<p>I'm in HS, and UChicago's on my list of prospective colleges. I'm wondering, however, why I keep hearing about how intense the workload/difficulty level is there. I understand they have their CORE classes everyone takes; is it these that are so draining? Don't get me wrong, Chicago's a great school and I would expect a degree from it to have substantial educational value (i.e., one has to work hard to get it), but why are they specifically so notorious for this? Any input's appreciated. :)</p>
<p>Chicago is hard because the people like to challenge themselves. a lot.</p>
<p>It’s because most Chicago students are masochistic and like to push themselves to (and oftentimes beyond) the limits of sanity.</p>
<p>Then we complain about it a lot just to let others know how hard we work. But we secretly love it and wouldn’t have it any other way.</p>
<p>Neltharian nailed it.</p>
<p>Uchicago is where the definition of fun for most people goes to die. While it is still college in some senses, it truly Is the life of the mind.</p>
<p>The classes move fast (they’re only 10 weeks long), and they try to cover a lot of ground. Not necessarily a whole 16-week semester’s worth, but more than 5/8ths of it. Midterms may start as early as 4th week. No assignment or class seems like something you can blow off.</p>
<p>More than almost anywhere else, there’s a tacit agreement among all of the students that it’s OK to care about your classes, to get excited by them, want to do the work. (That doesn’t mean everyone does the work, mind you. But at some colleges, you can feel like a freak if you are taking all of your classes seriously and trying to do all the work, and at Chicago that’s pretty much the norm.)</p>
<p>Lots of students elsewhere work as hard as students at Chicago, harder even. But Chicago almost completely lacks the slacker element that’s skating by, or the people who go to classes only when their outside activities permit. Everyone – football players, black-clad hipsters, wealthy club kids, aspiring politicians – is more or less committed to having classes and academics be central to his or her life.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean it’s competitive, by the way. Generally, it isn’t. But people can feel pressure to hold up their end of the bargain – actually to think about stuff rather than just b.s.-ing about it.</p>
<p>What JHS said. The challenge in college whether at uChicago or elsewhere is to make the transition from having 4, 5 or even 6 classes in high school to having 3 or 4. It means that management of time when not in class is an important skill to learn because you are sitting in class fewer hours than when in high school. It is especially important at UChicago because the quarter is only 10 weeks long. You’ll end up taking more classes after 4 years but they don’t skimp on the depth or the reading assignments simply because the quarter is shorter than a semester.</p>
<p>Just to clarify, how do students at Chicago challenge themselves more? Is it taking ~45 total courses (versus the required 42 or less with AP credit)? More than this? An overall harder curriculum?</p>
<p>I’d say a combination of the two (hard classes and more classes), in addition to being heavily involved in extracurriculars and generally having fun.</p>