Why Chicago- Pluses and Minuses

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
1

<p>This has probably been done before but...</p>

<p>Why did you pick UChicago? What drew you to it? What don't you like about it or what would you change about it? What is the social life like (sorry but the consensus I've heard from other top flight alumni is that Chicago is known for having less of a social scene and more recluses)? Any other comments?</p>

<p>Thanks. Chicago caught my interest last summer with their near weekly "hip" postcards with bits of information about it. Oh, and I'm a prospect for the class of 2014</p>

2

<p>I’m gonna be honest; I didn’t pick U of C because I thought I was going to have fun there or like the people. The reasons I’m going are because of the school’s economics reputation and the school’s teaching style.</p>

3

<p>Answering every question in the order listed. This impression I had came from my overnight stay, so you’ll have to do some investigating on your own, since every person has their own feel about the school they’ll be attending.</p>

<p>I picked this over a decent state school with a huge coke scene that would be problematic to the enrichment of my mind (I was waitlisted at one UC, Irvine). </p>

<p>What drew me to it is that it wasn’t called San Diego State University. Actually, I also enjoyed the well-rounded nature of the students and faculty I met in Hyde Park.</p>

<p>I would bring back a dominant sports scene, but that’s out of the question, and a reason why the students are very invested in campus activities. They make their own entertainment.</p>

<p>There is no one “scene”. If you’re looking for something out of Delta Tau Chi from Animal House, I got the impression that such parties are few and far in between. But the kids do get down, you just have to know what you’re looking for. And I assume that the reason U of C has more recluses is that these kids have the same notions you might have right now, and make no attempt to be flexible. </p>

<p>I don’t go crazy here at home right now, but I managed to get myself more involved with the late-evening escapades of the student body than I planned, with much reworking done to my Friday on-campus schedule as a result. </p>

<p>My host made sure I understood that no one will bow down to you once you get here. But the personalities I encountered were all vibrant for the most part, so if you’re conversational and amiable, you’ll do fine. Seconding lincolnUofC, I rather be around people who are insightful at the expense of having to force themselves to have ridiculous fun every once in awhile, than the other way around.</p>

<p>Many those top flight alumni you speak of are the reason Crerar is so damn quiet (you’ll know what I mean when the time comes).</p>

<p>Hope to see you as a prospective student next year.</p>

4

<p>To sum up my pros/cons of UChicago (I’ll be entering the class of 2014 because I’ve deferred):</p>

<p>+Academic reputation (hey, your relatives have no idea how great the school is, but your boss will)
+Chicago
+Unique internships/other opportunities
+The people
+The laid back atmosphere (in that students aren’t looking for a party every night_
-Winters (coming from the south, this can be brutal, but hopefully a year in Europe will acclimate me)</p>

<p>Highlander and I basically had the same impression. You can DEFINITELY find everything you’d ever want to do on campus, you just have to look for it.</p>

5

<p>Yeah signitblank, I always find it really funny when people don’t get the caliber of school Chicago is. Most people just think it’s the University of Ill. at Chicago.</p>

<p>I chose it because it’s in Hyde Park a short bus away from downtown Chicago, its academics are top notch, the dorms are awesome, and the party scene sounds just how I want it.</p>

6

<p>What’s the whole Hyde Park thing? I keep hearing that term, Hyde Park, is that like how Manhattan is to New York City? I’m from a small Florida town so big cities are a relatively new concept to me</p>

7

<p>[Hyde</a> Park - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyde_park]Hyde”>Hyde Park - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>It’s just a neighborhood in Chicago.</p>

8

<p>Chicago, like most other large cities, is separated into smaller districts. Hyde Park is one of them, and a relatively affluent one, at that. </p>

<p>Usually, when the term is used by rival institutions deriding the University, it holds more of a derogatory connotation, as if Hyde Park is some rundown neighborhood or ghetto on the south side. (Which makes you wonder why the President of the United States or the Head of the Nation of Islam would ever live there.) However, students and faculty seem to like it quite a bit. I would describe it as the most diverse and culturally rich place I have ever visited.</p>

9

<p>^^ When Obama’s PR people call him a resident of the South Side of Chicago, that’s another reverse-spin: they make him sound like he lives in a humble, middle-class home. That’s very far from the truth, too.</p>

<p>There are a couple of very unusual things about Hyde Park. One of them is that it’s home to a sizable African-American population and a sizable wealthy population, with some amount of overlap. Its amenities pale in comparison to an Ann Arbor or an Evanston, but I’m not sure that’s the worst thing in the world. The Northbridge Mall is 20 minutes away if you need to satisfy your high-end shopping needs.</p>

10

<p>Why did you pick Chicago? Academics in my field of interest and general white collar gravitas. </p>

<p>What drew you to it? Went to a feeder high school with a strong science and technology bent. UChicago, along with MIT, Berkeley, Stanford, Caltech etc. were viewed as “hot” schools for nerds, and were heavily applied to. </p>

<p>What is the social life like? In my experience, top performers tend to have a small group of close friends, and a large numbers of meaningless, “hello” on the street, list you on Facebook acquaintances. The fact that so many people live on campus in their second year onwards contributes to this. Again - for top performers - the social life can be deemed very similar to arts & sciences graduate programs. There is definitely a true socialite minority though. </p>

<p>Any other comments? Think critically about your path to beyond college. After your first year, a lot of the reasons you choose a particular college for will likely become irrelevant (e.g. the close knit community), but being in an environment where you will thrive inside the classroom is essential. Friends from college come and go, an EC here is an EC there, but your GPA / course selections / standardized test scores for many fields is vital to getting into a graduate program of choice, which in turn structures you professional life for several years if not decades. The biggest regret of my UG colleagues was not taking the long view on things.</p>

11

<p>I guess I’ll take a stab at the original questions, too:</p>

<p>Why did you pick UChicago? To be perfectly honest, it went something like this: I wanted to go to a school that had a distinct approach to academics and that was a little off the beaten path (i.e. Reed, St. John’s College, Hampshire, Sarah Lawrence College, New College of Florida). My parents wanted to send me to a school that had more academic and professional prestige for the cost of tuition they would be expected to pay. Two schools satisfied both me and my parents: Chicago and my in-state. </p>

<p>What drew you to it? As a prospie, it seemed to me like a very different place from where I grew up, very focused on learning for the sake of learning with the Core and all that jazz. That was a big plus. The social reputation scared me, too, but I realized that I’d take a graveyard dorm over a dominant party culture any day of the week. Now that I’m here, I think that the learning for the sake of learning bit is quite true, though I didn’t realize how many students are learning for the sake of learning–and grad school. I also very much underestimated the party culture. Sure, you can find pockets of reclusive students, but not before you find a lot of parties and social activities.</p>

<p>What don’t you like about it or what would you change about it? I’m not a big fan of the campus layout, I wish more students lived in dorms all 4 years and I wish that those dorms were all near each other. The distance I walk from my apartment to class probably spans one extreme to another of a typical liberal arts college campus. At the same time, I’m not sure I’d like the LAC setup any more if I had attended one.</p>

<p>What is the social life like (sorry but the consensus I’ve heard from other top flight alumni is that Chicago is known for having less of a social scene and more recluses)?</p>

<p>Put it this way: fraternity and sorority recruitment come and go (frats actually have no formal recruitment) without the whole campus knowing. I get invitations to apartment parties on facebook all the time just by being somebody’s facebook friend. (I promise you I am not very cool). </p>

<p>To be perfectly honest, the students whom I see complaining about social life the most tend to be a) the kinds of students who will complain about anything, and b) the pockets of students with a lot of disposable income, who can afford to go do expensive things on a regular basis and wonder why everybody else is busier than them and doesn’t have as much time for fun. (It’s because the rest of campus doesn’t get money from their parents and we’re working a job during those 10 or 15 hours a week that you’re not!) These students are in a minority, but a pretty loud and distinct one.</p>

<p>Any other comments?</p>

<p>This will sound hokey, but I believe the University of Chicago is one of the best schools in the world at doing what it does. It seems like prospective students tend to get what we’re about, get our vibe, get our sense of humor. (Or they don’t, in which case they know we are not right for them and they find a school that is).</p>

<p>Probably the best piece of general advice I could give is to look beyond the name of a school. If I had to do college over again at a school other than Chicago, the schools I’d like go to are not the usual suspects.</p>

12

<p>Chicago was not initially my first choice. It became my first choice. Prospective weekend sealed the deal.</p>

<p>I’m not sure what type of a person you are, but I can tell you this. I don’t believe Chicago is a school only for “nerds.” Yes, everyone’s a nerd in the sense that they’re PASSIONATE about learning. And honestly, what else do you need to define the word “nerd” anyway? But not everyone sits around and plays video games, stays locked in their dorms, or only reads. That is so far from the truth. That was honestly my biggest fear. I’m a social person–in the sense I enjoy experiencing things and getting out. I like to party too. And there’s plenty of it if you want from my learning. I’ve talked to plenty of current students and that’s what they tell me. </p>

<p>I think the coolest things about Chicago (besides the academics) is just how “you” it can be. Chicago has so many different opportunities and routes you can choose to follow. There are over 400 RSOs. I mean you create, define, and fulfil the type of experience you want. You will find people who like all types of things. I think that’s the beauty of going to a school that isn’t pre-professional. Intellectual schools like Chicago, create more than just intellectual environments, they create kids who are passionate and interested in a WIDE variety of things. These types of schools foster growth. </p>

<p>So I think there’s a lot to like about the school. And, honestly. Chicago’s in the top ten list for best schools in the World. and number 8 on US News and World Report, tied with Duke and Columbia. Those shouldn’t be your reasons, but they’re plusses.</p>

<p>And the city of course! CHICAGO IS AMAZING. I seriously love the city. And I plan on taking advantage of it when I’m at Chicago.</p>

13

<p>Good to know, good to know. I think I’ll be visiting sometime in July.</p>

14

<p>Unlike many other excellent universities in its peer group, the University of Chicago did not evolve by twists and turns from a small college founded to prepare students for the ministry or the law. Chicago was founded deliberately, from the start, to be a world-class university encompassing both a liberal arts college and strong, highly interdependent research programs. It was invented, and has repeatedly re-invented itself, to fulfill the mission expressed in its motto (“let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched”.) Knowledge at the University of Chicago, in other words, is an enriching end in itself, not merely a tool subservient to some other end.</p>

<p>The faculty leadership has long had a keen sense of the school’s mission. It has been prone to much reflection and discussion about that mission in making any important decision affecting the life of the school (curriculum, admissions, investments in buildings and programs, etc.) It is a very idealistic place. These characteristics (not a lack of funds for example) explain why it removed itself from Big Ten sports, why it has no engineering or undergraduate business major, why there are no undergraduate departments, why it has a strong core curriculum, why class sizes are so small, why professors seldom rely on text books but instead teach from primary source materials, etc. </p>

<p>One of the best indicators of Chicago’s success is the fact that it is the only national liberal arts university to rank consistently among the top ten institutions, per capita, for graduation of future Ph.D.s. Other top performers in this category are small liberal arts colleges or technical schools. In other words, it offers a LAC-like education within a full-featured research environment.</p>

<p>Other posters have done a good job of stating specific pluses and minuses. One plus that has not been mentioned is that, as far as I know, very few other highly ranked national universities award such generous “merit” aid packages.</p>

15

<p>It’s a point to note that those merit scholarships, which in theory comprise about 10% of the incoming class, are awarded by Faculty Committee and not by the AdCom or FA department, and at the end of the four years, as newmassdad states, are not the ones that garner all the major awards. I think that at least up to this time, the AdCom has done a superb job, and except for minor tweaks, it should continue to do as good a job. I see no paradigm shift. S is in 7th Heaven, and I’m very happy for him.</p>

16

<p>A question to current (or past) UChicago students: what do you normally do (for fun) in the weekdays or weekends?</p>

17

<p>I’ll talk a bit from the perspective of an incoming first-year (which I am–Chicago '13!), since I just went through the college selection process. This, therefore, is what has drawn me so far to Chicago, and what has kept me a little wary, but keep in mind that I have only spent about 3 days on campus, none of them as an actual student, so I’m sure my opinions will change as I actually live in Chicago.</p>

<p>First off: I’m from Maine. We have an average state school system and a few so-called “Little Ivies,” namely Bates, Bowdoin, and Colby. These three are good schools, but I didn’t feel like I’d be “going anywhere”–namely, experiencing much of anything new–by going there. After sophomore year, when people start at least considering college, albeit not that seriously, I figured I’d be going to either an Ivy (assuming I could get in) or a liberal arts school like Oberlin. I literally did not know that the University of Chicago existed, and nor did any of my classmates; that’s how unheard-of Chicago is up here.</p>

<p>I have family in the western suburbs of Chicago; we went to visit them Thanksgiving break of my junior year. My mom decided that while we were out in Chicago, we could start the whole college-visit process by going to a couple of schools, namely Northwestern and the University of Chicago. (How she knew about Chicago is beyond me.) We never did get up to Evanston to see Northwestern, but we went down to Hyde Park. My first opinion of it was that it was “gritty”–I remember vividly seeing a mural on an alley near the Medici (57th street?) and being in awe of “graffiti.” (Remember, I come from suburban southern Maine.) Once I actually went around the campus, had a tour, had a session with an admissions officer, ate lunch at Bartlett, etc., however, I really did enjoy it. I decided I’d “put it on my list.” At this point, I had only been to the campus and had an admissions spiel; I had not actually researched the school at all.</p>

<p>After that it seemed like everywhere I went I heard about Chicago. Of course, 2008 was the election, so U of C seemed everywhere because of that, and then I realized just how many of my own books came from the university press. It was a little eerie, like Chicago had been surrounding me my entire life and I’d only just realized it. I fell in love with the school the end of my junior year, to the point where it was hard for me to think up other schools I even wanted to attend, besides the standard “Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth.” I added Bowdoin, Oberlin, and Williams to my list, but really, my list was all about Chicago.</p>

<p>I applied EA and, somewhat miraculously, or so it seemed, got in. At that point my family was treating it like I really was going to Chicago, and even though I had not committed yet because I had to know about FA, I wasn’t exactly working hard on apps for other schools. I heard about FA around December 27th or 28th, and it was fine. All fine. I was going. Officially committing on January 7th was just a finality; in reality, I’d been a member of Chicago '13 since December 15th, when I was admitted. I went to one of the April prospie sessions even though I knew I was already going, and that felt like a big test: did I still love the school? Could I see myself being there, living there? Had I made the right decision? The answer was a resounding “yes.”</p>

<p>So my thought process on Chicago:

  • Academic excellence
  • The rigor and relative “eggheadedness” of the student population
  • The interest level and intense involvement of the students
  • The diversity of the student population (I’ve basically never learned with any students besides pasty-white ones exactly like me; yay a 98% white state)
  • The lack of major sports (I like watching sports on TV well enough, but I’ve always been wary of going to a school where sports are a major emphasis)
  • Lack of a huge and overwhelming party scene (my idea of a party is one where the emphasis is on talking and socialization, not binge-drinking)
  • The city of Chicago (aka amazing cultural and employment/internship opportunities)
  • Chicago’s “dual identity,” as I think of it, as both a liberal arts college and a major, major research university (undergrad seems very liberal-artsy, but it’s not actually a liberal arts school)
  • The campus, its “Gothic” feel, and yet the fact that it’s part of a major city (but doesn’t necessarily feel like it on parts of campus)
  • The neighborhoods of Hyde Park and South Woodlawn (once I got used to urban-ness)
    +/- Distance from home (good in that it puts real separation between my parents and I; bad in that if something real happens, I don’t have them; I have family in the area to balance things out, however)
  • The weather (I’m more than used to snow, and I wanted to go to a school that would feel sort of like home in that there would be four distinct seasons still, yadda yadda, but it’s impossible to say that a Chicago winter is a plus)</p>

<p>I’m a nerd. A social and useful nerd, perhaps, but a nerd nonetheless in that I know all sorts of useless things, compulsively read everything put in front of me, worship Wikipedia and Google, employ sarcasm and inside jokes often, and love learning stuff. At the same time, I don’t want to be a recluse in college or in my adult life, and I do want to be competent (or beyond competent) at what I do for work and to do something (no idea what that would be) for which I have a great deal of passion. Chicago is full of so-called “nerds,” but it seems like they’re interested, engaged, curious nerds like I am, and that made all the difference in the world to me.</p>

18

<p>I think I am falling head over heels for UChicago. Let’s pray Early Action can answer my prayers! haha I only have one slight hesitation about the school. How hard is it to maintain a decent GPA for grad school?? I’m worried about attending one of the world’s best universities and going to University of Nebraska for graduate study! LOL</p>

19

<p>I really think that it depends on your major. If you are going to be an economics major or high level math and physics courses, it might be a bit harder to get that average over 3.5 even with hard work unless you are a genius. But isn’t that the case in most universities? However, my child is a non science major and has only taken a couple of economics courses and with a reasonable amount of work and some time consuming activities has still managed to maintain over a 3.6 cum after three years. I think that you will find Chicago comparable to most schools today.</p>

20

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<p>Grad schools weight based on which college you go to. I have read (in an essay written by a professor who worked on the graduate committees for CS at MIT, Berkeley, and CMU) that a 3.4 or a 3.5 at a top private is seen to be about equal to a 3.8 or a 3.9 at a top 50-100 private. If you go to the University of Chicago, your GPA will probably be considerably lower than if you went to your state flagship. It’s just how things work.</p>