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

adalayde
Wed, 18 Mar 2015 00:10:01 +0000

How hard is “really, really hard?” Is it true what everyone says about the workload being ridiculous, all work and no play, etc, or are those rumors started to dissuade massive amounts of people from applying?

Basically, so far I’ve been accepted to two colleges with reputations like that (here and Swarthmore). Ultimately, I LOVE both schools, love the intellectual culture surrounding them and the strong academic focus, but now that attending has actually become a reality… it’s a little scary. I’m pretty much wondering whether or not the workload is actually as bad as everyone says it is, and if it would be possible to strategically choose core-required classes to reduce that workload (especially in math and science).

I don’t mind working hard. I like it. But I also don’t want my college years to be exclusively comprised of the class-study-class-study cycle, you know?