Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DS (Junior) is looking into colleges and really likes what he's reading about it. He's pretty introverted, intellectual (I guess? He genuinely enjoys his classes and thinks most of his non-APs were too easy; he wants a hard school) and nerdy and loves the atmosphere. But, I'm a little worried that something like this will happen to him http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-02-17/news/chi-university-of-chicago-student-20-found-dead-20140215_1_dorm-students-death-foul-odor, because it's totally like him to just lock himself in his room for a week without talking to anyone.

Also, he wants to go into Comp Sci, which Chicago isn't known for, but I asked a colleague and he literally said that you can't wrong with Chicago (their grad program is ranked #30ish by US News, can't be that bad). DS also wants to double major in history, so he's not too happy with schools like MIT, CalTech or Harvey Mudd which aren't good at all with non-techy things. Other schools that are good with both are too reach-y for him to really pin down (Chicago's early acceptance rate is 50% from our school and the average accepted SAT score is around 2150 - nothing like the other schools in USNews top 20), though we understand that Chicago is still going to be a reach. He thinks he has a reasonable chance though, especially since he fits the exact stereotype Chicago seems to be trying to attract (he's been complaining about generic essay questions since the second time he had to write about the theme of a passage).

So...general opinions? Anyone have an experience with the school? It doesn't really come up here often... It is as good as it looks for the introverted kid who's nerdy enough to like strange things like Lord of the Rings linguistics and gets excited over a robotic library?

Bear in mind that at Harvey Mudd, you can cross register in courses at the other Claremont Colleges, even double major in a major not offered at Harvey Mudd.

Anonymous wrote:DS (Junior) is looking into colleges and really likes what he's reading about it. He's pretty introverted, intellectual (I guess? He genuinely enjoys his classes and thinks most of his non-APs were too easy; he wants a hard school) and nerdy and loves the atmosphere. But, I'm a little worried that something like this will happen to him http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-02-17/news/chi-university-of-chicago-student-20-found-dead-20140215_1_dorm-students-death-foul-odor, because it's totally like him to just lock himself in his room for a week without talking to anyone.

Also, he wants to go into Comp Sci, which Chicago isn't known for, but I asked a colleague and he literally said that you can't wrong with Chicago (their grad program is ranked #30ish by US News, can't be that bad). DS also wants to double major in history, so he's not too happy with schools like MIT, CalTech or Harvey Mudd which aren't good at all with non-techy things. Other schools that are good with both are too reach-y for him to really pin down (Chicago's early acceptance rate is 50% from our school and the average accepted SAT score is around 2150 - nothing like the other schools in USNews top 20), though we understand that Chicago is still going to be a reach. He thinks he has a reasonable chance though, especially since he fits the exact stereotype Chicago seems to be trying to attract (he's been complaining about generic essay questions since the second time he had to write about the theme of a passage).

So...general opinions? Anyone have an experience with the school? It doesn't really come up here often... It is as good as it looks for the introverted kid who's nerdy enough to like strange things like Lord of the Rings linguistics and gets excited over a robotic library?

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, scav still takes place, and some kids are really into it, but for others, it's barely a blip on the radar. This makes sense in that the student body has become more diverse, so there are more kids putting a lot of time into other activities -- e.g, sports. While the quirky kids still dominate, there's an increasingly large group of smart, regular kids.

Anonymous wrote:Another UofC esssay prompt:

Essay Option 1.

Winston Churchill believed “a joke is a very serious thing.” From Off-Off Campus’s improvisations to the Shady Dealer humor magazine to the renowned Latke-Hamantash debate, we take humor very seriously here at The University of Chicago (and we have since 1959, when our alums helped found the renowned comedy theater The Second City).

Tell us your favorite joke and try to explain the joke without ruining it.

Inspired by Chelsea Fine, Class of 2016

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:U of C grad here, 20-ish years ago (eeek!). Your son sounds awesome and exactly like the kind of kid I would have gone to school with. I had a great social life, partly because finding people who were like me in important ways made for a great social scene. I would have felt out of place and had a poorer social life somewhere with a big Greek culture, for example.

I hope all the claims that U of C is no longer so dorky don't mean that it has lost its special identity. Definitely visit!

I hope it hasn't been invaded by binge drinking lax bros.

Anonymous wrote:U of C grad here, 20-ish years ago (eeek!). Your son sounds awesome and exactly like the kind of kid I would have gone to school with. I had a great social life, partly because finding people who were like me in important ways made for a great social scene. I would have felt out of place and had a poorer social life somewhere with a big Greek culture, for example.

I hope all the claims that U of C is no longer so dorky don't mean that it has lost its special identity. Definitely visit!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:U of C grad here, 20-ish years ago (eeek!). Your son sounds awesome and exactly like the kind of kid I would have gone to school with. I had a great social life, partly because finding people who were like me in important ways made for a great social scene. I would have felt out of place and had a poorer social life somewhere with a big Greek culture, for example.

I hope all the claims that U of C is no longer so dorky don't mean that it has lost its special identity. Definitely visit!

I think it still has a "special identity" in that the students tend to me serious about academics, but what has been lost over the last decade or so as the admissions numbers have plummeted and the school has switched to the common app, thus attracting all the same students who routinely apply to the "top ten" schools is a feeling that the students who are there self-select specifically for the things that (used to) make Chicago unique, e.g., the Common Core, the "life of the mind," etc. Nowadays it's a lot more like you're standard top Ivy or Stanford/MIT -- super smart, accomplished kids who bask in their "less than 10 percent acceptance rate" rather than basking in being a nerd.

None of this matters as much as the fact that it's a universally renowned institution, has vast resources and well-known faculty, phenomenal graduate programs (which bolster the undergraduate's reputation and expand the reach of faculty), and excellent recruiting opportunities. While it doesn't have the cache of Harvard to, say, a grocery store clerk, it is certainly considered in the same leagues as H-Y-P-S in the rarified circles of business (finance, consulting, etc), law, politics, and academics. In other words, if your son gets in, he should enjoy himself more than "regular" kids did 20 years ago there, but should still get a top-flight education, and have vast opportunities once he graduates. Good luck!

Anonymous wrote:I just wanted to speak up for the neighborhood, having grown up there.

Hyde Park has a reputation for being "dicey", as one PP called it. It is in a city. The actual neighborhood of Hyde Park is pretty darned safe. The University of Chicago (called the U of C when I was a kid) has a very strong police force of its own to supplement the Chicago cops. During the white flight years of the 50s and 60s, the U of C bought up a lot of property around the neighborhood, turning quite a bit of it into student and faculty housing. That practice helped to stabilize the neighborhood, as the areas surrounding it became slums. Fast forward, and those slums have had quite a turn around. The neighborhood is probably significantly safer now than it was 40 years ago, and probably safer than just 20 years ago. It is still an urban neighborhood: bikes need to be locked, probably shouldn't walk too far at night alone, don't leave valuables in your car. It is like a cross between Capital Hill, Georgetown and Catholic.

Anonymous wrote:In my day (~20 years ago) the dominant feature of U of C was its core curriculum. Your son has interests in the sciences and the humanities so he'll likely be open to that level of rigor. What about languages? I went to a school with less rigorous core requirements and the language requirement kicked my ass and kept me from being able to take classes in all the subjects I wanted.