Chicago changes rules for Dean's list and will now also award Latin Honors

Colleges & Universities University of Chicago
121

“There is something to taking “chances” on students, and offering a college environment that could let those students flourish.”

Isn’t that kind of what they are doing by offering Test Optional?

“Along the lines of generally elevated (and documented) stress difficulties among young people, I wonder if the atmosphere on campus is now even more high-octane. There’s vicious competition just to get in nowadays, and students who are accustomed to (and seek) academic perfection in high school may not cease their efforts at the college level.”

Does this ‘vicious competition’ also exist at other universities with even lower rates of admission?

All stats point toward students at the College having a more - not less - successful experience at UChicago. Retention, completion, and yield rates are notably improved. Campus infrastucture and support has increased - not diminished. Posts by @Skyrior and others have suggested that the Core is less rigorous than it used to be, rather than more. And exit outcomes are supposedly much better now. No doubt, the campus atmosphere is more high-octane, but that’s an issue at all competitive colleges. So is the topic of mental health counseling services being increasingly deemed “inadequate” - even at top schools. The supply is greater than ever, but demand continues to outstrip supply. It’s one of the biggest problems discussed on campuses everywhere, and it speaks to a deeper problem than just having to undergo a challenging academic curriculum.

We’d need to see some hard evidence that things are somehow “worse” at Chicago than they used to be, say, back in the 90’s when the Core was 50% of the degree requirements.

122

@Skyrior , these observations about student stress were being made back in the sixties and I suspect at all times in the history of the College. The place was once called " the bootcamp". That intense atmosphere can be experienced as bracing and challenging, but it can also break some people down. I saw in myself and my friends elements of both those effects, sometimes in alternation. I also felt many times the pride of accomplishment in getting through the hard parts.

But aren’t the many changes in the College over the last decades meant to ameliorate all that stress and produce happier students? That was supposed to be the rationale for them. I have always been skeptical that they could actually do that, given that a certain level of academic intensity is simply not consistent with a perfectly serene life. Scholars and thinkers have been making those observations since the days of Robert Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy”. Could it even be that a false hope is being engendered in the modern version of the College that the pain and stress of learning things can be combatted through recourse to handy night spots or a raft of ECs - anything to avoid spending so much time trying to understand the stuff in books? This is a delusion that earlier generations of UC students, whatever their stress levels, were not under.

As for chasing grades, I can’t be overly sympathetic to anyone who goes in for that or gets stressed simply because of the imagined emphasis on them that the introduction of the latin awards creates. I don’t myself favor those awards, however. Serious learning is best sought for its own sake and should be worn lightly and unpretentiously.

123

It’s not hard to look at what the undergrads are saying especially since most of the stuff is public on Facebook. I’m also not a loner and still have younger friends on campus.

I took hard classes as an undergrad, the honors classes and the notorious hard electives and some grad classes. So the people I interact with should lean towards the “serious learning” demographic. And I am pretty confident that the majority of people I know and interact with do not care about serious learning. Maybe except in Core when the material is trivial and it’s not hard to be engaged with it. But when push comes to shove most people didn’t seriously learn for its own sake. I’ve only met one or two people who actually seriously and rigorously study for its own sake. That’s just not what teenagers’ (up to 25) brains are optimized for.

For example, a common advice (even coming from research RSO leaders) is that you shouldn’t read everything carefully in your assigned Core texts all the time and just skim it. That’s just insane. Who can say they not only diligently took notes on all their readings but also read the research literature, debates, other lectures on their SOSC texts? I certainly don’t know anyone who did that.

Kids aren’t dumb though. It’s obvious that attractive jobs and grad schools have become more competitive. Grade chasing is just a natural market response to changes in the labor market. When the opportunity cost of serious learning is too high it makes sense that students eschew that approach for something more rewarding. Serious learning isn’t fun to the vast majority of people - even Chicago students.

That being said I do not recall people caring so much about grades 4 or 5 years ago. I would argue it’s because the College has become more selective and therefore the accepted students tend towards those used to getting As and succeeding trivially in high school.

124

Interesting, @Skyrior . “Learning for its own sake” might be the Platonic ideal, but in a fallen world tormenting practical questions, such as “What will I do with this knowledge?” and “Will I do well enough in this course to take the next one and the next one?” will rear their heads, especially in the wee hours as one is falling asleep over the unread pages up for discussion in tomorrow’s class. I confess that I too sometimes didn’t get all the reading done.

Aristotle tells us that “All men by nature desire to know”, but they also desire other things, such as the esthetic pleasure derived from the contemplation of a beautiful object or person; the communion of true souls in friendship; and a good rib steak (done Athenian-style!). I don’t doubt all this is as true at the University of Chicago as it was at Athens.

But you describe yourself and your circle of friends as being serious guys taking on hard courses. Why was that? I was a bit like that myself, as were my own special friends. Yes, I will say that the innate desire to know was part of it, but there were other motivations. One was simply to prove to oneself that one could do it: doing hard things brings more satisfaction than doing easy ones. Aristotle would have recognized that motivation: human beings want to actualize the powers they find in themselves. For people who have the ability to learn, learning things makes one more oneself. That is why it brings satisfaction. Secondly, there is always the thought that the thing learned makes one more fit for life in one way or another. I have in mind here more than just collecting the credits and satisfying the requirements (even picking up Latin Honours) that help one to move along to the next stage of an instrumental process culminating in a career or profession. Yes, that’s part of it, and it’s the anxiety-making part of it at that. But I recall thinking that I was being cumulatively shaped by these old books into someone who could act in the world, understand it, make a contribution to it, in undefinable ways. Shakespeare or Tolstoy will do that to you. The knowledge you are getting from them is hard to put your finger on, but I will tell you that it’s real. It makes you feel less alone in the world and more fit to deal with it. All fields and studies have exemplars and texts of that sort. You could call learning a form of glorified self-help.

Does any of that sound right to you and your friends?

125

“I took hard classes as an undergrad, the honors classes and the notorious hard electives and some grad classes. So the people I interact with should lean towards the “serious learning” demographic. And I am pretty confident that the majority of people I know and interact with do not care about serious learning.”

  • Even the grad students?

“But when push comes to shove most people didn’t seriously learn for its own sake. I’ve only met one or two people who actually seriously and rigorously study for its own sake. That’s just not what teenagers’ (up to 25) brains are optimized for.”

Young adults age 25+ are more mature than they were during the more formative years, and UChicago is famous for being appreciated a lot more upon reflection once - perhaps even years after - you have graduated (see David Brooks’s comments from his speech a few years ago, among others). A basic analogy would be all those things we were instructed to do as little kids and later embraced as adults, such as practicing good oral hygiene or bussing our own dishes. We wouldn’t have given two thoughts to either when younger, but the habits we picked up when young serve us well in later life. Similarly, all that opportunity for “serious learning” - even if not fully appreciated at the time - will still help train the thinking process and prepare the college learner for exercising good mental habits once he/she reaches true adult stage (which for me actually happened around age 30).

Also, @Skyrior, what would you recommend these undergraduates actually do with their time if not practice “serious learning for its own sake”? As @marlowe1 points out, the ideal can’t always be achieved, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t always be the goal.

“That being said I do not recall people caring so much about grades 4 or 5 years ago. I would argue it’s because the College has become more selective and therefore the accepted students tend towards those used to getting As and succeeding trivially in high school.”

  • Grades are imperfect indicators of effort and intelligence; however, since those attributes tend to be revealed through your work product over time, and since a cumulative GPA is a four-year-long measure of that work product, it'll serve as a sufficient metric for most who are making decisions concerning your future (ie graduate admissions committees or prospective employers). This fact is a no-brainer for the vast majority of students coming into UChicago these days, and I imagine even several years ago College students understood the value of doing your best and getting good grades. Personally, I have yet to meet a serious student who disconnected "serious learning" from grade received. An "A" tends to mean you've mastered the material, a "C" tends to mean you haven't. (Obviously, there is a huge time-related aspect to the learning process for most of us weak mortals; for instance, an "A" in first year hum doesn't signal the same mastery as an "A" in PhD hum).

“For example, a common advice (even coming from research RSO leaders) is that you shouldn’t read everything carefully in your assigned Core texts all the time and just skim it. That’s just insane. Who can say they not only diligently took notes on all their readings but also read the research literature, debates, other lectures on their SOSC texts? I certainly don’t know anyone who did that.”

  • The key here is not whether you skim or take notes - it's whether you are skilled at close reading. Both my kids learned this in high school so are kind of lucky that way. It enabled them to enroll in both Hum and Sosc during first year. They had also covered some of the authors during high school. However, I don't think they were alone - lots of kids come into UChicago with similar preparation, and about half the first years take Sosc along with Hum. Furthermore, those who put off Sosc to 2nd year should already have gained some valuable close reading skills from Hum the year before. At that point, whether to skim some passages and take notes in others, or what you decide to outline, or what supplemental research you do - or even how you mark up your personal copy of the text - is an individual decision.

Skipping some of the readings in Hum and Sosc would be like skipping out on some p-set questions. You can do it, but you miss out on what you are supposed to be learning.

My son’s Sosc instructor recommended talks by visiting lecturers and I know at least one person who attended :wink: @Skyrior’s experience no doubt is accurate - whether it’s representative might be another matter. A lot might depend on who you hang with.

126

@bluebayou
“Taken on its face, (and perhaps out of context?), Dean Boyer’s comment is naive. Even if the high school world believes that Chicago is better than Columbia, there is no reason to assume it should receive more apps that Columbia. In the first place, Columbia is larger. Columbia also has an Engineering schools, to it will attract STEM geeks that Chicago does not, and thirdly, Columbia sits in a more attractive city (to 18-year-olds) and is closer to more populations centers – most students prefer to attend school within a days’ drive from home.”

You’re kidding me right? The high school world definitely does not think UChicago is better than Columbia. Columbia is held in higher regard though there really is no advantage of going to Columbia over UChicago (despite what Columbia students may think). Columbia, UPenn, UChicago are all about the same in student body quality and prestige. Between Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and the rest of the Top 10 is where you see the prestige gap.

127

Actually it’s really just Harvard and Stanford. One being the center of the East coast world and the other being the center of the West coast world. Of course some just like to combine it into Stanvard.