<p>The terms "liberal" and "conservative" have become such pop media buzzwords that they've lost all meaning.</p>
<p>Originally, the view of UChicago as "conservative" grew out of the Economics department which favored a free-market, less-government philosophy as opposed to the Keynesian economics of the east coast schools that favored a philosophy of government economic intervention to promote growth and achieve social goals, even if it meant defecit spending. At one time, those were "conservative" versus "liberal" concepts. </p>
<p>But, in this day age, when the "conservative" Presidents oversea record deficits and the "liberal" Presidents balance the budget, the use of those terms is utterly meaningless.</p>
<p>As a practical matter, I doubt there is any "political" difference between UChicago and any other elite college that would impact the daily lives or classroom experiences of the students.</p>
<p>I disagree. If you are going to study political science or economics, there will certainly be some differences in the classrooms. (I.e. more classes offered in democracy and social change at Swat, more classes offered in International Relations and war at UChicago). Also, at UChicago, you will run into many students who describe themselves as politically apathetic. Something I think you'd be hard-pressed to find much of at Swarthmore. Swarthmore is more socially liberal, if you consider their party scene and gay student contingency... At UChicago, frat/preppy type students have frat parties, but for other students there really is no large-scale social venue.</p>
<p>I must include here though that I talked to a student at Swarthmore who said he felt people at Swarthmore were socially-inept and that he would have had more fun at UChicago. As he was politically moderate on facebook, I have to wonder if he was a preppy-type who would have preferred that scene at UChicago.</p>
<p>Academically, universities and LACs differ more in the classroom experience than I had realized. Your relationship with professors will certainly be more formal at UChicago. UChicago has greater emphasis on studying ancient things. Their core consists of reading the "great books," and their classics departments are huge. At Swarthmore, intro classes often have students writing rough drafts, whereas at UChicago professors are more-or-less uniformly smart and enthusiastic but probably don't put as much thought into how they teach the class, in terms of providing time-intensive teaching methods like looking at rough drafts. Also, science courses at Swarthmore usually involve a lab which consists of designing and performing an experiment. At least in biology at UChicago, many upper-level classes are purely theoretical and have no lab. (You may or may not care about science, I don't know). Swarthmore has more emphasis on collaborative-learning.</p>
<p>UChicago's quarter system can be a bit obnoxious, b/c you only get 10 weeks to figure a teacher out, and you have 3 finals a year. On the other hand, it means you can explore more.
In terms of how the two schools are viewed by grad programs and law schools, they are both considered excellent. UChicago probably gets in better with business/economics oriented people. I think pc-ness and postmodernism probably enters the classroom more at Swarthmore, which could be good or bad depending on your preferences. The grad school most commonly attended by Swat graduates is Berkeley. UChicago grads most commonly go to UChicago, then Princeton.</p>
<p>Please ask me any other questions you may have. I've noticed if you talk to students at one school they tend not to have much idea of how schools differ, and they tend to make generalizations that sound like they came from a brochure. Since I've been at two schools, I flatter myself to feel like I can be more specific than a lot of students.</p>
<p>interested dad: there's a guy on the uchi forum that just loves to use the princeton review stats for swarthmore concerning admission rates and yield to build up uchi. i hope you don't mind, i copied your earlier analysis of what princeton review did wrong and pasted it in a post on the uchi forum. your earlier statement that noone would consider uchi a warm and fuzzy place would get you attacked on that particular forum. those people are really uptight about uchi not being an ivy.</p>
<p>Hey, there are members schools of the Ivy League athletic conference that are not "warm and fuzzy", either.</p>
<p>That is not a description I would use for Harvard, which is sometimes criticized for its lack of undergrad community. It's more in the "sink or swim" category. I don't know Columbia, but I suspect it would not be in the "warm and fuzzy" category either.</p>
<p>i tend to agree with the sink or swim at harvard, however, i think it may be something they actually cultivate there. I have also been to swarthmore and i also agree that they are kind of warm and fuzzy in atmosphere as is haverford, although haverford is almost scientological in the way they follow that crazy honor code.</p>