when you say it's hard, just how hard is it?

<p>Will my entire life be sitting in a library studying? Or is it easy to maintain a balanced life of work and play? I'm guessing it's somewhere in between, but I've heard so many horror stories about the workload, and, at the same time, know some students who say it's manageable. I'm so sure that I'm in love with the university, but all work and no play, well, you know...</p>

<p>It is easy to maintain a balanced life of work and play, but the balance may be slightly different than it would be elsewhere. I had two kids there (one still, one recent graduate), and both had/have full and satisfying social lives. Some of which takes place on the A level of the Regenstein Library. (I.e., some of the time you spend sitting in the library is NOT spent studying. That’s true everywhere, but it’s more important at Chicago because most people DO spend a fair amount of time in the library, so it is more important as a social hub than other libraries may be.) And lots of which takes place in interesting locations all over the city of Chicago.</p>

<p>Now, neither of them would help you prove that one can have a great social life and keep a 4.0 GPA at Chicago, but so far both have done perfectly fine from an academic standpoint.</p>

<p>As with almost everything in life, YMMV (your mileage may vary). What varies: your course selection, your profs, your other commitments, your level of devotion. I could probably find a way to work a lot harder than I typically do. For example, where I skim for main ideas, another student might be carefully annotating and highlighting. Where I get cracking on a big paper, another student might be watching YouTube videos.</p>

<p>Another difference might be your work expectation from high school. Students who have been challenged by their high school tend to have an easier time adjusting to the expectations than students who sailed through (though everybody adjusts).</p>

<p>The “typical” student on the “typical” week probably goes out/parties/socializes 1-4 nights a week. I would stick the mean at about 1.8 and the standard deviation at… I don’t even want to take a gander ;-)</p>

<p>What I can say, for sure, is that being worked to the point of “failing out” is a non-issue. If you manage to get in, you can do the work, and if you are falling off the academic bandwagon for whatever reason, you have a considerable safety net here on campus.</p>

<p>I was one of those who students who “sailed through” high school-I didn’t graduate with a super-high GPA, but I did well without ever really feeling challenged.</p>

<p>That said, I typically went out or socialized in my dorm every weekend, and never worked past around 10 o’clock on weekdays. If you manage your time effectively, and are honest with yourself about your expectations and your ability to get stuff done, you should have plenty of time left to go to parties or see movies or whatever. My biggest piece of advice is effectively utilizing the time you have between classes-I lived really close to campus and a lot of my time between classes was spent watching youtube videos when I could have been doing work. </p>

<p>In the end, you’ll get as much work done as you want-save finals/midterms, the amount of time you’ll have left after that is really up to how well you manage your time.</p>