So yesterday I was having this conversation with my son and we started talking about what changes in the school would remove UChicago from being his top choice school. It was another way of getting to what he values about the college the most.
Here is what he said
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He used the top 25 private schools (besides our state schools and a few merit heavy OOS schools) in the USNews Ranking as his starting point to decide which schools he would investigate further. So if UChicago was not in the top 25 private schools in the country, he would probably not have investigated it further, unless somebody had pushed it real hard.
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If UChicago’s “Life of the Mind” changed. He totally fell in love with that booklet the University sent him on this theme at the University. It convinced him of the intellectual gravitas of the school
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If career placement at UChicago or its career services fell off a cliff.
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If he thought that he had a snowball’s chance in hell of making it into the school.
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If the student body was all “fratty/preppy/homogeneous” or the administration and students were heavily invested in “trigger warnings, safe spaces and politically correct views” like some LAC’s and Universities in the NE
That conversation got me thinking about what makes UChicago, quintessentially UChicago? What are your thoughts?
Well, I was attracted to the school based on the student body and academics. You only get one college experience. You could choose prestige or something cheaper or something that will get you a higher GPA, or you could choose, in the words of someone on this website, “the last bastion of intellectualism in the country.” Chicago will make you grow as a person better than any other school, in my opinion, both academically and personally, surrounded by a student body that will support you. And I loved that book “Life of the Mind” as well. 
I like how everyone goes on and on about how much they adore this incredible intellectual environment. Frankly it’s overplayed. This purist intellectualism is responsible for making virtually every stem major at the school incredibly hard to do well in barring godly time management, and while there are definitely some amazing intellectual experiences to be had in certain classes, this intellectual fervor that your kid is so attached to is quickly going to dissipate.
The thing that makes UChicago UChicago is probably the propensity of students to overload themselves and then complain about it. It’s going to be hard, you’re going to be forced to develop your time management skills, and the application process lets in a lot of kids who can write a really pretentious highbrow essays but can’t cope with the realities of the workload and end up doing poorly. Unlike ivies, which are basically four years of partying and grade inflation, this school will either make you improve yourself or it will spit you out.
But yeah, I have a pset that im procrastinating on so excuse my rambling.
An old alum named Joseph Epstein wrote a book some years back called “Snobbery”, a witty anatomy of that subject. It was amusing to me (also an old alum) that he described the particular species of snobbery that marked his fellow students at his old alma mater - the pretense and sometimes the reality of superior intellectual attainment. That was what made you some form of BMOC and assisted your love life. Rather different from the snobberies of wealth, beauty or athleticism that took you places at other lesser schools. Needless to say, reality doesn’t always live up to pretension. It didn’t in my day, and I doubt it does now. That’s why Epstein calls it snobbery, and one might also use the words “half-baked” and “phony” from time to time. And, yes, there are many smart but not particularly cerebral types at the U. of C. But the point is that everyone honored the ideal. It appears from these discussions that it is still being honored. It may be even stronger now than it was in my day. If you’re going to be a snob, you might as well be that kind of snob.
One measure on the “intellectual horsepower” of a University’s student body is the “degree of political correctness prevalent on campus”. When trigger warnings, safe spaces, boycotts of unpopular opinions and appeals to ban speakers and deny tenure to controversial academics start taking hold at a University, you know that such a place has lost intellectual vigor specially when the administration starts pandering to these interests. A lot of the LAC’s and quite a few Ivy’s and several elite private and large state schools are far along this path already.
I don’t see this trend at UChicago yet. That’s not to say it cannot happen. But to me, one important criteria about whether an University promotes the “Life of the mind” is whether discordant and even repugnant opinions are allowed to compete for air time on campus. So far UChicago is holding its own here. Let’s hope it lasts.
The impression I get is that Chicago is fighting the vocal minority who would stifle speech they disagree with. At most of the colleges involved (even Oberlin, with that 17-page list of pie-in-the-sky demands - including immediate tenure for a number of named professors*) I can’t imagine a majority of students backed protesters’ demands. However, Chicago has been actively opposing such ideas in recent years. In January 2015, well before the flare-ups at Yale, Princeton, Mizzou, CMC, etc, Chicago issued the following report:
http://provost.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/documents/reports/FOECommitteeReport.pdf
When protesters disrupted an event featuring Anita Alvarez, and refused to let her speak, Prof. David Axelrod was unequivocal in denouncing their actions in a student newspaper. The contrast with other schools, where personal attacks aimed at the faculty and/or administrators largely went unanswered, was stark. Even the recent episode at UIC - with protesters forcing the cancellation of a Donald Trump rally - was a disappointing rejection of freedom of speech, however hateful that speech might be. Nothing makes me happier with my college choice than seeing the University of Chicago take a stand on this issue.
*I should note that Oberlin’s president responded to the students’ letter, saying he wouldn’t discuss their demands until the writers were willing to entertain a civil discussion - including requests and suggestions, but no demands. A college where Bernie Sanders might be a centrist and the (slightly more conservative) U of C are on the same page, which suggests this is less an issue of politics and more a question of the administration’s courage.
“The thing that makes UChicago UChicago is probably the propensity of students to overload themselves and then complain about it.”
If a school where a popular t-shirt reads, “Where fun goes to die!” sounds like a place you want to spend 5 years of you life, then you are quintessentially U Chicago.