<p>I think his focus on the graduate programs makes sense, since they clearly are make or break for research universities in the next century. In contrast, the schools that all invested heavily in their undergraduate programs during the mid 20th century are now being forced to undergo significant and in some cases acrimonious institutional changes. Georgetown, Dartmouth, Brown and Rice all come to mind, and I think its fair to say that these universities were better regarded than Penn, Cornell or JHU in the 50s when the BA from a private school was a ticket in itself (and graduate studies seemed relatively esoteric). UChicago is also particularly good at reaping the trickledown effect to undergraduates allowing UGs to take graduate courses, having the strongest doctoral candidate and hence TAs, excellent faculty willing to teach undergraduates, strong recruitment and professional connections which really is a key element in the case for expansive graduate initiatives. </p>
<p>The only thing I think Chicago should get more into is advertising. I think its worthwhile when, for example, the school has more Hays-Fulbright winners than any other school for the 20th or so year running, to put a full page add in the NYT, WoPo, WSJ, etc. The GSB has started doing this with regular placements in the Economist, but they rarely highlight students accomplishments rather than simply starting some programs availability. While they are costly, these ads most directly reach out to opinion makers that the school wants to connect with regarding its image. I am always amazed of how off beat some high level individuals perceptions of the place are (its only good at economics, it does nothing in the applied sciences, no one particularly famous outside of academia ever went there, no major companies get their start). </p>
<p>The press office is killer though. There was a poster in the GSB I saw the other day that said Chicago, behind Harvard and Stanford, is the third most common citation source for major dailys when referring to research (i.e. Professor X of the University of Chicago recent work on
).
.</p>