<p>Besides the classes, there are also an enormous number of resources and opportunities due to the fact that Chicago is a leading research institution. Work/research experience is one of the most valuable things you can have next to your undergrad degree. </p>
<p>Bio/Chem: You’ve got the hospitals/BSLC/Pritzker school of Medicine right on campus. I’m sure lab assistant positions are easy enough to find, if you go looking. I e-mailed my psych professor (and head of the dept.) Cacioppo asking him if there were any spots for willing, capable undergrad volunteers in any of the labs, and within a week I started working under Dr. Jean Decety in the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, running fMRI experiments and working on the experimental design. </p>
<p>Physics: I don’t really know, other than the fact that the major is infamously hard. We have a ton of history in the field (Fermi/self-sustaining nuclear reaction, Millikan’s oil-drop experiment, etc.) so there’s that aspect of it. We’re pretty famous for our contributions to the field, so I can only assume that there are good opportunities for students here.</p>
<p>Also, (and I don’t know how interested you are in this, but it’s definitely one of my favorite things about this school), we are one of the most prominent astrophysics/cosmology institutions in the world. Hubble, Chandrasekhar, Carl Sagan and too many others to count are all strongly affiliated with the university, we have an enormous stretch of astrophysics laboratories between the hospitals and Ratner, ownership of several telescopes, etc. UChicago staff are tapped for NASA projects all the time - my own astrophysics professor this year had to go to Chile for a week in the middle of the quarter to set up a high-res infared telescopic array (he delivered the lectures via satellite uplink). </p>
<p>Really, I think we’re not as known for our natural sciences simply because they have much less of a tangible effect on people’s lives than, say, economics (discounting things like the Manhattan project, obviously!).</p>
<p>I’m kind of rambling here because I have been studying nonstop for the last three days and I think I broke my brain.</p>