<p>Doesn’t this depend on your definition of pre-professional? Doesn’t pre-professional also refer to pre-law, premed, and a slew of other poorly chosen terms that intimates students will pursue graduate studies? Is it because Penn offers its UG students the opportunity to actually attend Wharton, a school famous for its business education and, except for perhaps Cornell, an oddity among Ivy League schools? </p>
<p>Fwiw, based on a recent thread started by DBate, should we really believe that Yale (the indirect subject of the “idiot” thread) is less pre-professional than Penn? Aren’t many of the students in New Haven considering Yale as an ideal springboard for medical school, law school, business school, or simply a career in the finance world of New York or London? </p>
<p>By the way, until recently, Penn’s Wharton used its website to proclaim its excellence in the … liberal arts to whomever was interested!</p>
<p>Sorry if this comes through twice; CC burped at me.</p>
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<p>That’s not in dispute, though. No one is doubting that some perfectly well qualified, intellectual students who might have contributed to Chicago are put off by what they consider arrogant or pretentious or poseur-ish essay prompts, and hence not apply.
I’m quite sure Chicago is aware of that risk as they select those essay prompts.</p>
<p>I have to assume they are pleased with their selection strategy, and are willing to take the risk that they alienate x% of prospective students because portraying themselves as the place where people groove on these kinds of questions is important to their self-image. If they cared, they would change the prompts to more mainstream, tell-me-about-yourself prompts, which they are, of course, free to do at any time. Since it doesn’t appear to bother them, I don’t see why it should bother anyone else.</p>
<p>Why does it bother some of you that Chicago has prompts that turn some people off? Aren’t there other great options / alternatives to Chicago that these students can go to? I certainly think so.</p>
<p>I have a sense of who is or is not attracted to Chicago and/or Penn because my children and the children of my friends are either in college, recently graduated, applying to college now, or looking forward to applying to college, and Chicago and Penn are two of the places they discuss most. I spent about three hours on Saturday listening to a high school senior, two college freshmen, a college junior, and a high school sophomore – all of whom I have know since birth, and none of whom is my relative – talk about where the senior had applied and why. (Yes Chicago, no Penn, although the college student’s younger brother, a good friend of the senior, had just been accepted to Penn ED.) </p>
<p>With regard to Penn, my kids have no fewer than 50 former classmates there, at least a dozen of whom are/were actual friends of theirs, and two doors down from me I have a partner with two children there currently. Two cousins graduated within the past six years, whom I saw occasionally because I was the local relative. My social circle includes several Penn faculty and several dozens of alumni. I lived on the outskirts of the campus for eight years; I had library privileges both at the law school and the main library. For one reason or another, I am on the campus at least once a month. I am married to a law school alumna, so we get about one alumni mailing per week.</p>
<p>I really don’t think I lack a basis to know something about Penn.</p>
<p>My willingness to sign on to what is admittedly a cliche stems most immediately from three unrelated conversations in the past week – the one with the applicant noted above, one at a party with the parents of a Penn junior, who were talking about how much more he liked his classmates at a foreign university where he spent the past semester, and one with a longtime close friend of my son’s, a ivory-tower kid without a pre-professional bone in his body, who in the past year has gone from relative contentment at Penn to relative disaffection over this issue. And in the background are many, many conversations with one of my cousins, who worked for me for a year after he graduated (before going to JD/MBA school), and who ultimately liked Penn but felt he had to cobble together an underground network of intellectually curious students because generally it was hard to find them.</p>
<p>The vibe at Penn is VERY pre-professional (a phrase I hate, actually). I have a kid there, most of my family members are grads and I did some course work there. That doesn’t mean every student on campus aspires to Wall Street or law school, but there ARE a lot of kids who are interested in business careers. Just walk around and see all the Wharton students rushing from interview to interview in their suits! There are probably as many kids at IU who want good business jobs or want to get into law school, but the overall atmosphere gets diluted by the size of the student body, sports, etc. Most Chicago grads aren’t interested in starving after graduation, but I think the combination of not having Wharton and not being on the east coast promotes a different vibe.
To me pre-professional infers that you would like to have a job in the corporate world or a career in law or medicine. Penn’s student body isn’t unique in this, and there are plenty of kids headed for PhD programs, Teach For America etc. They just aren’t as obvious as the future i-bankers taking the train to NYC for their interviews.</p>
<p>Google the inaugural addresses of the Chicago and Penn presidents. The differences are striking. I beleive it is the perceived campus culture, not the essay prompts that attracts some students rather tha others (and some will be equally at home at either).</p>
<p>Finally! You got to the point that people were making in this thread, as well as the one started … several years ago. </p>
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<p>Does someone need to be bothered to … form and state an opinion? Again, why is it wrong to fail to be impressed by Chicago’s choices AND believe that at the end the school does not benefit from such choices as some would like to believe? </p>
<p>On the other hand, it is obvious that the mere expressions of less than positive opinions seem to aggravate a few nerves. As they say in Paris, and at the risk of turning into an intellectual poseur … il n’y que la v</p>
<p>But it is presumptuous to assume that reputation is synonymous with student body, or student applications. Very presumptuous. And in this case, since many other posters (and I thank you for not being among them, Donna) are making specific insinuations or statements to include & exclude the “intellectual” set in and from Chicago, and to artificially “assign” them to other schools, it is not only presumptuous, it is offensive. </p>
<p>The concept of “attraction” is deceptive. Depends on the why of the attraction even more than the what, and is entirely subjective. If someone says “Wow, I want to go to Penn because they have a great business/medical/fill-in-the-blank pre-professional school,” then you can reasonably assume that the person is pre-professionally inclined. But it did it occur to any of you that Penn includes more schools than Wharton? Do you know some of the unique features about Penn? It appears not. Because both my D and I did the research about that, and that is why she even applied. For their academics. (Oh, whoops, No: couldn’t be. Only the University of Chicago must have “real” academics.) She was an academic in high school, an academic in college, an academic now, who will go on to graduate-level study soon. And she was always described as both an academic & an intellectual by other academics (teachers) in her high school who themselves had advanced degrees from illustrious institutions.</p>
<p>She was attracted to Chicago, because she is an academic. Get it? Her attraction was based on the substantial courses in her major and the rigorous requirements that she demonstrated in high school she had no fear of tackling. But the application procedure & langauge turned her off to the point where she thought her intellectual/academic inclinations would be more directly served elsewhere. </p>
<p>Again, maybe she had a bad year, application-wise – relative to her perceptions about U of Chicago. I separately, privately had the same perceptions about the essay prompts during that particular year; did not share those perceptions with her until she announced hers. And maybe both of us were “off”; maybe she was in a decidedly tiny minority of intellectual students who didn’t gravitate toward that U. But if I were that U, I would sure want to make sure that I didn’t eliminate potentially wonderful academic contributors because of some off-putting wording in an essay prompt. That’s why I said earlier: the adults need to be in charge, no matter how cute and appealing the concept of student-produced prompts are. I’ll repeat: I think some of the prompts cited earlier on the thread were cute and appealing, and designed to elicit successfully the kind of thought processes and allusions and creativity distinguishing a certain type of student from another type. And I think she would have responded well, and performed well, to those prompts. Unfortunately for chicago ( ) those were not options the year she applied.</p>
<p>And just a side-bar, Donna.
Actually, when D1 started applying to colleges, or even thinking about them – and I also --we were completely new to the whole process. Comparatively speaking, college apps in my adolescence were maybe the Paleolithic Age. Neither of us knew anything about East Coast colleges – Penn certainly included. We had to do all of our research from scratch. Perhaps that’s a good thing, as her decisions were more “pure,” I suppose - positively and negatively. And we had to learn a huge amount in a short time, given her ambitious college goals. So for us, you bet that Penn’s “pre-professional” orientation was a secret to us, a big secret.</p>
<p>It isn’t as if all the essay prompts my son’s year appealed to him; here are two others which I distinctly recall he avoided like the plague. Really, he was lucky that there was one that did inspire him. </p>
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<p>As for me, I would have been horrified at his age (or any age) at having to do any of them, including the one my son picked. Then again, I’m not remotely as imaginative or creative as my son. Does that mean I’m less intellectual or less quirky than he is, or that I would have fit in less well at Chicago than I did at Yale? (Not that I was remotely a paragon of fitting-in when I was in college! I was much more socially awkward, particularly at that age, than he is.) Not necessarily. My older sister – whom I haven’t seen in 15 years, by the way – was happy at Chicago, and seemed to have plenty of friends. But she and I are very different people, too. In the end, I’ll never know, will I?</p>
<p>Epiphany- I know plenty about Penn, and am a real Penn booster. I had a Penn sticker on my car at Northwestern :-). I myself would choose it over Chicago in a heartbeat if given the choice. </p>
<p>You’re setting up a straw man, though, that “only Chicago could be about academics.” I don’t believe that to be what Chicago is saying or implying, through essay prompts or anything else. </p>
<p>And if your D decided that Chicago’s prompts were offputting and didn’t apply as a result, isn’t that Chicago’s loss/ problem, not hers? </p>
<p>As they say in Paris, tant pis pour eux. (at least I think it’s eux. It’s been a while)</p>
<p>"Modern improvisational comedy had its start with The Compass Players, a group of University of Chicago students, who later formed the Second City comedy troupe. Here is a chance to play along. Improvise a story, essay, or script that meets all of the following requirements:</p>
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<li>It must include the line “And yes I said yes I will Yes” (Ulysses, by James Joyce).</li>
<li>Its characters may not have superpowers.</li>
<li>Your work has to mention the University of Chicago, but please, no accounts of a high school student applying to the University—this is fiction, not autobiography.</li>
<li>Your work must include at least four of the following elements: a paper airplane, a transformation, a shoe, the invisible hand, two doors, pointillism, a fanciful explanation of the Pythagorean Theorem, a ventriloquist or ventriloquism, the Periodic Table of the Elements, the concept of jeong, number two pencils.</li>
</ul>
<p>Wow! Responding to this prompt would be my idea of fun!</p>
<p>However, my idea of fun still wouldn’t be attending a college “where fun goes to die.” </p>
<p>What I personally love about Chicago are its essay prompts, but I’d never have lasted in that kind of academically intense environment.</p>
<p>epiphany- Did your daughter choose Penn? I found your last post (530) pretty combative. If your daughter merely APPLIED to Penn and didn’t attend, perhaps you and she were the victims of the same sort of advertising that our young Chicago grad friend is protesting. My kid also applied to Penn for its academics (and, God and the Dean willing, is soon to graduate). Your family hasn’t cornered the market on seeking strong academic institutions. A school can have strong academics and still have an atmosphere that can, on occasion, feel dominated by its most famous school. My kid is not a Wharton student and, as JHS mentioned with respect to others, did struggle for a year to find his tribe within the Penn community. I guess you might call him a wealth-seeking academic. I have never heard him or his Penn friends deny that the Wharton influence is huge. They also say it’s stupid to go to Penn for engineering.<br>
Epiphany, I don’t follow you at all. Penn students care about the academics. Many of them also care about earning a living. It’s a big university. My son wasn’t very impressed with the academics freshman year. In fact, most of his teachers were horrible. He had to be very careful about choosing courses in order to improve his experience the following year.<br>
Perhaps your daughter is a Penn grad who has had a different experience. As I said, I know a lot about the place, and I’m calling it like I see it and like I’ve seen over many years.</p>
<p>I like the improv one, hate the Borges one. There was one that both mathson and I liked which was something like “If you could be a mathematical equation, what would you be?” I wouldn’t want to go somewhere that fun goes to die either, but I don’t think it does. Both the brother and sister of my husband went to U of Chicago - it was a great fit for the brother and a terrible one for the sister. She’s smart, but like me, more interested in producing things than thinking about ideas. She ended up in accounting.</p>
<p>But the point, Donna, was that there was one prompt that appealed to your S, and there’s the bottom-line difference between his app. year, for him, and mine, for mine. And addressing both you and PG, it would have been a loss for Chicago, we assume if there wasn’t at least one prompt that appealed to your S, or he felt he could stomach. So I do believe that it is an unnecessary high-wire act on the part of the administration. I think that part of the app. could be an opportunity for the adults at UofC to join the competition: you come up with similarly intriguing/off-beat prompts, understanding that given your experience, it is more likely that your additions to the list will not turn off Donna’s S, E’s daughter, etc.</p>
<p>PG, take a look at posts & threads over the last 5 years on CC, and you will see a slew of them with the following general content:</p>
<p>“Oh, you/ or your S/D … didn’t like the prompts? That’s because those prompts are targeted to those who really belong at Uof C, and that universe of belongers are the intellectuals, vs. those who apply to Ivies. So if you don’t ‘get it’ [the essays], then you should apply elsewhere because you don’t belong here, and ‘we’ [Chicago applicants and parents of Chicago applicants] have decided what kind of people belong here. Whether or not you can do/will do the essays is the litmus test for our definition of intellectualism.”</p>
<p>I wasn’t going to respond to this, but it’s kind of a repetition, less strongly, than an earlier response of yours to mine on this thread, by which you claimed that absolutely “no one” believes that the entire intellectual student milieu is circumscribed within the U of Ch. Really? You haven’t spent much time in CC student forums, then. I distinctly remember the most outrageous thread dominated by a particularly gullible applicant who had bought the UofC marketing hype. She argued strenuously with one or more posters that Ch. is the only institution were serious students attend, that students of all other institutions have no genuine interest in studying. Seriously. That was her claim. And her claim was based on their highly successful marketing. She completely believed that she was in a unique category of individuals. Truly amazing.</p>
<p>What does that matter? It’s not as if Chicago has such a shortage of qualified applicants to fill its classes that it needs to go out and try to snag some bright and capable student they may be missing. I’m sure that there are far more intellectually inclined students who are turned off by the price tag (applying to their in-state publics or schools offering them guaranteed merit aid instead) – or who are turned off by the weather. </p>
<p>I would note that there is a distinct personality difference between my S - who apparently was “deterred” from applying to some top schools, including Chicago, based on factors related to applications, and D, who has never been “deterred” by anything. My D simply is more adventurous and also more dogged in her pursuit of whatever she wants – she’ll stick things out in a way that he won’t.</p>
<p>I’m not saying that all college applicants would fit that personality divide, but I do feel that my d is a lot more likely to push through adversity to reach a goal, my son more likely to decide something is not worth his effort – and that was reflected later on in their respective college experiences. Given Chicago’s reputation for extremely rigorous and demanding academics and heavy workload, perhaps it is a good thing if their application process deters some who may not be good fits for the Chicago environment. </p>
<p>The question really is, does the application represent the overall flavor of the campus environment? Since my kid didn’t end up at Chicago, I can’t say whether it did or not - but if an application “fits” the school and also deters many from applying precisely because they are put off by it, then I’d say that the application is doing a good job of setting up an early screen for fit. Better to screen out poor-fit students at the outset than have unhappy students who want to transfer to other schools later on, no matter how intellectually capable they are.</p>
) those were not options the year she applied.</p>