As a parent of a junior, I appreciated reading your post as it captured a lot of what makes UChicago such a special place. I would add the amazing array of fascinating speakers and fellows that the IOP brings in every quarter. And the house system truly is one of my favorite things. It is the ideal way to form instant friendships. My son is in his junior year and his best friends are still the group he met freshman year in his house. My second son is at a large university in a traditional dorm setting and it is much more stressful for a kid who goes in knowing no one.
Wait until you experience the procession and parting of the ways where the kids go through Hull Gate and are enthusiastically welcomed by current students while the parents dry their tears at a beautiful reception. I loved watching this video so I could see what happened after I left him.
Last year at the accepted students weekend we got rain sleet hail and snow all in the first 24 hours. My socal born and raised kid was very impressed with the diversity. He loves the place despite the fact that it isn’t 72 and sunny every day.
@notveryzen we got that in April at an admitted grad student event. Was going to college in CA at the time. Very impressed with the 4 seasons in 1 day.
@Chrchill, your statement caught my eye- about how UChicago law school,and business school like the undergrads. Do you know anything in particular that they look for?
It was very clear from the career panel reps from business and law that they value chicago undergrads. The law school has a special scholarship program to attract chicago undergrads. The mere fact that they were there speaks volumes as this was an admit day for the college.
@Chrchill, this is very interesting. I know that in the last century Chicago had a reputation for NOT wanting to take its undergraduates into its graduate programs. I like the change.
@Chrchill, the idea was to spread UChicago students around the country for graduate school. Also, not to allow the students to become too comfortable in one place. But like I said, the change is fine with me and I am not arguing with you.
I believe they have always been a fan of undergrads for Booth & Law school. But for professional programs, it’s rare to be admitted to the same school as you want to undergrad. (This latter point is not unique to UChicago, from my understanding…but could totally be misguided.)
The program @Chrchill is describing is the Chicago Law Scholars Program which is a special early admissions opportunity available to students in the College and Alumni.
It is a binding program where the student is awarded atleast $150k over three years.
If I recall correctly, the average student had 2-3 years of work before applying.
The Booth Advisors also took time to explain the Dougan Scholars Program and the Trott Business Program used as a feeder for Booth.
They also explained in detail the Business Career Services and how it supports pre and post graduation. We were interested in the Financial Markets Program as my son plans JD/MBA and glad we attended.
On a side note, one of our tour guides, a 4th Year Public Policy major, mentioned that the Business Career Services even assisted with negotiating her salary. She accepted offer with BP as a trader over summer and was the only non-Econ major. Hiring manager told her that they are extremely fond of the core and the quality of students UChicago puts out.
I would bet that every “rule” like that has exceptions.
For the most part, it’s self-protective. It’s a lot easier to have good relationships with your undergraduate students if you never have to look them in the eye and say, “I don’t think you are good enough to get a PhD here.” So instead they say, “We have a policy against taking our own undergraduates. I’ll be happy to write letters of recommendation for you.” I think that’s the case in just about every significant department. It was true where I went to college, too.
Of course, if you were good enough, they would accept you, but they preferred if you did something else first and applied a few years later.
No, with PhD programs the rule should generally be send your best students elsewhere. You’ve already had a formative influence, they’ve probably learned about 80% of what they’re going to learn from you, and their intellectual and professional growth will be furthered by having them go elsewhere, meet/impress new people, see how different faculty approach (some of) the same questions and get a sense of where they think the discipline is headed. You’ll still be there as a resource/mentor/future colleague for your best undergrads who go into PhD programs (and they can enlist you as an outside reader at the PhD stage if that makes sense), but it’s rarely in their best interest for you to encourage them to stick around rather than move on.
Professional schools are different. Not the same faculty and professional opportunities are more a function of credentials than relationships with/recs from particular profs. And, hey, the JDs and MDs will make real money, so there’s a financial incentive for the University to encourage their brand loyalty. Not so much with the PhDs.
During one of the forums that we attended in UC, the director of the Carrer Advancement program mentioned that many of their undergraduate seniors are accepted in professional schools even before finishing college, but also mentioned that many of those schools require 1-3 years of work experience. Anyone knows how that process works? Do those schools wait for them over that period of working after accepting them, or do the students apply after working those 1-3 years?
Law school typically accepts for right out of undergrad. Med school too. Business typically accepts after a couple years of work experience but students have been known to go right to grad from undergrad there as well.
We definitely had a good handful of UChicago undergrads in my class at Booth and I knew a few others who went from undergrad to PhD program (social sciences) and a young man who went on to Med school. Could be a matter of good fit. However, the undergraduate program should be able to populate grad. and professional schools at many top institutions, not just its own.
Uchicago undergrads can apply to Booth, Harvard, Stanford in their fourth year. Booth only accepts UChicago undergrads early. Harvard and Stanford are open to undergrads from other colleges. Google it… The acceptance rate is super low though for new grads/fourth years
@FStratford that sounds about right. We only had a couple direct-from-undergrad classmates at Booth (and none were from UChicago College). Most were in Mid '20’s having worked at least 2 years. Work experience not only helps with admission, but also your ability to bring perspective and depth to the B-school classes. I would have felt a bit out of my element had I gone straight from undergrad but the ones I knew got terrific jobs in brand management, finance, management consulting, and other “hot” fields so it really does depend on the particular student.
Booth also has a top-notch PhD business program and those kids are more likely to be straight-from-undergrad (some from the College, most from other colleges and universities). Those PhD kids take MBA courses and of course the MBAs can take the PhD business courses (I took several in finance and econ.) so you definitely mix with them. I’d say the majority of direct-from-undergrad kids you’d meet at Booth are pursuing the PhD as their terminal degree and are looking either for an academic position or a highly specialized job (say, on Wall St.).
This was once true, but it no longer still is. While it’s certainly possible for 4th year college students to get accepted to law school or medical school – and that’s much more common than immediate acceptance to business school is – I think the norm now is to take a year or two (or more) in between college and professional school.
For med school, it takes a lot of effort to complete the requirements, prepare for and take the MCATs, and complete all the applications before your last year of college (and also have enough medicine-related ECs to make you attractive to schools that care about that). And then you have to go all over the place during your fall/winter quarters interviewing (you hope), while trying to keep your grades up and graduate. Every kid I know who has gone to medical school recently applied the year after he or she graduated from college, or the year after that.
The elite law schools have generally favored somewhat older applicants, especially if they have additional degrees or expertise in some substantive field, and/or maybe enough exposure to the legal world (e.g., working as a paralegal) to know whether they really want to practice law or not. It’s certainly not a requirement, and a college senior with sky-high stats and evidence of intellectual ability and maturity is likely to have a fair amount of success with law school applications. As far as I know, however, exactly none of my kids’ friends went directly from college to law school. The only person I know who did that recently is the boyfriend of a young woman I know really well, and he has struggled a lot post law school trying to figure out what he wants to do. He’s not a good advertisement for going straight to law school.
College pre-professional support programs remain very involved with recent graduates apply to professional schools. When you see those acceptance rate figures, they definitely include post-graduation applicants. And, yes, law schools accept plenty of alumni of their related colleges who apply a few years after they receive their bachelor degrees.
Same for PhD programs, by the way. I know a few kids who applied and were accepted right out of college, mostly in STEM fields. It’s fairly rare in humanities and social sciences, especially at top programs. My son knew of a couple of undergraduates who were accepted to top sociology programs, but both of them had actually taken time off from college to do research that they turned into honors theses that were very impressive.
