idad

I know I should let this go and it is akin to the dancing on the head of a pin thing, but for better or worse I would argue that for undergrads, Chicago is currently academically superior to HYP etc. I did not say it was a better school to attend, has smarter students, has a better social scene, is more prestigious, or is a better career launching pad, it is just a different academic experience. Let me relate another story, since this is all we can do in a discussion such as this. I have a very old friend who is quite successful and visited college campuses at the invitation of various university and student groups. He loves undergraduate education for education's sake and believes those who do make the best employees, though these were not recruiting trips. He told me that he was very disappointed with his visits to HYP. He would ask a simple question and often be met with absolute silence. He would even go around the room polling students in case he was being misunderstood. He would ask, "Tell me that moment in class or later in a discussion when you had your first intellectual epiphany, that aha! moment when you saw something in your world quite differently than the moment before?" He was astounded that not only did the students not immediately report any such event, some asked if he could explain what he meant. With a couple of individual student exceptions, this was a recurrent theme, until he visited Chicago. When he asked the question there, hands flew up, and almost every student had an excited story to tell. He has returned several times to each and experienced the same result. His comment to me was, "Either Chicago is doing something very right, or the others are doing something very wrong." I tend to think it is the former.

Here is a link to some somewhat famous articles about H & P, Y has (perhaps rightfully) been spared. I doubt very much that this is everyone's (or anyone else's) experience, but I found them to be interesting nonetheless. I will try and refrain from posting further on this topic, there are only so many ways to say the same thing.

http://chronicle.com/article/Think-T...eritas/48590/#

The Truth About Harvard - The Atlantic (March 2005)

Lost in the Meritocracy - The Atlantic (January/February 2005)

mathmom

If I were to judge just by the students who post here on CC I'd give Chicago the nod any day over Harvard. (I'm a Havard grad BTW, as is my husband, my in-laws all went to U of Chicago - two graduated, two dropped out.) Harvard students seem boring, obsessed by numbers and prestige, and all too many of them seem very pre-professional. This is not the Harvard I attended! That said, I didn't have too many intellectual epiphanies at Harvard, partly because I realized early on that I was much more interested in producing physical things (architecture in my case) than intellectual ideas. That's my weakness not Harvard's, but perhaps there were more of me than I realized. My friends there were mostly musicians and scientists. Last spring the U of C students posted their uncommon essays and they were a lot of fun to read. I haven't seen anything comparable come out of the Harvard threads.

CountingDown

JHS -- S1 would absolutely agree with you on the quality of advising in the math department (and CS as well). The departmental advisors are his go-to people for everything. He has developed some good relationships with profs as well. S has not had any complaints about job opportunities, on-campus or off.

As far as academic rigor: S called yesterday to (happily) report that he is finally getting his %$#@ kicked in his classes (Honors Abstract Alg, Complex Analysis, Soc/Pol Thought and German). Is also a junior tutor (TA) for a calc class, which means he sits in that lecture with his students, runs the recitation and grades p-sets. Is also involved with a few ECs plus house activities. Is putting in long hours, doing well, and is reveling in the mind-expansion that's taking place. He wanted to be busy this year -- think he got his wish!!

I've said this previously, but S picked Chicago > MIT, believing Chicago would challenge him to grow more as a person and offer him the chance to study in fields with a level of seriousness not available at MIT (or most other places). He felt that undergrad was the best (and quite possibly only) chance he would have to attack things like the HUM and SOSC sequences and he has not been disappointed. I think his only regrets are some aspects of the social scene at MIT which he got to enjoy this summer while working there. Though he visited Harvard, Princeton and Cornell (and applied to H&C), he was never as enamored of them as Chicago -- he is an academic through and through.

Had he wanted Ivy uber alles, he's a double legacy at Penn. Neither of my kids ever gave it any consideration. (S2 considered Dart, Brown and Cornell but decided not to apply.)

I agree with mathmom and others that the quality of conversation on the Chicago threads is consistently higher than those of other school threads I've followed.

hyeonjlee

S1 (freshman) called "happy and bubbly". He said he got a scathing criticism from his sociology professor on his paper line by line (well turns out, entire class did, criticism all personalized based each kid's submitted paper). He slept only two hours last night to completely rewrite it. In another class, though he got a better grade than all the other kids he talked to in his class, he still got only "B+" for the first paper he submitted. He said he was very glad that he was at Chicago, not the school that offered him a full ride, since he probably would not have been challenged and squeezed this way. He said he would have been just happy in other schools with ample free time to pursue life's pleasures since he probably would waltz through the four years getting top grades without making much effort, but in Chicago, he will be happy AND well educated, and he will have truly EARNED it. He sounded like someone who is really enjoying a very tough workout - you know, the kind of exercise euphoria you get even though every single muscle and join hurts.

I am even more ecstatic than he is. I feel we are all getting our money's worth. This is precisely why we decided to send him to Chicago full pay when we had an option of a full ride. I felt that his limits have never been tested in his life, and he needs an environment that challenges him as much as possible so that he can evolve to the next level, whatever it may be.

This is a kid who never had to life a finger to be a top student in a magnet school rated within top 5 by USNWR. Though we don't have direct experience, based on what we heard from our friends whose kids are in the HYP+ schools, I have the feeling that he would not have been thus squeezed and stretched in those schools (I don't know for a fact, just anecdotal examples).

Tuition $37000. Room and Board $11000, Four round trips to home $1400. Seeing a kid happy to have found an intellectual home for the first time in his life, priceless!!!!

Seashore

My D picked Chicago over the elite Ivies/Stanford, in that she canceled those applications after she got into Chicago EA. I think she'd do it again, although she may have mellowed to the point of recognizing that she could have been happy at all of those schools.

I don't think she's in a Department that typicallly focuses on undergrads, but she's had no problems getting as much attention from as many profs as she wants. If you show a little interest, they respond.

I agree with JHS on the general advisor. He's a little worthless. But I think it's mostly because she just doesn't need him.

trollnyc

So if I withdraw my apps to the ivies after getting into to Wayne State, does that mean anything? No!

How, might I ask? Because everyone here seems to think that Chicago is the only place where students take getting an education seriously? How ridiculous... As if it has a monopoly on students who "learn for the sake of learning". C'mon, give it a break. 9 times out of 10, these are the students who would have been getting their stimulating educations in Cambridge, New Haven, Princeton, Palo Alto or New York or Philly, if given the opportunity.

CountingDown

Troll, some of these students WERE given the opportunity to study in Cambridge, et al, and declined it.

As for the rest...QED.

Cue7

Maybe I'm having a knee-jerk reaction to all this, but when I attended Chicago, this general theme (why Chicago is better than Harvard, Yale, etc.) was a pretty popular point of discussion. All the kids who, at best, made it to the Yale waitlist would sit around talking about how Chicago provided a "real" education, and these other schools just didn't. I even think there was a t-shirt at Chicago proclaiming, "The University of Chicago: Because if I wanted an A I'd have gone to Harvard."

I always thought, if anything, when trying to rank schools based on ACADEMICS that this was silly. I'm sure you can get an astoundingly good education at Harvard, although you may need to seek it out more.

I think the situation would just be better if the comparisons between Chicago and HYP stopped. Academically, Chicago is on par - which is great - but I always hesitate to designate one school as clearly better than another when you have to quantify something as hard to measure as quality of education. On every other significant front that measures a undergrad's worth, Chicago then falls behind HYP.

For the certain student that picks Chicago over Yale or MIT or whatever, great. If you want a great, well-rounded liberal arts education, you can't get that at MIT, and if you want to be right in a big city, you can't get that at Yale. There are always certain factors that lead a student to pick a certain school over another. At the same time, this doesn't mean that Chicago is the better school in any particular regard, just that it fit a certain applicant better. Indeed, as I've said above, I think Chicago promoters should at least grant some deference to HYP when assessing schools on ALL fronts (and not just academics).

There is kind of a tradition at Chicago to snub their nose at HYP. Whenever I meet the kids who graduated from these schools (by merit, not tons of hooks - which i know means only about 65% of a class), I more often than not end up very, very, very impressed. HYP still does an outstanding job creating leaders across all fields, and they are all wonderful schools.

In short, I guess the HYP-bashing (implied or blatant) gets a little old for me, and I'd rather just tip my hat to these schools.

newmassdad

HYP bashing? You're kidding, right? Your words speak for themselves: Cue7,

Can we just accept that (Econ 101 stuff) the preference set for kids varies? Some are less drawn the the "connections" and such that HYP purports to offer perhaps? Some are looking for a different academic experience? Some may have been rejected by HYP even though they are just as good academically, and want to celebrate their newly discovered home?

Sometimes, discussions in certain settings are not quite what they seem. For instance, this section of the boards, dedicated to UofC, is hardly a place where dispassionate comparisons of the quality of various higher ed institutions will take place. Nor should it be. It is, rather, a place where current and potential attendees discuss, and become comfortable with, their choice. In other words, these discussions are not (in subtle ways) about "finding the truth", if indeed the truth even exists here.

So please, if some folks find it comfortable to talk about ways in which their choice might be better in their minds, let them do so.

To accuse these folks of "bashing" is blatantly unfair, and serves no purpose here.

JMHO.

trollnyc

I find it fascinating why this would be the case. Perhaps its a mechanism by which people cope with rejection? I don't know. I just find it ludicrous when folks here suggest that How ridiculous. What the heck is a "real" education!?

In sum, I think all this self-absorbed gloating about having gone to Chicago, blah blah blah and getting a true education, and learning "for the sake of learning" and "being academic", and "self selecting" is a coping mechanism for insecure people. Many folks from other schools share this same disease/disorder. However, I do find it rampant on this board, much more frequently than others.

Not too many...There is a reason why the yield barely cracks 35%...

Terp2014

trollnyc, I wonder what bashing Chicago is a "coping mechanism" for...Hmm...

soomoo

I've been following this thread for a few days now as it has struck a chord with me. My son applied EA to both MIT and Chicago. He truly loves both schools. However, if he get into Chicago and not MIT we will have him apply to Princeton also since he is double legacy. I don't think he really likes Princeton as much as Chicago but since he has a decent shot of getting in.....

As a parent I am struggling with him picking Chicago over Princeton. There are many reasons for this feeling, but I am not sure a 17 year old can or would appreciate my thoughts on the matter. At what point must you, as a parent, back off and let your child decide these sorts of things?!!!

hyeonjlee

Well,

If my kid is choosing a community college over Harvard, I would be worried and even question his judgment, and, as you said above, would be wondering "At what point must you, as a parent, back off and let your child decide these sorts of things?!!!"

However, since your kid is choosing one school over the other, both of which are within the top 10 school list, I would have to ask you a pointed question:

Are you concerned about the long term negative impact this "ill conceived" decision on his part will have on HIS LIFE?

Or, are you uncomfortable with his decision because of how it impacts you: as in, not being able to say my kid is going to Princeton, MIT, Harvard, whatever: you know, after all, Joe Schmoe in central Wyoming knows all about Princeton, but perhaps not Chicago.

Would you also be wondering out loud whether your son should marry someone who only graduated from Columbia instead of Harvard? This has a long term consequences too, think about the children out of this marriage!

I know I am coming across very cynical here, and I apologize for being sarcastic - not my usual mode. However, reading this post, I just couldn't shake this "let them have a cake instead" metaphor off in my head. When parents are wondering "at what point must you let the child decide these sorts of things", we are thinking about things like a child who wants to enlist and go to Iraq, potentially risking his life.

HST

If he really loves both schools (Chicago and MIT), why would you want to dissuade him from either? Interference of this kind probably wouldn't do any good, and might actually do some harm.

making_a_point

You want your son to enjoy Eating Club and party all weekend go to Princeton. You want your son to be challenged go to Chicago or MIT. Chicago will be a better choice if you want a more well rounded curricullum. MIT will be a better choice if you want to end up majoring in engineering. Just my view.