<p>This is its last year, so I would imagine the walls will really be coming down by spring. Room decorating will have few limits. Next year most Shoreland residents will likely be in the new dorm. S1 lived in Shoreland a couple of years ago and really liked it (but not the ride to BJ for meals).</p>
<p>(Psst, thanks for the bus advice, guys! I took the bus/train to the hair salon today with no complications. Thanks to y’all and Google Transit, I feel like my public transportation skills are pretty solid!)</p>
<p>Oatmealia, you left out the most important part: how’s the haircut?!?! :)</p>
<p>Ha ha, I like it! Good recommendation, unalove. It’s nice and short and comfortable, just in time for… well, winter, I guess. But now I can wear a hat without looking too doofy!</p>
<p>There is hope for all of you applicants who dread the swimming test…the biggest news in S’s first phone call home last night was that he PASSED the swim test. He did the entire thing floating on his back and paddling his arms and legs (and no, he does not have a Phelpsian backstroke). </p>
<p>Before he left, he told us he was going to waive the test and just take the class at some point, so this was truly a big surprise.</p>
<p>getting back to academic advisors, spoke to my S yesterday. he was unimpressed and uninspired by his interaction with his advisor. What are his options? Can he request a new one? Which are the best?</p>
<p>S has said nothing about his advisor at all. Any questions he’s had re: placemnt and courses have gone directly to the profs involved (or the director of undergrad advising in that dept.). Don’t think all depts. have faculty acting in that capacity, but I know of two depts. in Physical Sciences that do.</p>
<p>I remember reading that students can’t request a new advisor – I think until Winter Quarter, to give time for the relationship to “jell.” I asked S about his experience via email since others here have expressed concerns, but didn’t get any direct feedback. Will ask him when we talk to him on the phone.</p>
<p>drdom,</p>
<p>Ask yourself if it matters. It took a medical crisis for my D and her adviser to connect. Hopefully yours will never need to connect.</p>
<p>Unlike HS, I think the UofC advisers are not very important for most students. After all, there are many more sources of advice about most anything academic - CMORE course and professor ratings, departmental faculty and staff for specific courses, RAs, peers and so forth.</p>
<p>The most important thing the advisers do is:
- make sure there is a plan to complete all of the extensive core courses in a logical fashion
- refer students to others for some kinds of questions
- help and advocate when problems arise. </p>
<p>To give an example, because of calc placement test results, it was not clear which math course my D was to take her first year. Her adviser sent her to talk to Jose Quintans because my D wanted to be a BSD major. Even though Jose is the collegiate master for BSD (at least he was then) and the head of the MD/PhD program for the med school, he was around O week to help out first years for course placement issues. </p>
<p>I don’t think most other colleges make such a commitment of high level faculty time to their undergrads.</p>
<p>(This may be completely useless pedantry, and no insult whatsoever is directed at CountingDown or her erudite son, but I think relationships “gel” – metaphorically, in the sense of becoming more solid, like gelatin. If drdom’s son and his advisor are “jelling”, the IP attorneys for Jell-O ™ may want to send them a cease-and-desist letter.)</p>
<p>drdom, as I said upthread, or up some other thread, I think the first solution to try for your son’s problem is lowering your expectations of what the advisor is going to provide. Real, nuanced academic advice will most likely come from faculty, graduate students, and upperclassmen in the departments that interest your son; the academic adviser will make certain that he has a plan for meeting his graduation requirements and is implementing it.</p>
<p>JHS…they may be jellin’ in their Dr. Scholl’s, and my eyes are wellin’! 
I make jelly and preserves, so I was thinking “jell.” Mea culpa. I was also posting at work – where I multitask to the nth degree.</p>
<p>Ooof – jelly! So Jell-O doesn’t have leg to stand on, so to speak . . . </p>
<p>But they’re gellin’ in their Dr. Scholl’ses: [Dr</a>. Scholl’s® - Massaging Gel Shoe Insoles and Inserts](<a href=“http://www.drscholls.com/drscholls/massaginggel.jsp]Dr”>http://www.drscholls.com/drscholls/massaginggel.jsp)</p>
<p>[QS</a> Top Universities: Top 200 universities in the THE - QS World University Rankings 2008](<a href=“http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/results/2008/overall_rankings/fullrankings/]QS”>http://www.topuniversities.com/worlduniversityrankings/results/2008/overall_rankings/fullrankings/)</p>
<p>Is this new?</p>
<p>It may be new for this year; it’s not “new” in the sense that the same people have ranked the same universities in roughly the same order in the past as well.</p>
<p>anyone have recommendations for a good restaurant near the University. Hoping for some good food during parents/family weekend. Is it customary that students accompany their parents to the weekend’s activities?</p>
<p>The Med on 57th is a classic parent/student destination.</p>
<p>My D would not have been caught dead at any of the parent weekend activities with us. Most of them are not really targeted at the kids anyway. Pre-Zimmer, the prez would have receptions at his house, which were good parent/student events, but I don’t think Zimmer is quite so sociable with undergrads. He tends to ignore them.</p>
<ol>
<li> There are not a lot of super-good parent-quality restaurants near the University. The Medici is OK, and there’s some Italian restaurant (Mezzaluna?) on 53rd that’s OK, and my family likes the unique quality of Ragin’ Cajun (South Asian + soul food, cheap). There is an expensive French restaurant in the strip mall on 55th that I’ve never tried, because I’ve never heard anything good about it, and an expensive Italian restaurant right near the Shoreland that I’ve never tried because I’ve heard bad things about it. There’s an ambitious newish restaurant called Park something that has a good pedigree (the owners have several other very successful restaurants around Chicago), but it’s thoroughly mediocre.</li>
</ol>
<p>Chicago has great, great restaurants. But they’re not in Hyde Park. Get your parents to take you elsewhere. </p>
<ol>
<li> In theory, yes. In practice, not so much. Last year, one of my kids came with me to two sample classes, and he was the only current student at either. (He really loved both of them, and has kept up a relationship with a professor he met at the second.) Lunch, however, and the RM’s and President’s receptions are all-hands affairs.</li>
</ol>
<p>Thanks folks. What are your favorite non-Hyde Park restaurants?</p>
<p>The “expensive French restaurant in the strip mall on 55th” is called La Petite Folie, and I think it’s owned by UChicago grads. It’s really convenient and I like it fine. It’s not super-special Chicago foodie, but more like food you’d make yourself if you happen to be into French cooking.</p>
<p>drdom,</p>
<p>Given the number of restaurants Chicago has downtown and north of there, with huge variety, every ethnicity you can think of, a huge range of prices and such, I hesitate to suggest any one place. I will say that I find the places north of North Avenue to be more interesting and a better value than the tourist traps that cater to the convention crowd south of North.</p>
<p>If you are traveling by car, I will say that Chicago’s chinatown is the real thing. There are still a few old war horse tourist traps, but the best is in a shopping center north of Archer and west of Wentworth. Well worth the short drive and the wait for a table at the better places.</p>
<p>DH always goes to Carson’s for ribs when he is town on business. When we dropped off S for O-Week, we went there for dinner afterwards. DH also laments the closing of the old Berghoff, but he still goes to the new incarnation. S and I went to the Med the night before move-in. None of these places offer haute cuisine, but we enjoyed them and the prices were fairly reasonable.</p>