I’ve been thinking about an answer to this question ever since seeing [url=<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19416972/#Comment_19416972%5Dthis%5B/url”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19416972/#Comment_19416972]this[/url] reply on the applicants page. Everything that person said is completely correct. They didn’t even exaggerate. All of that is true.
It is disingenuous every time an admissions counselor brushes aside questions about the workload here and the tour guides are told to never, under any circumstance, say the word intense. Because the truth is that UChicago is hard, UChicago beats you down, UChicago is stressful, and UChicago is (as much as the admissions officers are scared to tell people) intense - just like every other elite school where you are thrown in with a subset of the highest achieving group in America.
But that’s such an incomplete view of the school. The view of UChicago as only a giant pressure cooker filled with unhappy people misses so many things about here that makes so many of us so happy we go here.
It doesn’t capture the professors who care about us enough to live up to even the most absurd brags by small liberal art schools. It misses the people you’ll meet here, in your house and classes, who care about literally every subject imaginable in that way that you always cared about whatever it is that got you in here and that you thought you would never meet someone like you in that way, let alone so many of them. It glosses over your classes themselves, where you learn more than you thought possible in 10 weeks. Sure, your grades might not be the best at the end, but you are sure you outlearned your friends at other schools. It doesn’t leave any room for the 2 am excursions to Clarke’s, 1 pm trips to Rajun Cajun, and noon romps to the Art Institute. It only sees the bad in the challenge, not the ecstasy of suddenly solving that problem on your p-set, the beauty of your essay congealing into something that makes sense and may even be insightful, and the simple joy of studying quietly with people you could not conceptualize existing before you got here.
The truth is there are many people here who regret coming here. If you are thinking about coming here because you want good grades to get into the medical school of your choice or because it has the best US News rank of any school you got into, I would stop and think very carefully about what you want out of the next few years of your life. Do you want to learn a lot about things that might appear useless, pointless, or simply a waste of time, spending hours learning for the sake of learning? Do you want to work a lot, like, a lot? As much as many people here enjoy it, for some people here it really is hell, like making a non-runner do a 5k every week with a marathon at the end. Do you mind being challenged, more challenged than you’ve ever been in your life, mostly by things that will probably never directly come up again in the rest of your life?
I absolutely think UChicago is only for certain kinds of people. It has nothing to do with partying vs not partying or life goals or personality or anything else. It’s simply for people who want to learn a lot for the sake of knowing more things and are willing to work hard for it. Come visit for the overnight and consider your choices carefully before committing.