No horse in this race, but previous posters made me curious: What are Chicago’s weird essay questions? Could someone please give us an example?

20 or 30 years ago, the University of Chicago was a very distinct place. Call it geeky. Call it quirky. Whatever. It was extremely bright students doing their thing.

Nowadays, it does seem to be mostly wealthy private school kids. Many go in ED because that's the strategic thing to do when you have the money and are interested in a prestige degree. And others are HPS and Duke rejects who get in RD.

It's not the same.

Chicago seems to have abandoned the quirky smart middle class kids that made its name in favor of blander, wealthy, private school students looking for a brand school that will take them to Wall Street and similar.

Not the same.

Can’t speak for all kids there but my nieces ex boyfriend goes there and his brother. Comes from a very well off family in Southeast VA and went to a private high school. I would say he’s arrogant, not quirky, athletic, and not super smart.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Years and years ago when I was there as a grad student, the undergrads were brilliant and quirky, and didn’t seem Uber wealthy or private school types.

I have the feeling that’s changed now. The College is much larger, and there seems to be a lot of emphasis on ED, which means wealth to me. I also hear of kids attending who just would NEVER have chosen Chicago back in the day- they are normal and smart but not brilliant, well rounded etc.

Does someone on here know OLD Chicago and NEW Chicago? Has it changed? Is it still a good, friendly, dorky place, life of the mind? It is it like lots of other schools now?

Thanks in advance.

I went to Chicago back in the day My DC (similar to me in many of the traits you mentioned) goes to Swarthmore which still has those types.

Twenty plus years ago, my wife and I were both at the UC and it was blissful. All the kids were geeky, social misfits, decidedly not wealthy, raw intellectuals who studied in the tunnels (remember the tunnels) because it was warm down there. Today, our children attend grammer school and Mathnasium in Hyde Park, and all the undergrads look like LL Bean models. The U of C really did itself a disservice by trying to appeal to a broader audience. The jocks and sorority sisters will always pick Northwestern, so the U of C will just get HYP rejects and lose its culture. It makes me sad that my children won't have someplace like the old U of C (or does someplace like this still exist outside the LSE)?

Anonymous wrote:Quirky, smart, leftist, non-athletic, well-off financially, lots from Northeast, enjoy the challenge of rigorous academics.

U Chicago leftist? Didn't they come up with trickle down?

Anonymous wrote:Definitely they tolerate all political ideas a lot more than HYP and Brown and free speech is more valued

You must not have actual experience with Brown. There is definite diversity in political views amongst students with aome groups/students/families being quite conservative, and the university values free speech.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Heavily private/prep school kids. They actually recruit a fair amount and ED is huge.

Thanks. Do you have a kid there? I have what I think of as a traditional U of C kid- really bright and quirky (spikey in his interests, in the current parlance). I don’t think of him as an Ivy kid, all smooth edges and well socialized and wealthy.

Going to apply to MIT (CalTech is too far) but I like the idea of the old Chicago for him. But maybe it doesn’t exist anymore.

Plenty of bright and quirky at Brown. Some social/wealthy too, but definitely groups of bright/quirky and some intermingling between the two. Some spikey, some multi-spikey, some round.

Anonymous wrote:Definitely they tolerate all political ideas a lot more than HYP and Brown and free speech is more valued

definitely agree. and i am a harvard grad but have many family members who went to U of Chicago

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So funny that on page one of this thread someone else said it was full of leftists.

It is not.

+1. and historically it was one of the more sane schools that ventured out into non-traditional fields like Law and Economics. Based entirely upon sound economics.

Anonymous wrote:My son did his undergrad and PhD there. When he was making the college decision, his reasoning for choosing Chicago was that this was the place that would teach him to think thus would enable him to do whatever he wanted in the future and has since proven his logic to be correct. (He gave up a full ride to another's honors program). One of the moments that sold him was during our tour when a member of the student panel said "You know how when you tell a joke and no one gets it? Well, here they do.". The smile of his face in that moment told me this was the place for him.

This comment really gets at it. Chicago students are very, very smart, very hardworking, and so wealthy that they think nothing of spending $400,000 for the vibes.

Anonymous wrote:My experience is dated, but I mostly found the students to be too lost in whatever thing they were studying for talking about their politics to matter much. Some of the people I knew there turned out to be left wing anarchists and some worked for Trump, but mostly they wanted to talk about something like Byzantine history or romantic literature when we were in school. We didn't really pay attention to outside contemporary politics.

Yes. This. My experience there 20+ years ago.

My experience is dated, but I mostly found the students to be too lost in whatever thing they were studying for talking about their politics to matter much. Some of the people I knew there turned out to be left wing anarchists and some worked for Trump, but mostly they wanted to talk about something like Byzantine history or romantic literature when we were in school. We didn't really pay attention to outside contemporary politics.

My son did his undergrad and PhD there. When he was making the college decision, his reasoning for choosing Chicago was that this was the place that would teach him to think thus would enable him to do whatever he wanted in the future and has since proven his logic to be correct. (He gave up a full ride to another's honors program). One of the moments that sold him was during our tour when a member of the student panel said "You know how when you tell a joke and no one gets it? Well, here they do.". The smile of his face in that moment told me this was the place for him.

My kids were legacy HYP and chose to ED U Chicago instead. They were top students at one of the top 20 private schools in Niche. I was very active as an HYP alum and donated, etc. so they probably had a decent lottery shot at HYP. But they really wanted to challenge themselves, and so they chose Chicago. (I did get through economics with a magna cum laude at HYP with basic algebra, and the gateway course to even enter Econ at Chicago required multivariable calculus, so huge difference in rigor). But this leads to the humbling comment a pp made. Easy to fail at U Chicago.

Very true humbling experience!!
According to my kid builds caracter.