Did the Dean of Admissions cross boundaries or I'm too strict?

Parents Forum
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<p>IHate:
Several of us, it seems, are not beating you over the head and find your reaction not so unusual or hard to understand. Perhaps that’s not being made clear.</p>

<p>marite:
I’m familiar with Cores of several U’s, including Chicago’s. As to that aspect of fit, however, I don’t know. This resonated with me, though:</p>

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<p>…and the reason I say that, again, is that, while ‘quirky’ can equal ‘nerdy’, intellectual is a much larger set than either of those two subsets. As I said earlier, any company or institution needs to decide what it’s unified message is, and to stay on message. Messages that are contradictory miscommunicate and/or confuse. While newmass’ D strikes me, from his descriptions, as quite the intellectual, I don’t know that anything he has described about her falls into quirky or nerdy. She sounds pretty mainstream to me, just quite intellectually ambitious.</p>

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<p>Bless you, Menloparkmom, you’ve made my day! I didn’t mean to make it sound like he was a social outcast. He has tons of friends and is one of the few kids in his grade that has good friends across nearly every social group. He’s well liked by everyone. In fact, he’s rarely home anymore because he is out every night. But, he rarely initiates activities and will wait for his friends to make the plans.</p>

<p>Thanks for the reassurance. It’s nice to know other shy, introverted kids have done well in a big setting. I’ve noticed at son’s school that very few kids go off to school by themselves. Most of the time (unless it’s a top 10 school) there is at least one other kid also going to the same school. I’ve had parents tell me that was by design. A lot of them room together the first year.</p>

<p>I have noticed going through the process that son’s interest would pique in a particular school when one of his friends said they were applying there. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if that doesn’t become one of his criteria when he finally has to make a decision.</p>

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<p>I wonder why people have negative opinions about introverted kids. Are’nt INTP people the Thinkers?</p>

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<p>I don’t think that’s ever been in dispute, though, epiphany. I think the difference is that while many (most?) other elite schools position themselves as a place where intellectuals would feel comfortable, Chicago most self-consciously tries to position itself as where that subset of * quirky * intellectuals would feel most at home. But no one, not even Chicago itself, has ever said or suggested that people who go elsewhere or prefer elsewhere aren’t or cannot be highly intellectual. </p>

<p>(And even if they did say that, so what? They’d be wrong.)</p>

<p>Look, I look at NU’s applications and website and the rest – and I find a very mainstream sensibility to it. It isn’t “come here and be quirky.” It’s “come here and enjoy great academics alongside some of the mainstream trappings of a college experience - Big 10 spectator sports, a Greek life, some preprofessional schools, etc.” That turns some people on, and it turns some people off. Chicago chooses to position itself differently. Deliberately less mainstream. Deliberately more “get your freak flag on.” And? So? I still don’t get why this bothers some people. It doesn’t mean that <em>everyone</em> that goes to Chicago is quirky/nerdy, just that the quirky nerds would likely feel more comfortable there than at NU. Just like NU’s positioning doesn’t mean that <em>everyone</em> who goes there is Joe College Rah-Rah-Big-Ten-Frat. These are just ways they distinguish themselves from others. </p>

<p>If you were to draw a perceptual map of the elite college space, Chicago is indeed more differentiated than most of the other elite colleges. And? I bet the folks at the Booth School of Business would say good for them, for understanding the basics of marketing and positioning. I fail to see why this bothers some people. Yes, there’s a stereotype of a Chicago person. There’s also a stereotype of an MIT person vs a Dartmouth person vs a Vanderbilt person. Not everyone will fit the stereotypes – there are girly-girls at MIT and grinds at Vanderbilt – but there is some truth to the stereotypes.</p>

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<p>Myers-Briggs is obsolete. Nice try though</p>

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<p>Don’t forget us INTJ’s :-).</p>

<p>I use Myers-Briggs all the time in my professional life. It’s not obsolete at all.</p>

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<p>What makes you think that Chicago isn’t on message? I think the message they send with their off-the-wall essay prompts is <em>precisely</em> the message they intend to send. Whether or not you (generic you, not you specifically) like it doesn’t mean it’s not the message they intended to send.</p>

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<p>It’s not the message that the rest of the school lives up to though.</p>

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<p>Does Chicago really position itself vis-a-vis NU? That seems a rather narrow catchment area, to me, and a very specific idea of what “mainstream” is. </p>

<p>At any rate, the question I had was about the writing prompts. I have not made an exhaustive study of them by any means, but I looked at the writing prompts in the year my Ss were applying to colleges (S1 applied to UofC, S2 did not). Some were fine and some were downright pretentious. Stripped of the mini-essay length verbiage, some were not very different from the writing prompts that could be found on other colleges’ websites.
I appreciate that UofC puts a lot of energy into finding good writing prompts instead of relying on the perennial “experience” “inspiring individual” “hardship you’ve overcome.” Sometimes it succeeds and sometimes it does not. But I’m not sure that, in the end, its student body is markedly different from that of many other schools of its caliber.</p>

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<p>UofCers don’t often position themselves against northwestern, they just get defensive whenever anyone mentions that school. Both students are more or less equally smart (Chicago might have the edge) but NU students are more well rounded and happy.</p>

<p>UChicago more consciously positions itself against columbia, and recently Princeton for some reason I cannot understand.</p>

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<p>I have read a substantial portion of this thread, but not all; however, I feel that I should add another perspective, one similar (though more removed) than IHUC’s.</p>

<p>One of my D’s closest friends from high school applied EA to UChicago – it was her first choice for a number of reasons. First, she’s a quirky kid with a high level of intellectual engagement. Second, she’s the type of person to read the classics in her free time, to analyze films at a high level, to spend her free time writing, and to excel academically in all types of subjects, and that fit with the reputation of the school. On top of all that, she was an NSF finalist. She fell in love with UofC’s campus, its emphasis on the quirkiness of its student body, and its reputation for being a haven for intellectuals. Another bonus was the location – she loves cities, and she wanted to be in or near a major one. The unofficial motto of “where fun comes to die” didn’t deter her at all.</p>

<p>However, when she arrived, it turned out she was a lousy fit. For one, she found that the curriculum requirements crushed her. Her quirkiness meant that she wanted to explore a wide range of topics but on her own schedule. Plus (and this would have been a problem at any university), she took a liberal view of deadlines. Socially, she felt completely isolated, both in her housing and in the classroom itself. Although she’s outgoing, I wouldn’t call her warm, and I think that hurt her. She did make non-UChicago friends at her off-campus job, however. </p>

<p>It’s not clear to me whether she flunked out or merely lost her scholarship, thus making it impossible to attend. After a year off, she now attends a different, lower-key school that she loves. But, like IHCH, she hated UChicago with a passion, and can’t say a positive thing about it despite being otherwise a positive person.</p>

<p>The problem with buying into a college’s marketing of the kind of students it likes is that you may trick yourself into looking at only that aspect of the school. UChicago’s marketing is brilliant because it attracts a self-selected group of students, but those students have to be equally proactive at looking deeper to find that elusive fit. Just because UChicago wants you, or just because you’re a quirky intellectual, that doesn’t mean that you’re best served by attending. This holds true for all universities/colleges.</p>

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<p>I feel like I should address the issues about the Core curriculum we have here.</p>

<p>I am an English major, so I dreaded the fact that I would have to take biology, chemistry, and calculus. In fact, I never had taken calculus in my life and so that class in particular was a constant struggle for me. Unfortunately, quite a few students placed into a higher calc class but decided to drop a level which ended up hurting me because they encouraged the professor to move at a faster pace than I was comfortable with. To date, calculus has been my least favorite class and my lowest performing class but unless you want to call two Bs crippling to my GPA, I’d say I came out of it having benefited from learning calculus more than I was hurt by taking the class. If I had the option not to take it, however, I definitely would have chosen not to.
My first year at U of C I also took biology. In high school I took honors bio and it was horribly difficult for me, so I did not look forward to taking bio here at all. But my professors (Dr. Strielemen and Prof. Osadjan) were absolutely fantastic and bio now ranks as my second favorite class here. I worked incredibly hard in those two classes but it was so rewarding to come out of bio having done well but, more importantly, having learned so, so much. All the labs were done on ourselves and it was just fascinating to learn more about myself as an athlete and vegetarian, of which was addressed in the second biology class. I’m even considering taking another bio class, one that isn’t required by the Core. If you would have told that to me in hs, I would definitely not have believed you.
And then there was chemistry, of which I took chem for non majors (Chem in the atmosphere and Global Warming). Yes, these are mocked as “Rocks for Jocks” classes and yes, they were quite easy. But they were interesting, too. And in fact, I don’t regret being required to take them.
In Hum I had three separate professors for three different quarters and each one increased in quality. My third quarter professor was absolutely fantastic. Professor Ebeling could speak over 30 different languages! And that talent wasn’t lost on the class, either, as each of our texts were read first in a page in its original language (one girl in class read the Chinese, another the Latin, I helped with Italian, Prof. with all the rest) before we read the English translation, so we could have a better sense of the text in its original production. I’ve kept in contact with that professor. I met with him over a year later during his office hours just to catch up, intending to stay 30 minutes because I was really busy that week. Instead I stayed 2.5 hours. He is a professor I will continue to talk to and will likely turn to for a letter of recommendation because he not only can address my writing skills and personality in the classroom, but also to who I am as an individual. Likewise, I had positive experiences with Sosc and Civ (studying abroad in Rome).
In summation, the Core hasn’t hurt me in the least. Yes, I had to take classes completely out of my element and ones I had performed poorly in (or not learned at all in the case of calculus) in high school. Yes, I resented having to take those classes at first. But, with the exception of calculus, there is no class I’d willingly go back on my transcript and scratch out if I could. Do I scream “I love the Core” from my apartment window? No, of course not. But I know it is highly debated amongst current students, highly worried about by prospective students, and I thought perhaps my opinion on the matter might tilt you one way or the other. Attending a college and feeling forced to take a class you hate isn’t going to make you feel warm and fuzzy towards that school, so prospective students should definitely consider whether taking bio or sosc will make you die a slow death or, like me, you might come out of it with a new appreciation for a subject you once hated…</p>

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<p>This resonates. S2 did not object to the core curriculum as such, and ended up taking many similar courses at H. He was concerned that its requirements would interfere with his ability to take advanced courses in his own field when he wanted to take them. This is not an idle concern. Now that he is in grad school and expected to take specific first -year courses, he finds that these courses’ schedules conflict with those of other courses he wants to take (he is exempted from one because he’s already taken it as an undergrad).
There seemed, as well, some roadblocks to taking grad courses. One Chicago alum he consulted said that every year, he had to make the case for taking an advanced class even though he’d gotten an A in the less advanced version. It probably would not have been too much of a concern once he was in the college, but my then-16 year old S did not relish the idea of arguing his way into classes. These two concerns led him to put Chicago lower down his list. And only once he made that decision did he really take a look at the writing prompt.</p>

<p>marcellad:
I very much appreciate your input! Many colleges have core curricula. Harvard had one while my S was there. But they differ insofar as H’ score curriculum was rather more like a gen ed curriculum (take one course from column A, two courses from column B, etc…). My S in fact took courses not very different from the ones you took; and he ended up liking some courses in his core curriculum so much he took more in certain fields as electives. What my S was concerned about was scheduling, as I mentioned above, rather than the actual content of the Core.</p>

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<p>Colleges can position themselves as intellectual or nerdy or whatever, but no university can carefully craft a class based on criteria like intellectuality or nerdiness and weed out kids who don’t fit the mold. The reality is that kids who apply to the U of C apply to a number of other schools. And many of those who wind up at U of C would have preferred other colleges. Right off the top of my head, I know two U of C kids whose first choice was Penn – the social Ivy and in marketing terms the polar opposite of Chicago. The concept of a student body carefully selected for intangible qualities is a pipe dream.</p>

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<p>I would say that in the days when Chicago had an extremely self-selecting applicant pool, it was probably <em>better</em> able to do that – where only the quirky nerds who found out about it bothered applied. Now that it’s the new East Coast darling (OMG intelligent life west of Buffalo! film at 11!) among the cognoscenti, I wonder if there will be more of the type of “mismatches” that IHUC and Momwaitingfornew’s acquaintance report. </p>

<p>I do agree that Penn and Chicago are rather dissimilar – equally smart student bodies, big city living, but otherwise a very different feel / character.</p>

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<p>Actually, IHateUofC, for all your boasting about your argumentation skills, this is clearly a false statement. You are in a “unique position” to attest ONLY to your own opinion of the U of C, based on your own personal experience. You are not in a position to speak for any other student. I don’t doubt that you were miserable. I don’t doubt that everything you say was true for you. But that doesn’t mean, by itself, that it was true for others. Yours is only one opinion, and even my son’s opinion (which is also only his) cancels it out. Not that it’s a counting game, but Marcellad’s first-hand opinion cancels yours out as well – no matter how many times you repeat yours! </p>

<p>So all you’ve accomplished is to prove that one specific student who spent four years at the U of C was unhappy there, and had the opinions you’ve given of the intellectual energy and passion displayed by the student body and faculty. You haven’t come even close to demonstrating that your opinions are widely shared, or are “true” in any objective sense – an impossible task, since all your opinions relate to matters that are inherently subjective.</p>

<p>By the way, my son is also grateful for some of the courses he’s had to take because of the core requirements. And feels that he is a more educated person because of those requirements. He doubts he would ever have chosen on his own to take a course requiring him to read authors like Adam Smith and Karl Marx – but is glad that he did. And, like Marcellad, he is not a science/math person by any means, but has enjoyed (and done very well in) the biology courses he’s taken. He had Professor Osadjan this past term himself, by the way, and thought he was wonderful. In fact, he repeatedly told me how wonderful all four of his professors were this year, and had similar opinions of the majority of his professors last year. (The only name I specifically remember off the top of my head is Professor Gandhi, who is, by the way, a descendant of you know who. He thought she was amazing, and hopes to take at least one more course from her.) </p>

<p>And all his friends certainly have enthusiasm, passion, and energy for their courses. As well as for things others are doing. I’m not saying that the U. of C. is unique by any means in this respect, but he’s eternally grateful that there are plenty of people with similar (slightly unusual) enthusiasms to his – for example, that there were other kids who would actually listen to him talk about a project he did this term for his Roots of the Modern American City course, analyzing changes in the commercial, manufacturing, and residential profile of downtown Baltimore by comparing detailed city maps from the 1890’s and 1950’s. It isn’t as if there were other kids in his high school who would listen to him about things like that! And, basically, that’s precisely the type of thing he’s always loved talking about, ever since he was a young child. (And did things like learning – God knows why – the corporate headquarters of every major corporation in the country, or the complete details of the interstate highway system, all apparently without difficulty. Quirky, yes, but he has, indeed, found kids at the U of C who are a lot like him in that way, and are actually impressed – instead of thinking that he’s unspeakably weird – that he specifically remembers almost every painting he’s seen at every museum he’s been to in the last 10 years, or can sit at a table with a dozen friends in the dining hall and remember for every one of them their parents’ names and geographical origins, and their siblings’ names and ages, because he’s interested in people’s families and remembers what he’s told. I find it a little hard to believe that there are too many other schools where he’d be accepted for who he is, and not be made fun of. And that’s supremely important to me.)</p>

<p>So, OK, IHateUofC. You hate the U of C. It’s hardly a surprise that there are people who hate the U of C and don’t fit in there for all sorts of reasons. There are people who hate every single school in the country. But I am very skeptical of your assertion that the percentage of unhappy people at the U of C is unusually high. </p>

<p>Especially since you’ve refused to give any details about your field of study, the courses you took, or what your living situation was like. All of which, as others have pointed out, are substantial factors in determining any individual student’s happiness or unhappiness at Chicago or anywhere else.</p>

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<p>Re post 436: You’re probably right, pg. Also, back in the day, the kid who really wanted to go to Penn probably didn’t file 10 or more applications, including one to the U of C, where he really didn’t love the Core or the intellectual/nerdy ethos, but where he felt he <em>needed</em> to apply to add yet another highly ranked school to his list.</p>

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<p>I never said the core was useless, I said it was failing to meet its objectives. Even the Maroon agrees me. Look up their multi-part editorial.</p>

<p>I’m not really surprised students tell their parents everything is fine and dandy. Get talking to people late into the night as I have and you’ll discover the deep rooted frustration that is at the heart of most UChicago students.</p>

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<p>I also don’t like the insinuations that I somehow couldn’t cut it at UChicago. I am an academic at heart and my work has reflected that fact.</p>

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<p>Why would students at Chicago be any more or less likely than students at any other school to tell their parents that life at the school was fine and dandy when they were really not happy, IHUC?</p>