<p>S1 has been talked out of premed and med school by all his physician relatives, but until that point, he found the courses to be quite interesting and relevant. He did say the chemistry he took at a top Ivy was easier than the other science courses at Chicago, but that Chicago’s was more interesting and inquiring.</p>
<p>Thanks for your input! I just discovered the “Chem at UChicago” thread which is helpful as well.</p>
<p>Hi! I don’t know if I post in the right thread, but I 'll be a SAL student for the academic year 2008-2009, and I wondered if there was a skydiving student organization at UChicago… I googled it, but I have not found any club with special fees for students…only expensive packages.</p>
<p>Thanks in advance,
goodwill</p>
<p>PS : I’m glad I discovered this forum!</p>
<p>“if at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you”</p>
<p>No club info here, but the Chicago Air and Water Show (free) is August
16th and 17th. You can see quite a bit of it from anywhere along the lake. I think the skydivers land at North Avenue Beach.</p>
<p>haha I like this one
I also found “You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.” :)</p>
<p>Thank you for the information cottonwood513!</p>
<p>If it turns out there IS a skydiving club for students at Chicago, with special fees in lieu of expensive packages . . . I hope no one tells my kid about it!</p>
<p>(You might check out Northwestern, DePaul, and IIT, too. If one of them has a club, it’s probably possible to piggyback.)</p>
<p>Great!
Thx a lot!</p>
<p>goodwill</p>
<p>anybody have suggestions for the best hotel to stay at during O-Week. My son will be living at Shoreland. Is there a hotel close by or would one at Midway Airport be a better bet? - Thanks</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Don’t stay at ANY hotel “during O-week”. Parents should leave Sunday morning, at the latest (and should understand that they will not be seeing their first-year after 4:00 pm or so on Saturday).</p></li>
<li><p>The university generally has some deals with hotels in the Loop/South Loop, and that has worked great for us. Especially if your son is going to be in the Shoreland, the key transportation mode is the #6 bus, which takes you within about a block and a half. Going south, you can catch it on State anywhere between the river and Balbo. So a hotel in the Loop or South Loop area, in addition to being a lot more fun than staying at Midway, will also be more convenient. (And you can get to the Loop from Midway on the Orange Line El.)</p></li>
</ol>
<p>(There is one motel closer by, and International House, but you can bet they were booked up long ago. The University of Chicago desperately needs a real hotel in Hyde Park.)</p>
<p>Drdom,</p>
<p>Last year, we found the best deals from hotels/motels near Midway airport. Assuming you are renting a car, you can also take advantage of easy access to a # of big box stores (Walmart, Kmart, Costo, etc.) within a very short drive of the motel complex and airport.</p>
<p>As JHS says, after you drop your child and his/her possessions off, you won’t be hanging out with them for more than a few hours. So, convenience of location is really a function of whether or not you’ll have a car and whether or not you want to get some last minute shopping done.</p>
<p>JHS’s #1 isn’t quite true. After the calculus placement exam on Sunday (yep, you heard that right) we took S1 to Target for some last minute shopping.</p>
<p>The Ramada Inn (not the best hotel in the city) is close to the Shoreland, but may already be sold out. There are also BBs in Hyde Park, we stayed in one. But JHS is right, there are many Hotels in the Loop and South Loop that would be more fun. Try Priceline for this area for a 3 or 4 star hotel and you should be okay. We once got a great deal in the near north next to the Hancock building at the Marriott Renaissance Hotel simply by looking for specials on the Hotel websites. </p>
<p>JHS is also right, they badly need hotels in Hyde Park. I understand the University is trying to build one on the site of the old Dr.'s Hospital, but is meeting with some community opposition.</p>
<p>Yeah – the Calc placement test on <em>Sunday</em> definitely got S’s attention. So much for staying up all night Saturday making new friends. Talk about tossing them into the deep end! ;)</p>
<p>We are staying at the Wooded Isle Suites (as it turns out, a block and a half from S’s dorm). We reserved in May, as I was afraid there’d be no vacancies anywhere reasonable if we waited til July or August. Will report how Wooded Isle works out for the benefit of other parents/prospies in the future. </p>
<p>Since we are driving the van to Chicago, I am trying to anticipate various needs and have alternative items packed. S’s roommate is coming in from overseas, so we expect there’s a limit to what he’ll be able to bring and that he’ll be arriving solo. If S and/or roommate need an emergency shopping run, one of us will just get the car and head out with the guys. </p>
<p>S has decreed that a printer, fridge and bookcase are necessities. (He uses the printer all the time, as he does not like to read from the computer screen. He reads actual newspapers, too. So old school!) Are there nightstands in the rooms?</p>
<p>If he doesn’t need everything we brought, we’ll haul it home. Just need to keep track of those receipts!</p>
<p>The nightstand is worth emailing roomates over. Each room comes with one nightstand. Then again, most doubles are arranged such that at least one person’s head is near their desk.</p>
<p>Here’s another hypothetical question:</p>
<p>What do I do if I arrive on campus and realize that everybody here is smarter than me? Should I just assume that the admissions office was high when they got around to my file?</p>
<p>I add this because I imagine the U of C can be a very intimidating place for some at first sight.</p>
<p>I went to a very good high school.
A lot of my friends also went to very good high schools.
My family has a lot of fancy degrees, though their day jobs are pretty pedestrian.
A lot of my friends’ families have fancier degrees, and their parents are influential, intellectual people.</p>
<p>And then, there are some kids who come from small towns in Wisconsin, and students whose parents never went to college.</p>
<p>Being a decently smart person at a great high school, for about the first three or four weeks of classes my first year I was a bit ahead of the curve. I was comfortable with the amount of work I was being assigned and the level of expectation.</p>
<p>And then, one day I woke up and it seemed like all of the really smart kids from Podunk High had zoomed past me as far as academic work goes.</p>
<p>The hints that that might be happening were apparent to me as early as O-Week, when I sent a teary-eyed e-mail home, saying that for the first time in my life I felt intellectually inferior to the people who never even had the resources I had. So while some students might be adjusting to the academic pace, I was adjusting to the fact that I had to start assuming that everybody around me was painfully smart, that they did the readings more carefully than I did, that they actually knew what they were talking about, etc.</p>
<p>There are times that I don’t feel like I’m as able as some of my peers, but I know why I’m here. I also know that some students feel the same way I do at times, and it’s great that people are generally open about feeling confused and lost. There are also always professors and TA’s to e-mail and chat to.</p>
<p>I also remind myself that being surrounded by so much smart is a blessing-- once we all disperse into the real world, we’ll never be with such a high concentration of people like each other again (with some exceptions). I’ve found being in such an environment inspiring more than anything else, and it’s definitely helped me think about the kinds of post-graduation options I want to pursue and which ones I don’t.</p>
<p>
unalove: That is why a hung around the place for about 15 years.</p>
<p>CountingDown: There is a Target close-by for unanticipated needs. A small refrigerator is nice to have. What is in the room depends on the dorm and type of room.</p>
<p>Two big mistakes most o-week parents and their student make are:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Bringing too much, especially things that can be shared with a roomie or with a suite, like refrigerators ( do you really need one for each person in a suite? i.e. 4?), TVs, big chairs, carpets and such. (Even printers!) You would b amazed at how much stuff returns home with the parents. You run out of space very quickly in the dorm rooms/suites.</p></li>
<li><p>Once the “parting of the waters” takes place (i.e. the procession from the opening speeches) too many parents think they are banished from the scene. Not so. In fact, we found the next day was the ideal day to head to target and other stores to buy what was really needed. And the parting the day after was much sweeter because it was more relaxed and great to see kid already settled in.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>So don’t overpack, don’t rush the departure. You have time.</p>
<p>Once the “parting of the waters” took place, our kids WANTED us banished from the scene. Each of them would have been completely annoyed had we showed up the next morning for a Target run. Obviously, families differ, but our kids were up to here emotionally after spending the better part of two days with us in active parting mode. They needed to start the next phase, not spend more time saying goodbye.</p>
<p>(They have busses to take the kids to Target, by the way, if they really need to go there. But chances are, they don’t. And there’s a Walgreen’s and Office Max within walking distance in Hyde Park.)</p>
<p>Space in the rooms can really be at a premium. I know if we had brought a printer with my daughter, it would have left with us. As for a refrigerator, that can be nice, but no room needs more than one. And many rooms don’t need any. In my daughter’s dorm, there was a kitchen fee that entitled her to use the dorm’s institutional kitchen, including as much space as she could ever hope to use in the ginormous refrigerators.</p>
<p>yeah, sorry - I didn’t mean to imply that we would be staying for the entire O-Week. What I meant was is there a hotel near Shoreland for a stay Sept. 19 - 20 or 21st? Also for family weekend in October. We will have a rental car with us and can make runs to various stores,etc. Thanks guys for all the advice.</p>
<p>Remember International House has rooms but they do fill quickly.</p>
<p>Will risers work on the beds? (hoping that might be a source of storage space…)</p>
<p>S is in a 11.5 x 15.5 double. There was a picture in the brochure S got in the mail with his roommate assignment, and it looked pretty cozy, shall we say! </p>
<p>Am thinking a two-drawer metal file cabinet may serve as both secure storage and printer stand or nightstand. The plastic one I just bought is going back to the store, I think.</p>
<p>We are assuming that S will share the fridge and the bookcase, if they can make it fit, with his roommate. S would have loved a big chair, but I don’t think that’s happening until he has a single.</p>