had somewhere in Chinatown, but not at the couple of places I have been.
Hot Doug’s was superb cheap food. RIP.
Look, a university can rise to greatness without superb food in the immediate vicinity. Look at Stanford, Brown, maybe even Harvard. I’ll bet there’s superb food somewhere in Cambridge, but I haven’t encountered it.
I hypothesize an inverse relation between proximity of good food and scholarly accomplishment. The exercise of one’s higher mental faculties isn’t really consistent with the lowly demands of palate and gut. You could call this a rationalization of an even more salient inverse relation - that between the cost of fine food and the size of a student’s wallet!
There’s Cemitas Puebla, the Med, the Nile, Valois, Salonica, Shinju Sushi, Snail Thai, Chipotle, Nando’s, Five Guy’s, Harold’s, Giordano’s, and Native Foods, just to name a few.
It doesn’t have the best or the cheapest food in the city but it has enough that you can have a reasonably priced and decent meal most Saturdays without leaving Hyde Park.
Most students don’t really care about fanciness or food quality in that way (no student is going to La Petite Folie, A10, the Promontory, or Piccolo Mondo for a Saturday dinner unless they have free rein to a credit card attached to their parents bank account), people just want a place they can sit with their friends for an hour or two and eat better food than the dining hall.
Giordano’s just opened in Minneapolis and we rejoiced. Best stuffed pizza we’ve ever had. Guessing it’s still on 53rd in Hyde Park? but also throughout Chicagoland including downtown. No one should visit Chicago w/o stopping at Giordano’s. Great place for students to take their visiting parents.
@JBStillFlying You are watering down the narrative here, which is or should be that the absence of edible food in the vicinity of the University is the principal cause of its meteoric rise. We should take our cue from the beginnings: William Rainey Harper must have had to trot over to the Columbian Exposition in order to get a hot dog. No wonder he recruited such a stellar faculty from all those lesser schools in neighborhoods with cordon bleu chefs. Then we fell away from that standard, with places in the sixties like “The Tropical Hut” and “Gordon’s”, which allegedly served viands that were only semi-poisonous. I conclude that to really put this rocket into space we need no better fuel than bread and water.
Bread and water is fine as long as the coffee’s good. THAT’s the real fuel. BTW, I disagree with a statement upthread - one CAN live on croissants alone for several weeks at a time. BTDT.
@ihs76 There is only one food item to speak of in Hyde Park: Harold’s Chicken (white half extra hot)
this a thousand times
Good read on Zimmer’s accomplishments and goals as his contract is extended through 2022.
I am glad we are back on point ! Expect yield at the college up dramatically for 2017.
Estimates, @Chrchill ? I’m thinking 73% (1650 / 2250).
Yield is 75% this year
^^That would suggest enrollment closer to 1700 than 1650. Could that have happened? They have dorm space for up to 1700 first years, correct?
@HydeSnark is your 75% number your guesstimate or verified ? What is source ? Why is Nondorf saying that they had the lowest acceptance rate with 8% when last year was 7.8 % ?
Can’t say source. Not a guess. Caveat emptor: that number may have been rounded up - so 73% is entirely plausible.
@Chrchill The Maroon says last year’s rate was 7.9%
(see: https://www.chicagomaroon.com/2016/05/31/university-admits-record-low-7-9-percent-to-class-of-2020/)
This year’s 8% rate may be a rounding up of 7.7% or 7.8%. It also isn’t final
(see: https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2017/4/6/uchicago-release-class-2021-acceptance-rate-spring/)