<p>Excluding a number of waitlists, I have bascially boiled down my choices to Wesleyan and UChicago, very different schools that I like for different reasons. I definitely prefer smaller discussion based classes and want a place where the focus is on undergrads. I don't really mind whether I'm in a city or more rural location. I'm also not 100% set on what I want to do but am thinking of premed (my #1 concern with UChicago is grade deflation). I enjoy learning and intellectual discussions (yay uchicago) but am not exactly as into many of the more nerdy things a lot of the kids seem to be into. On the other hand, I'm also kind of sick of parties after going to a high school where I attend at least one pretty much every weekend. I am interested in pursuing a lot of research during college. I'm not sure what I want to major in but it will probably be bio/neuroscience or a double major with bio/linguistics (and again I am interested in being a premed)</p>
<p>Frankly, based on what you’ve just said, you already seem to be leaning toward Wesleyan and for perfectly valid reasons: I think that the overt competition for grades is profoundly less at Wesleyan; I think your chances of a great gpa are probably better at Wesleyan (assuming you work just as hard as you would have at Chicago) and once you begin to live among your closest friends, you can choose which parties to go to, or not go to (and, least they exist!)</p>
Obviously undergrad focus will be greater at an LAC, but I don’t think Chicago lacks in this regard. You may have to work a little harder to be noticed in some classes, but you can definitely form relationships with professors very early on.
Class sizes: Core classes are capped at 19. In the humanities/social sciences, upper-level classes can get small very quickly, depending on the department. Your pre-med classes will be large lecture courses–my bio and physics classes were both around 100 people. Foundational/intro courses will almost always be larger, and bio is a behemoth of a major, but not all your classes are going to be huge. This is the spring of my first year, and the bio class I’m taking is…nine people, I think? It’s incredibly discussion-based and student-focused. I think Chicago in general is really good about having learning centered around the students where feasible, particularly in some of the honors classes. I’m sure you’ve already had the virtues of the Core preached to you, so I won’t bore you with that (unless you want me to.) And obviously we can’t quite compete with an LAC in the small-classes department, but we do try very hard
Chicago and grade deflation: it’s really a comparative lack of inflation, but semantics. Med and law admissions are unfortunately rather GPA-based, and there has been a lot of debate in the Chicago forum about whether (and how much) that hurts Chicago applicants. It is more difficult to maintain a very high GPA at Chicago than at many of its peer institutions, and I’ve heard the pre-med advising is lacking, but it’s not at all impossible to succeed at med school admissions here. Many people do it each year. That said, if you’re dead set on going to Harvard Med, this is probably not the best place to be.
You don’t have to be into super nerdy **** to like it here, trust me.
Research! There is no comparing the kind of research you can do here, at a major research university, to the kind of research you do at an LAC, although I’m sure a school like Wesleyan does a lot to make research opportunities available to its students. You will want to inquire into how they mitigate their natural disadvantage in that regard.
And yes, you can start doing research as early as your first year here.
Majors! We have a pretty good bio department. We have an excellent linguistics department, or so I’m told. And you’ll want to look into the computational neuroscience minor; it’s pretty cool.</p>
<p>If you have more questions, I’ll be happy to answer.</p>
<p>ETA: There is no “overt competition for grades” at Chicago. There really, really isn’t. On the contrary, the spirit of cooperation here is incredible. There is a lot of internal pressure to do well in your classes, to take on more and more work–and as a premed at any school you’ll be feeling a lot of pressure to get good grades–but the competition is all with yourself, not against other people.</p>
<p>Of course, all that internal pressure can lead to stress, and you will have to resist the urge to pile on more and more hard-but-so-interesting! classes until the workload becomes unmanageable. It’s an affliction that’s sort of subtly encouraged here–the idea that the more work you’re taking on, the better you are. For that reason, the atmosphere at Chicago can get very intense. Some people respond well to that intensity: they push themselves harder and do better, but never reach the breaking point. Some people don’t: they don’t know when to stop, to relax, to be satisfied with themselves. Know what kind of person you are before coming here.</p>
<p>Like at all other institutions, the amount of time you will spend on your work at UChicago will depend heavily on a.) your professors, b.) your efficiency/focus/dedication to getting things done ASAP, and c.) your reading speed for the reading-heavy classes.</p>
<p>But yes, you will generally have leisure time, except during Hell Week. (Though some students have leisure time then too. Lucky bastards.)</p>
<p>I am a terrible person who procrastinates, and not anyone’s model, but! On average I probably worked 20-30 hours a week–more when I had multiple major assignments (labs, papers, midterms) to worry about. </p>
<p>You will have lesiure time, don’t worry. You will have to schedule wisely–both in the sense of knowing your courseload limits and in the sense of having good time management–but you can do well in your classes and have time to play, too. (Of course, there will probably be a week or two where your lesiure time is watching bad TV for an hour between cram sessions. But that’s college.)</p>
<p>I have a terrible work ethic, but if a major slacker like me can handle Chicago with a half-way decent GPA, you’ll do just fine. I work about 2-4 hours a night on weekdays, and maybe 6 hours total on the weekend, so I find plenty of time to chill :).</p>
<p>Another great thing is that since the academics are so ‘intense,’ everything else is majorly chill. From pick-up games of basketball at Ratner to shakes with strangers at the C-Shop, people tend to be open, warm, and accepting.</p>
<p>I was actually wondering about sciences at Wesleyan… I heard that among LACs they are pretty strong in the sciences, but I really don’'t know any specifics</p>
<p>Wesleyan was a pioneer in the teaching of natural science. At a time when Darwin was still considered controversial, Wesleyan built one of the first buildings in America dedicated to science teaching. A nineteenth century chemistry professor, W.O. Atwater, invented the first calorimeter and his work is still cited in literature concerning human metabolism. According to wikipedia, Wesleyan is the only LAC with doctoral programs in math and the natural sciences. In Mathematics, that means you have access to graduate level courses even as an undergraduate. In physics and most especially in bio and chem, it means professors can run extremely sophisticated labs all year-round with the help of TAs and federal funding pays for the latest in equipment, again, with undergraduates as the biggest beneficiaries because the number of TAs are actually rather small for a university.</p>
<p>I would say, that if you’re a science student and you’re still asking the question, “What am I interested in?” then, yes, the opportunities are comparable; any mentoring you get at this stage is going to get soaked up like a sponge and I know for a fact those opportunities for close faculty mentoring exist at Wesleyan. If (and, it’s a big IF) they also exist at Chicago, then, big deal. It’s still a stalemate between Chicago and a school one-quarter its size. :)</p>
<p>I guess another issue with Wesleyan is that it doesn’t have a medical school/ hospital like chicago does and of course the opportunities available in middletown aren’t comparable to those in chicago</p>
<p>Wesleyan’s research expenditures are about $8M/year;
Chicago’s are over $300M (for a campus with about 5X the number of students as Wesleyan)
(source: Washington Monthly)</p>
