This thread has meandered off topic, but my son lives in South and has never felt unsafe walking to / from his dorm. As for studying, he spends a lot of time in the Reg working on problem sets with groups of friends.
Thanks, guys. Yes this thread has meandered off a bit, and I probably should go post on the other thread (wonder if there any young women there), but safety is perhaps important to continued meteoric rise. I’m trying to get a sense of the change over time, because I know what that area was like in 1990, and it wasn’t good. The shuttle doesn’t help - enough - if you have to wait for the shuttle outside alone or if the shuttle doesn’t stop at your door and the driver doesn’t wait for you to get inside. I know this from personal experience, unfortunately. I think having guards posted all over, and lots of foot traffic, would have to make things safer though. That South dorm is so big, it seems like there would have to be a lot of foot traffic, but when we visited last fall (and stayed at one of those new townhouses on 61st behind South!), we weren’t really out walking at night.
As to the divergent library, when we went into, it felt like you could hear a pin drop. We felt uncomfortable just walking through, like we were disturbing the students. Maybe there are private group study rooms, not sure.
@goingnutsmom I PM’d you. thanks
From what I gather, things are very different now. It only beyond four/five blocks away from campus that things get dicy.
@85bears46 Hyde Park has changed since we were there, and the area south of the Midway has changed a LOT.
Also, you said: “Just curious: if you don’t mind answering, where do students study these days? In my days College students either went to Harper or Reynolds Club.”
That’s interesting. Seemed to me like all the Shoreland kids studied in the Reg, mostly on level 2 (and then you would go down to A Level to make a ruckus). It probably was because you could catch the Shoreland shuttle right out front of the Reg when you wanted to go home.
@ThankYouforHelp It was over 30 years ago and my memory for sure has failed me 
That was a generalization anyway.
There is no doubt overall the quality of student life has markedly improved in the last 30 years. There is a Target along 53rd and Treasure Island is far better than the Co-op. Hyde Park in the 1980’s gave off the vibes of a besieged Ivory Tower. Now it feels like a vibrant college town. No doubt that transformation is one of the main reasons why there is a “meteoric rise” in ranking for U of C.
Well, if you go by the UChicago logo, the school should be named the University of Phoenix.
The Chicago logo is the epitome of awesomeness; very regal.
The logo is eye catching and very unique.
http://communications.uchicago.edu/identity/logo
I like the old one more which is much richer in color.
IMO finally they picked something right at the very beginning. LOL
I am pretty sure even people cannot recognize its name easily but should have no any problem to recognize its logo. If you put it with other logos from other universities it should be one of the most recognizable in US.
My son will be attending in the Fall and threads like this really make me comfortable with his choice. Very much appreciate the history.
As a prospective Econ and Math major the class size, professors actually teaching classes and strong recruiting should really help him to further develop.
On a side note, we visited last week and the security/police presence didn’t seem obtrusive. Chicago as a city really offers a wealth of culture.
Thanks to everyone that has posted.
Most impressive to me is that UChicago has enormous international appeal. LAC’s and schools like Penn (except Wharton), Brown and Dartmouth are simply not well known outside of the US. Ask an educated Chinese, Brit or German, and they will always talk about Harvard, Stanford, UChicago, Berkeley and Columbia. The global name recognition is something to consider for those who have international career aspirations.
@Chrchill Not quite true. Ask anyone outside the Chicago thread and they will not agree with you. The schools with true global recognition are Harvard, Stanford,MIT and to bit lesser extent Yale and Princeton. Chicago does not have better name recognition than Penn or Columbia or even Cornell. Brown and Dartmouth have relatively weak grad schools so their global presence is hurt a lot by this.
A very well-educated European or Chinese will known Chicago and Columbia and Penn and Cornell. If he knows one of them chances are he knows all. In China probably they know Chicago and Penn even more so than the other two because of the Penn Wharton China Center and the Chicago Center in Beijing, which the other two schools do not have.
The average European and Chinese will probably know and be impressed by Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Yale (and maybe Princeton). The Chicago name will mean nothing to them as neither will the Penn, Columbia ,Cornell names and of course Brown and Dartmouth even more so.
Also all of the other ivies benefit from the association with HYP and especially Harvard in terms of global recognition. Even though Brown and Dartmouth are relatively weak in terms of academic strength and research output they manage to have a decent standing solely due to the ivy league tag. Cornell has better academics and research strength than Brown and Dartmouth so it is considered a bit higher internationally but still gets a big boost fro the Ivy tag. And so do Columbia and Penn who have even stronger overall departmental strength and research output. On a global level even Yale and Princeton benefit from the association with Harvard. The Ivy League is one of the stronger and most recognizable brands out there and as long as most of the ivies continue to be strong schools that brand and perception is reaffirmed. Stanford and MIT do not really need the ivy tag because hey have very strong brands on their own but most of the time they are referred to as ivies anyway.
The whole gilt-by-association thing is just BS. The Ivy-obsession is a distinctly US phenomenon (and then probably mostly the obsession of UMC teens and their parents).
Oh, please, @Penn95 . People who are sophisticated about economics and policy all over the world know about the University of Chicago because of Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, Richard Posner, and people like Fisher Black and Myron Scholes (the former was a Chicago professor and the latter a recent Chicago PhD when they wrote the paper that became the basis of modern finance). Also the “Chicago Boys” who brought free-market economics to South America. If they are somewhat more sophisticated people also know about Leo Strauss. People in science know about its association with Enrico Fermi. People may know that Barack Obama taught there.
Neither Penn or Cornell (nor very many other places) has names that recognizable. (Cornell does have Carl Sagan.) People aware of business schools all over the world certainly know about Wharton and recognize its brand, and you have to be a step more sophisticated to recognize that Chicago Booth is a peer business school.
As for whether your cab driver or butcher in Shanghai, Warsaw, or Vladivostok has heard of the University of Chicago . . . probably not, but so what?
Carl Sagan earned his BA/BS, MS and PhD from U of C.
From my Chinese friends (totally anecdotal and not scientific) a lot of people in East Asia had heard of U of C dating back to the 1970’s because of Milton Friedman. Friedman used to write a column in Newsweek and he singlehandedly brought immense fame to U of C to the mass all over the world. Nobel Prize in Economics in 1976 made him even more prominent given the status of scholar in East Asia.
@exacdemic It is not though. Ivy is far from a US phenomenon. Just take a trip to Europe and Asia and you will see otherwise. Having lived in both during my high school years and gone to international prep schools in both I can say it is not. And I m not the only one saying it, just read every other article out there about elite schools, the ivy league name pops up 99% of the time. Of course that doesn’t mean that people do not know that there are very strong schools outside the Ivy League. But the fact that people not familiar usually think Stanford, MIT and also Chicago are ivies speaks for the strength of the ivy brand.
The gilt-by-association is not BS at all. There have been major studies about attaining prestige by association. And in this case you have already strong and prestigious schools that are being elevated a bit further by being part of a club with a strong brand and being associated with a prestige behemoth like Harvard and to a lesser extent Yale.
@JHS lol i think you are confusing things a bit. A sophisticated person in economics and in general will of course know the University of Chicago but such a sophisticated person will also almost certainly know the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University and Cornell University many other top schools. However, Chicago is not a widely recognizable name amongst the general population. And neither is Penn and neither is Columbia and neither is Cornell and others. This is just a fact. In most cases the person on the street will be impressed by Harvard, Stanford, Yale,MIT but will stare at you if you say most of the other top schools. Now does it really matter that the butcher around the corner won’t be impressed with these names. Of course not. But this is how it is.
None of those universities is associated by name with anything as widely recognized and globally influential as “Chicago School” economics.
I am not denying at all that sophisticated people the world over recognize Penn, Cornell, Columbia, etc. They do. And I don’t think it matters much at all what unsophisticated people the world over recognize or don’t. I do believe that Chicago has somewhat more of a global brand than most – obviously not all – elite American universities because of its prominence in Economics and Physics during the second half of the 20th Century. Chicago stands for something other than just being a well-regarded American university. I am not certain the same is true of Columbia or Cornell.
Chicago has been having a strong reputation in Asia as a research powerhouse, especially in Hong Kong and China for a long long time. One of the reasons was the fact that the University had produced two PhDs who came from China went on and won their Nobel prize in Physics in 1957.
Chen-Ning Yang who studied with Edward Teller and received his PhD from Chicago in 1948 at the age of 25 or 26 while Tsung-Dao Lee who got his PhD under Enrico Fermi in 1950 at the age of 23. These two scientists really put their Alma mater in a special place in the minds of Chinese people.