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

PAGRok
Sun, 26 Apr 2015 05:42:39 +0000

I’m picking out quotes I agree/don’t agree with and giving comments.

“You could come to UChicago and take it easy, find a nice, fun group of kids to hang out with, take a bunch of stimulating but not overly hardcore classes, have a blast downtown every weekend, and still walk out with a 3.5. The reason that most students don’t take this path is more due to internal motivation (positive or negative, depending on your viewpoint) than anything.” Probably less than a 3.5 I would say, you do have to put in effort, and more effort than other schools, to arrive at this GPA. I have been told by my adviser that my 3.6 is really good and an accomplishment, and my career adviser said I should definitely put it on my resume because it is impressive.

“Remember that Chicago is on the quarter system, and often times professors will cram material into one quarter that would fit into a semester at other schools — this is the big reason why classes feel rushed. Relatively speaking, I think Chicago is on par with the more rigorous Ivies such as Princeton and Columbia.”

This is very true, content goes very fast, sometimes I think we do more work in a quarter than my high school friends at University of California schools do in a year - Like reading 200 page books in a week or two per class. Also, UChicago has quarters, and a 2 day reading period. Princeton has semesters and an 8 day reading period. We take 3 finals a year, and a total of 6 reading period days, Princeton has 2 finals a year, and 14-16 days of reading period. So take that as you will.

“Study should be something inherently satisfying to you in itself. If it is, Chicago’s wonderful teachers and the stimulation of other students will take it all to a different level.” This is SO true, you have to like to do work, all the time, there is no end.

“Another big piece was realizing I didn’t need to take 4 courses each quarter. The difference between 3 and 4 classes is extreme.” This is also very true. Took 4 for my first two years = hell. Take 3 my third year = easy.

“1) The quarter system. First, professors are strong armed to offer at least two major assessments before the required final. That means that over the course of a ten to eleven week quarter you spend three weeks or so in a live-in-the-library, quasi all nighter study mode to get competitive marks.” HAHAHA THIS SUCKS

“There is also a pedagogical element: textbooks, domains of knowledge / competency, professors’ expectations from their own time as students are anchored to the semester system, which means you will hit plenty of single quarter syllabi that are semester classes in disguise.” HAHAHA ALSO THIS

" hence those schools that hand out A’s like Halloween candy will have better employment and graduate school outcomes." Which means all the work may not be worth it!

My comments, no other school I know have has all these factors: the bad winter, quarter system, short reading period, lots of “hard” core requirements, intellectual nature, by-default “competition” because peers are all really good, obsession with academics, lack of good social scene in general, emphasis on original thought/discovery/original sources, high level of writing/reading based courses in the core in which writing TA’s are told by the administration to "grade one grade lower than original planned on assignments (literally my TA told me they tell them to do this).