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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Thanks for posting!  Question about houses -- what's your best guess re how North Campus will pan out?  Another Max P or South -- or will the combination of exiles (from Breckinridge et al) and redesign create a somewhere-in-the-middle option?[/quote]
North has a lot more singles than Max P or South, which tends to attract nerdier people. The house structure is totally different, Max P and South are just normal dorms that you could find at any other school and the borders between the houses are just invisible lines in the hallways. It doesn't lead to a very cohesive house structure. In North, every three floors is one house with a house lounge going through the middle so despite the size I believe it will be much better than Max P and South. And honestly the conventional wisdom that "small houses are closer" is dirty propaganda propagated by BJ which has tiny houses; Hitchcock has 150, Maclean has around 100 (I think), and Breck has about 80. All three have very close-knit. Max P and South has plenty of nerdy people (though I wouldn't say it's true for the Ivy-League types, there are not many of them in the nerdier dorms) but because the house community makes less of an impact, the extroverted party types tend to stick out more and make more an impact. There isn't much of an alternative to finding people in the dorm through partying because people don't do things as a house.

Most people from the satellite dorms who aren't first years are planning on moving out, so that will barely make a difference. Breck is moving to I-House and keeping its name. But still, I would be shocked if North was as bad as South and Max P.

[quote=Anonymous]Why is bio the worst part of the core? How do pre-meds do at Chicago?[/quote]
Bio is the worst part of the core because Core Bio is a 3 hour lecture usually offered in the morning three times a week filled with people who don't like bio that isn't taught very well and is hard in the classic bio "you have to memorize a lot of stuff" sort of way. There is a normal bio sequence for bio majors and pre-meds and a masochistic bio sequence (called AP 5 or Advanced Bio) for people who really want to be bio researchers (as a rule, this class does not give out As to keep out pre-meds). Both are apparently much better than Core Bio.

Not gonna lie, it's hard to be a pre-med here. Everything is harder because professors don't like giving As and you have to take lots of classes you might not be as good at because of the core. Bio professors do not like pre-meds. And on top of all that, getting a degree from UChicago isn't going to help you get into med school. Still, if someone loves every other aspect of the school and wants to be a pre-med, I wouldn't let that dissuade you. It's not impossible to be a pre-med here. There are plenty of successful pre-meds, and it's better to be at a school you enjoy even if it doesn't fit your career goals perfectly. You don't want to be at a school you like less because of pre-med and then decide you don't want to be pre-med, which happens often.

[quote=Anonymous]What a thorough and helpful review from the student! So it sounds like Columbia is less stressful overall if one were to choose (re the core v sciences etc).[/quote]
No, Columbia is just as stressful. They also have a core, and they are way more competitive than us. We don't have much of a culture of trying to be the best. There's a culture of working hard and probably biting off more than you can chew academically (usually because people [i]want[/i] to, which says a lot about us), sure, but not a culture of trying to present an image that your life is perfect to cover up your own insecurities. At other schools (including Columbia), there's a culture of seeming like everything is fine, often to not very nice results (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/education/edlife/stress-social-media-and-suicide-on-campus.html, http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/12833146/instagram-account-university-pennsylvania-runner-showed-only-part-story). That simply doesn't exist here. I think people at UChicago are as happy/happier than people at other schools, but are more realistic about things that aren't perfect. I have plenty of friends at other top schools. I have talked to people there. They're all miserable too, it's just taboo to ever mention it.[/quote]

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