<p>OP it’s going to be OK. Ignore the really harsh responders and learn from the others! Open yourself. I get it. Your HS may be narrow minded. It’s OK. Move on.</p>
<p>by the way OP, U Chicago’s brand is very strong among elite employers. You won’t have to worry about the employer angle when it comes to reputation. You are completely misguided if this is what you are worrying about.</p>
<p>It’s the gas station attendant and fast food cashiers you need to worry about. And, I thought that’s what really bugged you, that is, you get no bragging right among the Joe Blows and Jane Does.</p>
<p>haha thanks.haha yes. I admit that my explanation was quite provocative. </p>
<p>sorry about that. (this is to all)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>this is a very helpful fact. Since UChicago has no brand name around where I live, I had incorrectly speculated that UChicago’s job prospect is weak as well.</p>
<p>as long as
then as I said, problem is solved.</p>
<p>again thanks everyone.</p>
<p>OP,</p>
<p>I don’t know where you live and in what kind of circle/community of people you spend most of time in/with.</p>
<p>However, all the graduate programs in world’s very best institutions have a massive respect for U Chicago. U Chicago is ranked within top 10 WORLD’S best universities by various ranking agencies. In fact, U Chicago has a comparatively better brand name among international elites than in USA. Among elite employers in finance, science, banking, law, medicine, consulting, etc (the list goes on), U Chicago garners universal recognition and respect. Heck, U Chicago is known to have the largest number of Nobel prize winners.</p>
<p>Yes, mom & pop hardware store owners probably have no idea what kind of school U Chicago is. Yes, an owner of a car part factory with a contract with Ford may not have a clue. I am pretty certain that sales people in car dealership and people in auto body shop may not know anything about this school. Perhaps a president of a small print press shop in North Dakota does not know anything either. For that matter, 99% of the population in the states with straight state borderlines (so called square states) may not heard of U Chicago. If this is the kind of reference group you have in mind, then you should be concerned. Meanwhile, they may also not have a clue about Brown, U Penn, Amherst, Swarthmore, Williams, JHU, Cornell, Columbia, Darthmouth, etc… Other than HYP and perhaps SM, most elite schools are not a household names in most average families.</p>
<p>However, if you have any worldly ambition and aim high, all of your target employers know your degree’s worth if it is within top 20 schools. </p>
<p>If anything, if your prospect employers has not heard of U Chicago, you should avoid them: they are not in a business of attracting the very best.</p>
<p>OP, I echo the sentiments of post #41 and could not have said it better myself. Please realize that people are being harsh because you have made some very inflammatory statements. Your entire post carries a tone of arrogance, making it seem that you think Chicago is below you in some way.</p>
<p>Sorry if I caused people to think
this way.</p>
<p>I really did not mean to word my threads like that.</p>
<p>As my original post suggests, I was happy with Chicago EA then my friends flamed the “prestige and academics” thing, which caused me to deeply worry about it. (i.e. “What if I learn the best material, yet not get a good job because of the name?” “What if I get no fun during the best four years of my life?” and etc.)</p>
<p>Through PMs and replies here, I received enough feedback/advices to make good choices.</p>
<p>Thanks Everyone!</p>
<p>Just my 2 cents, but I do not think the OP was trying to be deliberately malicious or inflammatory. Most of the offense many of us have experienced seems to be the result of carelessness and probably nativity. Judging by the OP’s early liberal use of somewhat joking ish colloquial language, emoticons, and candidly honest statements such as “btw your comment is pretty damn mean it sorta hurts :P”, I get the feeling this animosity is all just a huge misunderstanding sparked by initial carelessness and sustained by slight over reaction.</p>
<p>** Edit: Ninja’d by OP</p>
<p>OP has an understandable problem, and people are understandable offended by OP’s problem. It’s a sensitive topic. It’s also a topic that highlights Chicago’s current institutional tactics.</p>
<p>Will you have to defend Chicago for the rest of your life? Answer: No, because no one other than employers care about where you went to college after you’re 25 years old. No one will even ask. Whether you went to Harvard or you went to the local community college, no one cares.</p>
<p>But it is true that you won’t get as much attention from your relatives and friends over the next 5 years. And that’s something that concerns and annoys every 18 year old. UChicago students can claim all they want that anybody who’s annoyed by this is immature or ignorant, but pretty much every 18 year old is immature and ignorant in the first place.</p>
<p>That being said, Chicago has a bigger name among employers than all but 5 or so schools in the nation. Chicago will help you get places that other schools can’t get you. And in the end, that’s what’s going to get you prestige in LIFE. A Harvard graduate who works at Starbucks pales in comparison to a community college graduate who works at Goldman Sachs. In this way, college really is an investment. Chicago’s like a stock that is performing not so great when you first buy into it, but you have insider information that it’s going to go up big in 5 years and never look back. In the end, it’s your decision.</p>
<p>OP, there are PLENTY of parties at UChicago. There aren’t many fraternities or brothers, but they are very active on campus. Apartment parties and dorm pregames are everywhere. You might not get to party much on week nights (except Wednesdays), but it sounds like you don’t do that anyway. </p>
<p>As for reputation, yeah, kids from your home town won’t recognize it like they will Ivy League schools. So what? Ivy League names might intimidate them or even inspire resentment. I agree with phuriku that name recognition won’t matter except to your employer after you’re 25, and employers know UChicago. One has to realize that being able to impress people with the name of your school is much less important than enjoying your time in college and getting as much as possible out of that time in terms of your career and further education.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You’re a fool, So, no, you most definitely should not attend UChicago.</p>
<p>You should read Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s best-selling Black Swan: economics is a field as phony as its economists, and you’d be better off studying something of a more practical nature.</p>
<p>One of the marvelous, fascination-with-the-abomination things about this website: Every time I think I’ve just read the dumbest post ever, someone manages to lower the bar yet again. Awesome!</p>
<p>Hah objective person you must be really frustrated then - because there was actually a time in the past where the demise of uchicago (at least the college) was very possible. How much does it frustrate you that, perhaps more than ever in its history, thr university of chicago is in its strongest position ever?</p>
<p>objectiveperson spends inordinate amount of his energy and time vilifying the school he went to. Obviously, a very sad case. He has not been able to grow as a person to put past to rest. His sole purpose is to take a revenge on a school where he was miserable for whatever reason by trashing the school obsessive and compulsively. I truly wonder why he did not transfer to a different school. I have the feeling that it’s more him than the school, and he wouldn’t have been any better off if he had gone to a different school. </p>
<p>To OP, I suggest this. Read posts by objectiveperson. It’s very depressing since it paints a picture of a very bitter and sad person. If you can see yourself doing even one hundredth of what this objectionable person is doing, it’s a good indication that you should go to a different school. It’s simply not worth spending years after graduation being so obsessive and compulsively bitter about the choice you made at the age of 18.</p>
<p>objectiveperson’s behavior is quite alarming. I honestly think he needs some counseling.</p>
<p>I actually want to hear why he hates the school.</p>
<p>Left click on his screen name, and a menu will drop down. Choose “Find more posts by objectiveperson”. Enjoy.</p>
<p>As I recall, the gist is (a) people work too hard and don’t enjoy themselves, (b) people are to smug about their intelligence and intellectualism, and (c) the University has treated its surrounding community badly, especially Woodlawn.</p>
<p>To objective person:</p>
<p>the inferiority complex is all in your head, and applies to you, and perhaps a few other like you that were similarly disenfranchised when you went to U Chicago. No matter where one goes, one can always find this group. I see that about 14% of current Harvard students regret their school choice. Are you going to go rant and rave about how horrible Harvard is? Columbia does seem may better, while 89% of U Chicago students are happy with their choice. </p>
<p>Even if there may have been more who were like you in the past, what does it matter now to the current generation of students and prospective students. U Chicago is rocking at all rankings: overall excellence, student satisfaction, etc. Its reputation among the lay public is rapidly rising. Why should YOUR horrible personal experience from a bygone era be taken as a definitive statement about where the school is and its student body is heading toward? </p>
<p>I have the feeling that you would not have been happy no matter where you had gone. It takes both the personality of the individual and the environment to create this kind of lasting bitterness. So, the environment was less nurturing than to your liking, but it probably also was your own unique personality to create this level of venom that lasts YEARS after the actual experience. People with truly life altering bad experience move on and find productive outlet for their energy. You, on the other hand, are stuck, developmentally speaking, because you attended one of the top universities in the world by any objective standard, and did not have a good experience. Don’t expect the rest of the world to be highly sympathetic toward you. </p>
<p>I am not dismissing ALL of your concerns. If you provide a balanced, well reasoned concern, we could have a discourse here. What I am fed up with this never ending whining, blaming everything on everything/everyone else, and never taking any personal responsibility for your experience. You could have and should have transferred if it had been so bad. Why didn’t you? I think I speak for a majority of posters on this board, when I say we are sick and tired of you, NOT because you criticize U Chicago (it’s a fair game), but because of this incessant whining and emotional diarrhea of negativity and venom that does not do anything or add anything other than it seems to serve some twisted emotional needs of yours.</p>
<p>You should move on with your life. The fact that you are so hung up on your bad college experience years after you graduated and spend this amount of negative energy and time spewing venom is very, very sad - normal, halfway well adjusted people go on to look for positive things in their life even if there are some bad experience in the past. Your personal growth is arrested at the mental age of 18-22. Move on. Step outside of the terrible mental loop of this period of your life. Go and live a little. Have a productive life.</p>
<p>Sorry to miss the nuances. I didn’t think you were in favor of partying and football games, but did think you were somewhat focused on lack of joy. (By the way, you are completely off base about this. In both directions. First, judging from my kids’ experience, and my other contacts with the University, students at Chicago spend a lot of time and energy bringing ideas to life, and they are encouraged in that by the University. They also have little trouble moving from college to the real world. Second, going to parties and football games DOES sometimes contribute to happiness and holistic personal development, although admittedly more of the former.) </p>
<p>And, yes, you have made clear many times your inferiority-complex theory.</p>
<p>I asked my son (a current student) about this inferiority complex thing vis a vis other top elite schools. He said, nobody he knows feels that way. and they are all pretty happy at U Chicago. IN fact, he said, “we don’t really talk about other schools. Why? we are happy where we are”. </p>
<p>He was rejected by Harvard. So I asked, do you wish you had been accepted at Harvard? He said, well, I would have been happy there also in a different way. I can adapt and do well in a lot of different environments. But now that I know what I am getting at U Chicago, I feel in fact that it was a good thing that they rejected me and sent me to U Chicago. He joked that he should send a thank you note to Harvard for having rejected him :)</p>
<p>So, for whatever its worth, this is the view from a current student, and he does not even seem to be an outlier.</p>