<p>eh. I can understand where all of you guys are coming from… But you have to remember one thing… YOur hosts are only a year (or maybe two) older than you. They were not there to babysit… And I still don’t get why people were upset that there was a party on campus. Who cares? It was a blast, and it was still different. I have never been to a party where the Frat guys are nice and there to help, or where really dorky kids and really “cool” kids are all there together getting along and having a great time. I got stuck with a HORRIBLE HOST… So I left. I found a group of great kids and had the time of my life. You cannot expect them to baby you the whole time you are there, I walked around for a very long time alone and enjoyed every second of it and when I wanted to be around people I simply walked up and started talking. Everyone was really nice and ready to meet people…</p>
<p>ChadH, you sound like me…I could care less if my host sucks, I’ll explore and see what’s going on-- alone or with new friends. I’ll check out a party or I’ll wander around and pick up friends along the way. It’s called FLEXIBILITY.</p>
<p>YES Exactly, you cannot expect everyone else to do it for you.</p>
<p>ChadH & reading<em>is</em>sexy:
Agreed.
That’s why I did end up talking to a bunch of other prospies along the way.</p>
<p><em>grin</em>
However, I still think horrible hosts shouldn’t volunteer in the first place. I wasn’t asking for a babysitter…but…a host. Someone to sort of point out the general direction of buildings and such…and answer a few basic questions about their Chi. experience back at the dorm.
…I think even someone our age could do that.</p>
<p>Hosts should look after the prospies, at least when it gets dark out and they are trying to find their way around. Also, it would be nice if they take the prospies to whatever they have scheduled first in the morning.</p>
<p>my hosts definitely had things of their own going on, though… i can understand that they didn’t want to drag themselves out of bed to put us on the shoreland bus in the morning like mothers with kindergartners.</p>
<p>While I didn’t get into the U of C (I’m waitlisted after getting deferred gahhh), I had a feeling since before I applied in November that I really wanted to go there. I’ve visited a few schools since then, namely Wesleyan University, Colgate University, and Penn State University for the Honors program.
I would have expected Penn state to suck, since it’s a large state school right? But it was the complete opposite… I sat in on three classes: biology,chem, and shakespeare. All the profs/ta’s enjoyed what they were doing and tried really hard to get me involved in what they were doing. This at a freaking state school! If anyone heard that i was a prospie for the Schreyer Honors college, they’d all say you should come to psu cause it’s awesome. The intellectual atmosphere can be formed anywhere, you just have to find the right people. Then, there will be students at the U of C who will laugh at that attitude and just get by doing other things. You can find people who you’d like to hang out with wherever you go, I was just in awe of the openness of the campus and how much anyone in the program at PSU was willing to take a few mins and tell me why they considered Schreyer over swarthmore or UPenn or Cornell or whatever…
I’m visiting Wesleyan next week, I know it’s got the same kind of intellectual atmosphere as UofC in the sense that the students care a lot about their work and work hard, but they’re extremely active in other things happening on campus. I think it’s a horrendous sign when it takes people a while to think about why they like a school and whine about it before they decide to tell you that you should come anyway…
That being said, I still love the UofC and I’m skeptical of my chances of getting off the waitlist, but I hope to be there for grad school.
If this visit changed your mind, pay attention to why it happened, first impressions are lasting and you HAVE TO trust your gut instinct. You can fall in love with a school on paper, but you have to trust what you feel when you’re there. We can all adapt and fall in love with wherever we go, but you have to remember that you also got into other schools(hopefully haha) and you should consider them also. I’m not trying to dissuade anyone from attending, but some people here seem to be trying to make excuses for following their gut and heart, and I think that’s a bad idea.
Enjoy!</p>
<p>Just FYI, the “official responsibilities” assigned to any host are to be in your room when they arrive, make sure they get to the dining hall, and make sure they are able to get back to their parents in the morning (or whatever activity is planned). The instructions I have recieved (there arent any real official forms or anything, just emails from the student directors) litteraly say you can interact as much or as little as you want with them. </p>
<p>I try to to interact with my prospies as much as I can but sometimes we just get wierd prospies… My suitemate had a prospie and a midterm the next day and his prospie went to bed at 10:00 and made him study outside…all the other prospies that night joined our house in our midnight soccer game</p>
<p>“My suitemate had a prospie and a midterm the next day and his prospie went to bed at 10:00 and made him study outside”</p>
<p>Middle-aged at 18. What a sad thing.</p>
<p>Aw man, a midnight soccer game sounds like TONS of fun :-)</p>
<p>Word that, yo.</p>
<p>i suck at soccer, but it would’ve been fun just randomly kicking and hopefully making it move.</p>
<p>gee! Maybe I’m glad I didn’t go on the dorm preview day after all (considering I already chose BJ) because so much of it depends on where you end up. I guess you have to imagine that your experience was a possible day-in-the-life of a Chicago student, but if you were to really attend U of C, you would have a whole different take on the school. First, you would be able to choose your own schedule (to an extent). Second, you would have a more cemented social area/ knowledge of other people and what they are up to. And third, you’d be used to Chicago’s quirks by then, whether you liked them or not.</p>
<p>It’s funny reading these, because while I didn’t go, my friend from school Blake did. He was under the impression that all Chicago students were socially withdrawn and didn’t know what a keg looked like, and at least his visit made him rethink that much. He’s still in between Chicago and other schools (Rice, Wesleyan, Bowdoin), but I think he has a much more favorable view of Chicago based on one visit. </p>
<p>I think for a lot of us, Chicago is a dream school, and finding out that it’s not perfect all the time is rough, whereas when somebody visits the school expecting something they won’t like, they are pleasantly surprised…</p>
<p>I think that’s true. I just think my getting deferred and then waitlisted isn’t a good sign. It’s like they’re telling me that I don’t belong there, academically so too. I think you stated that very very well, Good job Amy :-)</p>
<p>Amy, I really like wesleyan. Infact i’m visiting there next week for wesfest.
One of our family friends’ daughter graduated from UChicago, and she(the friend not the daughter) told me that if I wanted a good overall college experience with rigorous academics, an intellectual atmosphere, and an interesting time, then i should pick wesleyan. While if i wanted to work my rear end off at the sacrifice of some of the overall experience for academics and work, then i should pick chicago.
I’m just trying to figure out whether I still want to go there or not since i still love the school, but i just don’t want to die during Ugrad…</p>
<p>Good luck to your friend though, he’s got awesome choices 
I just like the idea of a school being focused on Ugrads.</p>
<p>the soccer things sounds really cool… what dorm/house was that?</p>
<p>About six to eight houses have been involved in the midnight soccer. At various times Snell/Hitchcock (maybe just one of them), most of the houses in Max P., most houses in Pierce, and some from B-J have been involved (it happened in the fall, too, and has been revived this spring).</p>
<p>It was mostly organized by one of the Woodward RA’s and has started up again this quarter. </p>
<p>Basically we played games of soccer in the midway at 11:30 or so. It’s pretty dark as all of the lighting comes from a few streetlights and the odd passing car so its a lot of running around without being able to clearly see anything.</p>
<p>I had a lot of fun doing it (and my house was undefeated with one tie which was kinda nice)</p>
<p>any games scheduled for the 20th? …pretty please.</p>
<p>The 20th is a Thursday night. That is midnight soccer night. So, barring a thunderstorm to ruin the fun (that happened this week), there should be soccer at midnight on the Midway.</p>
<p>There will probobly be a game, but you’ll have to be staying in a house that is playing. I suppose you could show up anyway but that might be hard to orchestrate.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, because it is a prospie night, there may be a lot of people more interested in parties than playing soccer.</p>