<p>I'm hearing this stuff about "where fun goes to die" and that your GPA will be low/go down if you matriculate to UChicago?</p>
<p>Is this necessarily true? If so, why?</p>
<p>I heard the same thing. Apparently, the place is filled with bookworms (aka Trogium pulsatorium).</p>
<p>Seriously, you might want read the following thread:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/936860-honors-graduate-174-lsat-shut-out-top-law-schools.html?highlight=law+school[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/936860-honors-graduate-174-lsat-shut-out-top-law-schools.html?highlight=law+school</a></p>
<p>Those and other slogans are simply inside jokes that mean, “This is a highly academic school, and we work very hard, but the truth is we love it here.” There’s plenty of fun and if your GPA is a priority, you can probably keep it where you’d like it.</p>
<p>Sigh.</p>
<p>Yes. Chicago is where fun goes to die. No one laughs, or has parties, or gets drunk, or has sex, ever. The workload is insane and crushing; you will struggle just to pass your classes. At the end of your four years, you will stagger out of the front gates a miserable dried-out shell of your former self, your dreams of elite professional school and seven-figure salaries forever destroyed by your low GPA. You will die alone, friendless, penniless, and homeless, in a darkened alley, in pouring rain, while diseased stray cats mewl pathetically and lick at your wasted hands. In your last moments, you will summon all your strength and gasp with your dying breath, “Why? Why didn’t I get into Harvard?!”</p>
<p>Conclusion: don’t come here. Go to Caltech instead; I hear the parties get pretty wild over there.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how credible this research is, but according to [National</a> Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/]National”>http://www.gradeinflation.com/) , Chicago’s average GPA in 2006 was 3.35 with a severe upward trend. Compare with, say, Columbia at 3.42 in 2006, with a slight upward trend.</p>
<p>haavain, </p>
<p>It’s a question with potentially valid implications, so dismissing it with a sarcastic comment is probably unwarranted.</p>
<p>^^^ thumbs up!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s a question that has been answered many times, in great detail, and I am heartily sick of it. If the OP would like a serious answer, he can use the Search function.</p>
<p>haavain, do you really feel that way about UChicago?</p>
<p>Sigh is correct.</p>
<p>Search function.</p>
<p>Next.</p>
<p>Give it up. Nobody uses the search function. That’s just the way it is.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/473110-chicago-faq.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/473110-chicago-faq.html</a></p>
<p>@haavain: You don’t even go here. It could all be true. </p>
<p>That said. It’s not.</p>
<p>haavain is enrolling there this year. wow, he/she is certainly not going in with much optimisim. ;)</p>
<p>^ he/she must be a lemming ;)</p>
<p>Haavain, that was awesome. Totally rattling that off if anyone asks me this question in real life. xD</p>
<p>^ me too !</p>
<p>Kids, do the math. 90% (or so) of the students entering Chicago (and similar schools) were in the top 5% of their high school classes. Their GPAs reflected that. The median unweighted GPA of accepted students at Chicago is probably around 3.8. However, only 5% of Chicago students will be in the top 5% of their University of Chicago class (which is probably pretty close to a 3.8+ GPA), and the median GPA at Chicago is something like 3.35 (and, I bet, somewhat lower than that for first-years). Any way you cut it, the vast majority of students at Chicago are going to see a significant decline in their GPAs from high school to college. A few won’t, some will even do much better, but most will need to cope with it.</p>
<p>That’s true everywhere comparable, by the way. With all the kerfuffle about grade inflation or deflation, the range of median GPAs at peer schools is maybe-maybe as much as .2, with Chicago not at the lowest extreme. </p>
<p>So why do Chicago students pitch and moan about it more than some others? At Harvard there’s a culture of saying “Grades don’t matter because this is Harvard! And besides, I put all my energy into comping the Lampoon.” At Chicago, there is a culture of saying, “Grades don’t matter, learning matters,” but that doesn’t sound as convincing, and no one is putting all his energy into comping anything. People are more focused on their classes, so any lack of complete success in those classes stings a little more.</p>
<p>what classes are so difficult? i highly doubt a large majority of the students are taking honors comp sci, 160s math, AP 5 bio, honors chem, honors orgo, honors physics, etc. every single english class i have taken was a piece of cake.</p>