<p>Part of it, I believe, is that while many schools share this feature to some degree with Chicago, Chicago inverts it and makes it the defining idea of the University itself. In a sense, Chicago is obsessed with the Idea of the University and with education in general. Chandler’s line about no other university having such a powerful idea of itself really rings true to me, as someone who experienced four years at Chicago.</p>
<p>The material related to the [Idea</a> of the University Colloquium](<a href=“http://iotu.uchicago.edu/]Idea”>http://iotu.uchicago.edu/) is a good read. With respect to Berkeley, consider this. If you went around asking students and faculty, “What is the Idea of Berkeley?” how would they respond? Do you think most people have considered this in their time at the school? Would the answers be varied? At Chicago I would wager that most people have thought about it and that the answers would be very similar in their themes.</p>
<p>Well actually there would have answers within a similar range, I think I can say that. No, there wouldn’t be unanimity of response or a singular answer, but the idea of intellectualism would have been prominent, as well as the thirst for global knowledge (given representation of such an international presence which has always, always been very visible at Berkeley). Again, it seems as if the idea of identifying with an institution gives Chicago students some comfort, judging by Diocletian’s words. The difference would be that my fellow Bears would be more interested in identifying with the ideas and the processing of ideas than in identifying with the institution.</p>
<p>At Chicago I believe that the concept of the institution and ideas is so intertwined as to be the same. After awhile, most who attend drink the kool-aid. What is of greater surprise is that this point of view is often be shared by others outside the University.</p>
<p>Robert Pippen, the faculty representative on the search committee that identified the new U of C president, exclaimed how surprised he was to hear this [same] refrain time and time again as the search committee visited campuses throughout the nation. </p>
<p>“As we traveled… we would ask for what the view form the outside was of The University, and we would hear… The University is the purist of universities, dedicated to research, creation of new knowledge, and education more than any other, that it is a kind of intellectual hothouse, that the value of ideas and the life of the mind mean more here than anywhere else. We heard this so often that I was tempted to ask, ‘So what is you do?’”</p>
<p>“Some don’t see this, I suppose, and instead the application winds up in the garbage can. These same people probably have the hubris to see it as Chicago’s loss. I see it as theirs.”</p>
<p>Does the answer to not getting the needed acknowledgment of prior pejorative comments need to be an overall increase in the noise level and invectives? Was the allegation of pride over reason not sufficient that you had to elevate it to “overbearing” pride or presumption? Or was it a way to show that math graduates who have learned a thing or two about Python, Latex, or bourne shell, also know how to use a lexicon?</p>
<p>Isn’t it simpler to acknowledge that competitive students DO have choices, and that the process is one of elimination. It is a lot easier building a list of 20 or 30 schools than reducing it to an acceptable size. In the end, a student can only attend one school., and has to reject more than a few attractive candidates. </p>
<p>Some people decide to reject Chicago before applying, others after applying, and finally quite a few after being admitted, as they matriculate at a different school. It is all a matter of timing, changing perceptions, and most importantly, the relative availability of individual choices … and possibilities. I assume that it must be disappointing to read that tossing the Chicago’s application materials in the garbage could be done by some, and this without any hesitation nor regret. On this note, reading the tone of the contributions by avowed and fanatical die-hard supporters, has easily reinforced the notion that, for most the immediate reaction is usually the correct one.</p>
<p>That’s surprising for a large public University like Berkeley, but reassuring. My friends at Michigan have not had the same experience, nor my friends at places like Cornell and Davidson.</p>
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<p>You’ve misunderstood me. Although I do identify, perhaps strongly, with Chicago, my primary identification is with the “Idea of Chicago.” I chose Chicago because of what it represents, or rather, what they claimed to represent. I was terrified that I would be disappointed, but it was my joy to to discover that it was the truth. If you had talked to me my first year at Chicago I probably would have told a different story.</p>
<p>Sigh. Your steadfast ability to not only leave my questions unanswered but retort with this kind of nonsense boggles me.</p>
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<p>It is, but I believe making a list of schools this large is pathological. To create a list that large one can’t be going on much more than snap judgements or “brand name” power. It makes sense that this kind of person would be equally quick to dismiss a school.</p>
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<p>Not really. I think it’s a mistake, but my personal response is little more than a shrug.</p>
<p>Since I’m getting nothing valuable from this discussion with you, xiggi, I’m going to end it. And unlike you, I mean it when I say it. Respond as you will; I won’t be doing so in kind.</p>
No, none of us have any problem at all over that. We are perfectly happy to know that many students do this. As previously noted, it narrows the field of competition for those who do go to the trouble of applying.</p>
<p>Its the 14 page temper tantrum that has been engendered along with the tossing of the application that puzzles us. Your initial post was fairly innocuous, but your intransigence over the issue seems quite odd. </p>
<p>Obviously, YOU are very upset with your sister’s decision to toss the application; otherwise you would not have posted. (I note that we have not heard from her). So the question is why? If you (or your sister) has neither hesitation nor regret, why the stubborn insistence that Chicago is somehow in the wrong for using such application questions? Even if the questions serve no useful purpose other than to reduce the number of students who might see Chicago as a safety by placing an additional hurdle in the way of the application, there is a strong argument for continuing the practice. Yet you stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the possible merit of any the arguments in favor of the application, responding in an increasingly strident and angry manner. </p>
<p>My kids tossed dozens of apps into the trash along the way, and I never gave it a second thought. My son tossed the Brown app because they wanted a handwritten essay and he wanted to type (a practice that has now been abandoned). And, as a matter of fact, he tossed the Chicago application because he decided he didn’t want to bother writing another essay. And he tossed the Swarthmore app because he managed to procrastinate past their deadline. That was the end of it. </p>
<p>I don’t know whether you personally ever wanted to attend Chicago, or whether you applied or were deterred from applying because of the essays, or whether you applied and were accepted or rejected. But I believe that Chicago would much rather have the type of student who would respond positively, not negatively, to the offering up of rationales for the essay questions, and try to build upon and extend the idea, or play with it and posit a different set of questions or application criteria… or (as one previous poster has suggested) spend time exploring the why of it rather than decrying the practice at length. </p>
<p>Because when it comes down to it, I think that Chicago is all about learning to come up with new and better questions. The process by which they develop the application – via submissions from admitted students – is simply an example of a practice or ideal that seems pervasive (as evidenced by references submitted by Diocletian and Idad)</p>
<p>Calmom, again, you simply reinvent the history of this thread. </p>
<p>Were you confused in your post 81 “You are correct that you are not the poster who has been carrying on the strident debate?”</p>
<p>Since I started this thread, I have made very simple points -points that are not very hard to understand, but that I had to repeat several times. </p>
<p>Yet, I had to rebut a number of misconceptions, mischaracterizations, assumptions, open-ended questions, but also a number of hardly disguised and poorly veiled insults. In this regard, your latest post again contains more of the same, including leading questioning about the participation of my sister who is NOT a reader of CC, and more creative assumptions about my “obvious” reasons of being upset. </p>
<p>I have said that I did not care for the prompts of 2006-2007 and that I felt they had degenerated in the past years. Did you not also share that your own daughter did not care for the 4 four prompts and elected to answer the FIFTH one that is the open one? How much difference is there between disliking four prompts or all five of them? </p>
<p>Frankly, I have to start believing this is a mere game for you. Why is this issue this important to you since you daughter also choose Barnard over Chicago? </p>
<p>Please read my post 80 again.</p>
<p>PS I was not rejected, deferred, nor waitlisted by Chicago. I considered the school but never applied.</p>
No, apparently I was mistaken, as I was under the impression at that point that you had a measured and dispassionate response, but you proved me wrong in your subsequent posts, which have been escalating in your tone of anger and self-righteousness with each post. You apparently have taken every observation about Chicago as if it were a personal insult. Even with your last post, you repeat the same, seeing a “veiled insult” within a neutral statement.</p>
<p>I still don’t get it. Why do you care if your sister didn’t like the application and tossed it out? And if you considered but did not apply to Chicago, why would you even have the slightest concern about what essay questions they require? </p>
<p>I’m focusing on your sister merely because that is how you opened the thread. You seem to think that it is Chicago’s great loss that your sister didn’t apply – the rest of us don’t see it that way. Chicago will have other students and your sister will apply to different colleges… so what’s the problem? My daughter considered Georgetown SFS a dream school, but decided not to apply because they required SAT II’s and she thought her scores would hurt her chances of admission. Every other college she applied to accepted ACT + Writing in lieu of SAT II scores. Most, but not all, colleges follow that practice. But I’ve never once posted a word of complaint about Georgetown - I figure it’s their school, they can do what they want, my kid has other options. </p>
<p>And as for why I am interested – I am very glad that my daughter had the option in the spring of choosing among Barnard, Chicago, & NYU (as well as several less-reachy colleges). I think the Chicago application process was one of the most open and personalized. (Chicago and Barnard were the only two colleges she applied to that made clear they welcomed supplemental submissions of any kind) I think my daughter had a lot of fun with the Chicago application and that she was also able to give them something that truly reflected her personality - it simply didn’t feel “canned” or massed produced. My kids really didn’t want to go to the kinds of colleges where they felt they were being measured by their “stats” - they wanted a more individualized process – and I think that Chicago is one of the truly great colleges out there that does that. </p>
<p>My daughter can’t attend nine colleges at once, so we had to make a choice. That doesn’t mean that we didn’t like the colleges she turned down. On the contrary, it felt hard to do. She would not have applied to Chicago if she did not want to go there, even though Barnard was always a preferred choice. But my daughter fell in love with Chicago when she visited on a very cold, snowy January day and just because she also loved Barnard & Columbia doesn’t mean that we think less of Chicago. Sorry, but we still think it is awesome college and that its a lot of fun to read each year’s new set of essay prompts. And I really liked this year’s and thought they were much better than last year’s – I didn’t like the Langston Hughes prompt last year because it seemed to simply ask students to write about themselves. And the cool thing about most Chicago prompts is that they usually students to think outside of themselves.</p>
<p>Neither do I understand your insistence to read between the lines and your inability or unwillingness to pay attention to what is actually written. This even seems to apply to your own words. This is hopeless!</p>