Univ of Chicago

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you are an alum or have a child at Univ of Chicago, can you share your thoughts/experiences. My DD thinks it’s her “dream school” and I want to learn more about it. Will be taking her up to visit.

Tell us more about your kid and we can opine on whether it's a dream or a nightmare in the making.

She and I know that schools in this tier are a dart throw but something about this school seems to appeal to her.

She is a decent student - mostly A’s, some A minus. Heavy AP courseload. High 1500s SAT scores.

She is not athletic. Not really got any standout long time ECs.

But she gets deeply interested in subjects. Sometimes esoteric ones. Will randomly choose to go to lectures on topics that she hears about. Will go to the portrait gallery to walk around “just because”. She is truly undecided on what she wants to major in. She likes and is good at science but also likes languages. Some interest in neuroscience it seems. But zero interest in med school. She loves to read. I think she would make a successful tenure track prof at some point.

Socially, she has good friends but not part of a large friend circle. Likes small group activities. Certainly not in the group of kids that others might want to emulate. I think she is straight but hasn’t really shown an interest in dating. Probably leans liberal but is not a social Justice person.

She loves Boston - she hasn’t spent any time in Chicago so no idea there.

I appreciate everyone who has responded.

Alum, but from like 20 years ago so take it with a grain of salt, but she sounds like a good fit. Deeply interested in esoteric subjects, small group of good friends but not super social, possibly bound for academia (even in a vague way)? Sounds like a lot of the people I went to school with.

It was my dream school too (and a time when it was much easier to get accepted) and I loved it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:great school but expect uchicago bashers and the hypsm prestige defense squad to show up on this thread really soon...

Present and ready for duty!
HYPSM is the best and top tier of the elite of elite of academic institutions.
UChicago is a great place, if the fit is right.
Positives: academic, intellectual, has prestige but NOT HYPSM prestige
Negatives: frigid cold, crime-ridden, quarter system so if you get behind you are toast

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I taught at UofC and the students there are my favorite. Compared to other universities where I've taught, I found students more willing to engage with ideas and less likely to have a "what do I need to do to get an A because I'm applying to med school" mentality. I didn't think I would like the core curriculum, but found that having shared texts really enriched class discussion.

Thanks for chiming in, UofC admissions team.

If you want to move from annoying to full stalker, you can ask Jeff. I'm sure he could confirm that I've mentioned teaching at UofC in other posts. And, I'm pretty sure official Chicago boosters are only allowed to write UChicago. The downsides to me were a significant number of students experiencing mental health issues exacerbated by stress (a graduate student shot himself in a library bathroom and died while I was there) and the quarter system which is grueling.

[Anonymous]

My son is a senior there. Was also the dream school for him, he did not get disappointed. Regarding the issues mentioned above, he is OK with the weather. We live in an unglamorous part of Brooklyn, so he is OK with the neighborhood. Intellectually it's been a challenge, he's basically coasted through HS and this is the first time in his life that he had to work so hard. But he is graduating with a 3.75 GPA in a tough major, so it's doable.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Great for kids who are truly intellectual/life-of-the-mind students and maybe a little bit quirky. But they have to okay with a heavy workload, cold weather, and a city environment where there is some risk of crime. For the right kid, it is fabulous academic environment.

But if your kid rooms with a kid who isn’t this kind of kid, it can turn nightmarish pretty fast and campus mental health support is grossly inadequate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is meant by a "heavy workload?" I've seen that term used often to describe Univ of Chicago's academic environment, but is it really that much heavier than any of the other top schools such as the Ivies?

Quarter system makes it look/feel more grueling than H and P (where I went) but there also seems to be MUCH less reading. Don’t know if this is generational. My perception is partially an artifact of humanities/soc sci parents vs STEM kid, but DC’s non-STEM classes had much less reading per week than I was used to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I taught at UofC and the students there are my favorite. Compared to other universities where I've taught, I found students more willing to engage with ideas and less likely to have a "what do I need to do to get an A because I'm applying to med school" mentality. I didn't think I would like the core curriculum, but found that having shared texts really enriched class discussion.

Really?

https://www.chicagomaroon.com/article/2020/12/18/cs-121-dishonesty-2020/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you are an alum or have a child at Univ of Chicago, can you share your thoughts/experiences. My DD thinks it’s her “dream school” and I want to learn more about it. Will be taking her up to visit.

Tell us more about your kid and we can opine on whether it's a dream or a nightmare in the making.

She and I know that schools in this tier are a dart throw but something about this school seems to appeal to her.

She is a decent student - mostly A’s, some A minus. Heavy AP courseload. High 1500s SAT scores.

She is not athletic. Not really got any standout long time ECs.

But she gets deeply interested in subjects. Sometimes esoteric ones. Will randomly choose to go to lectures on topics that she hears about. Will go to the portrait gallery to walk around “just because”. She is truly undecided on what she wants to major in. She likes and is good at science but also likes languages. Some interest in neuroscience it seems. But zero interest in med school. She loves to read. I think she would make a successful tenure track prof at some point.

Socially, she has good friends but not part of a large friend circle. Likes small group activities. Certainly not in the group of kids that others might want to emulate. I think she is straight but hasn’t really shown an interest in dating. Probably leans liberal but is not a social Justice person.

She loves Boston - she hasn’t spent any time in Chicago so no idea there.

I appreciate everyone who has responded.

Chicago is a fun city. UofC has great museums, cafes, Folk Festival, Doc Film series on campus (which is beautiful). Good access (transit pass, arts pass, planned outings) to off-campus museums, arts events, etc. My DC had very similar interests/social life. Now in a Bio PhD program.

[Anonymous]

Obviously a great school. Very nerdy, somewhat humorless students. But brilliant professors and challenging classes. It’s not in a great area of Chicago but it is in Chicago which is a truly great city with everything to offer!

Visit it first.

[Anonymous]

Everyone from elsewhere says it’s so great but natives are fleeing in droves.

[Anonymous]

Demographics are changing, but population increased in last census.

[Anonymous]

Defensive Person, even though the city added more than 50000 residents since 2010, it still has 150000 fewer people than 20 years ago. It's a decline of 5.1%.

[Anonymous]

Are you the one who call those who departed "natives"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What is meant by a "heavy workload?" I've seen that term used often to describe Univ of Chicago's academic environment, but is it really that much heavier than any of the other top schools such as the Ivies?

Quarter system makes it look/feel more grueling than H and P (where I went) but there also seems to be MUCH less reading. Don’t know if this is generational. My perception is partially an artifact of humanities/soc sci parents vs STEM kid, but DC’s non-STEM classes had much less reading per week than I was used to.

It's really hard to compare the experiences across universities because no one person is ever simultaneously taking classes at two places at once.

That being said. My husband is a social science prof at U of C and so I have fairly intimate knowledge of what is assigned/returned to him. And, my GOD the papers. It's not so much the number (usually, that is around 1 big paper with a few smaller) but it's the quality of the papers he gets back from students. These are easily the kinds of papers I would have written in graduate school -- 50+ pages long, original research, detailed citation. One person requested archival data from another country and translated it himself.

I am less familiar with the amount of reading aside from what is assigned for the freshman class that all U of C profs have to occasionally teach (the "core") which seems to be pretty heavy, but you can probably find that info online.

So: busy work? Not really. But, to be a "top" student, you need to do work that I would not typically expect a college sophomore/junior to do, or really any college student outside of their senior thesis project.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Great for kids who are truly intellectual/life-of-the-mind students and maybe a little bit quirky. But they have to okay with a heavy workload, cold weather, and a city environment where there is some risk of crime. For the right kid, it is fabulous academic environment.

But if your kid rooms with a kid who isn’t this kind of kid, it can turn nightmarish pretty fast and campus mental health support is grossly inadequate.

PP whose husband teaches at U of C and there is some truth to the mental health concerns. And don't blame the weather or Hyde Park -- it's kind of a chicken/egg question (the kinds of kids attracted to U of C tend to be pretty Type A and college tends to be a place where a lot of those kinds of people burn out).

My husband has several students, *mostly* but not entirely grad students, who have had mental health crises. One was institutionalized (self admit). None of them had anything nice to say about U of C's involvement in their mental health struggles, and it would definitely be concerning to me if I had a student there who had any kind of anxiety or borderline substance abuse issues.