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<li><p>OK, Zimmer should probably be able to recognize Chicago’s Rhodes winners. Especially the cute ones. His bad.</p></li>
<li><p>I don’t have the sense that Chicago promotes undergraduate accomplishments less than other research universities. Undergraduates don’t usually have a lot of promotable accomplishments – life-saving medical techniques, Fields Medals, multimillion-dollar research programs, or even publications. And I have a sense that the historic differences in Chicago admissions vs. HYPS means that, yes, Chicago undergraduates are less likely to start and get some new initiative off the ground and less likely to promote it if they do. That’s a little bit the flip side of focusing on the life of the mind vs. future presidential candidates.</p></li>
<li><p>But you should tell them that. I’ll bet they aren’t aware of it.</p></li>
<li><p>I am certain that Zimmer does not want to take the University back to the days where the college was neglected. In terms of big projects, the college has gotten more than its share in the past decade (with the b-school), so it’s not very surprising that the pendulum is swinging the other way a bit. And I do believe that he thinks the graduate/research programs should lead the way, and that it’s impossible to have a strong college without world-class academic graduate programs. He wants to be more like Harvard or Stanford, not more like Georgetown.</p></li>
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