Does UChicago live up to its "extremely hard" reputation?

CS
Thu, 19 Mar 2015 01:41:17 +0000

Echoing what others have said.

You can make it as hard as you want as there is no upper bound to level of difficulty. There’s always grad classes and research opportunities to continue to challenge you. In my first and second years, I went with the approach of taking the most challenging courses I could (from honors math and physics courses to humanities with some of the stricter and more difficult professors).

However, when I realized I didn’t want to pursue a PhD in math and started taking some of the ‘regular’ level classes, I went from spending ~70 hrs/week on coursework down to ~20 (half of this was because my math classes were a breeze as I had already learned a good portion of the material from previous classes and the other half was because I stopped stressing about grades and was fine with a C+/B- every once in a while).

Another big piece was realizing I didn’t need to take 4 courses each quarter. The difference between 3 and 4 classes is extreme.

Outside of class, in my first two years, I spent 15-25 hrs/week on extra-curricular activities. After I toned down the course work, I spent 60-80 hours/week doing extra-curricular stuff and had a blast.

All-in-all, it’s what you make it which depends on what you care about.