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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I would say it differently. In terms of revealed preferences. there are some top kids who are drawn to U Chicago. I am ecstatic that my DC was admitted to U Chicago ED1. I am HYP legacy, and when I had that discussion with my DC, he was firm that he was not interested in my school, and that U Chicago is the perfect fit. I was made aware of the school two years ago by another HYP parent at our school, who sent both his sons to U Chicago. There is a subset of kids who love the fact that U Chicago has top intellectual rigor across the board, and professors are often very quirky and witty. Mine took Summer College there and had a blast, but problem sets were very, very hard. On another note -the U Chicago supplemental essays reflect the spirit of the school - very weird, very intellectual, very fun to write... if you are a certain type of kid. So if you enjoyed writing those, you are probably a good fit for the school.

A previous poster mentioned it's not the preprofessional pipeline of Harvard - true!!! And that is what is so great about the school; college is more just a race to the first job in BigLaw, Big Finance or Big Consulting.[/quote]

Is Yale, Harvard, Columbia not intellectual enough for your kid. Give me a break! [/quote]

I went to Harvard College and was surprised by how few of my classmates were intellectually-oriented. Ambition and self-confidence were defining attributes of the class rather than brains and curiosity. That said, obviously, if you were intellectual (and it didn’t matter to you what most of your cohort cared about), it was great — so many resources, accessible faculty doing interesting work, lots of grad students. I think Chicago is (has been?) attractive to kids who want their peers to share their academic values.[/quote]

And yet more kids proportionally end up in consulting and finance than from H, so maybe UChicago is just as careerist, if not more so, than all the other T20 schools?[/quote]

I didn’t say careerist (nor would I assume careerism is measured by % that go into consulting/finance). This is more of a “what do I want out of college?” question for most kids. “I want to be surrounded by people who want to stay up late talking about ideas” is, for example, different from “I want to be among the future elite.” And, yeah, there are both types at all these schools, but in different proportions. That’s before we get to the economics of the situation which is that lots of kids/families have college debt and need a lucrative job pay it off or pay it back. More than a few of my ambitious/self-confident Harvard classmates had the safety net of wealthy families and/or connections (and we all had much lower tuition), so could pursue passion projects after graduation (e.g. arts careers, starting a magazine).

I don’t think Chicago is uniquely intellectual or necessarily the best place for an intellectual kid, but I agree with the first poster quoted here that its intellectual culture attracts a certain type of very bright/high-performing kid who is turned off by the (undergrad) culture of HYPSWharton.  [/quote]

Or to be blunt, kids from upper-middle-income families who have high grades but without the hooks that would otherwise have gotten them into the ivies (legacy, athletics, URM, children of big donors, exceptional talent in a certain area, etc.) Chicago does that to a certain extent but not as much as the ivies. DC graduated from STA and is now at UChicago and just about everyone who got accepted into an ivy fell into one of these aforementioned categories and the quirky, high-performing but non-athletic kids usually ended up at Chicago (5-10 years back they would have easily gotten into the ivies).[/quote]

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