<p>No, it just means they chose some other place. Why this positioning gets everyone up in arms is stupid. Don’t like it, don’t apply, problem solved. </p>
<p>Child logic.</p>
<p>To me the distinguishing characteristics of UC are the core and its location in a large city. I think it and Columbia are attractive (or not) to students for those reasons more than any others, at least at first.</p>
<p>Hunt, you know how you have your prestigiosity thread? Can you come up with some word to describe the characteristic of … no matter what the thread, once this college is mentioned, the entire darn thread then has to revolve around it? I’ll put Harvard on the list, of course – but U Chicago is certainly up there. (Duke, Michigan and Berkeley too)</p>
<p>In my areas, in my experience, of the students I have known, at the school I’ve known, the top kids with the stats that make it a distinct possibility, the schools of choice have been HPY consistently. That is not the case at a lot of schools, I’m sure. In particular, at those schools and in those communities where the the college counseling and knowledge is weak, and there isn’t the peer/parent back and forth talk about schools, something many of the most selective schools are trying to change. We see discussion of this issue each year. </p>
<p>However, those who are top students with top test scores, around here, want to give HPY a chance, and the stats are very clear that those who do tend to pick those schools if accepted. The yield rates are right there.</p>
<p>Don’t forget Miami of Ohio!</p>
<p>Cptofthehouse - what part of the country are you in? I really think so much of this is regionally driven. I simply see a different competitive set from my friends who are still on the east coast versus my friends who are in the midwest. Different schools come in and out depending on the mix. </p>
<p>JHS - well done.</p>
<p>JHS 
</p>
<p>
Yes, it’s some kind of black hole gravitational effect. I quipped on the prestigiosity thread that you know your rating system is working when people post to tell you that Berkeley is underrated and Duke is overrated.</p>
<p>"[C]ommunities where the the college counseling and knowledge is weak" is not generally thought to be be a synonym for “west of the Alleghenies” – unless one is from the Northeast, I suppose. </p>
<p>/ insert JPG of Saul Steinberg’s View of the World from 9th Avenue” here</p>
<p>“Are you kidding me? I’d never step foot in flyover country. Why, those people are such hicks – they never go to any other part of the country!” </p>
<p>Now we can cue the poster who “discovered” recently that cities in the southeast had, like, plumbing and electricity and malls and gas stations and sidewalks and everything!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Humm, PG, the problem with the above is that it does not describe exactly what PT says. Without looking at the earlier post, I think he wrote something along the likes of “none of the HYPSM are as fiercely intellectual” and you can drop the quirky to get the full effect. He did not write specifically about … quirky intellectuals. </p>
<p>The issue here is not about having an opinion of the type of school Chicago is or the type of student it atrracts. The problem is to make a broad statement that can be interpreted as offensive. A broad statement, that I should say, defie much logic and belies the experience many of us have from seeing how our “peers” picked their schools. </p>
<p>And, again, I go back to what the definition of an intellectual is. One of my dear friend might fit the profile of a deep intellectual as he would bring up Pierre Teilhard de Chardin or Blaise Pascal in our high school ethics classes with ease and compare their views to a number of authors none of us had ever heard of, including the teacher. This did not obscure the fact that he was in the top 2-3 percent of the class and was equally at ease with Pascal’s Theorem. He applied to a number of great schools from the HYPSM group but ended picking a rather unknown religious school in Dallas on the pure strength of its philosophy, religious studies, and … pre-med program. You see, all along he wanted to be a priest or a doctor, or both! His second choice was Notre Dame. He never would have applied to Chicago – let alone attended. </p>
<p>This anecdote is nothing more than N=1 and does not add much but there are a number of similar stories. What is the REAL basis behind perennial claims that intellectuals “should” flock to Chicago or Swarthmore and that their quirky brothers shoudl focus on Chicago again or Reed. Are those the only places for unicycles and weird eating habits? </p>
<p>In the end, one can push that theory all along and repeat it ad nauseam. But that does not mean it would become true from all the repeating efforts or that it cannot be challenged. Even if the challengers wear small underwear. </p>
<p>For what it’s worth, the only kid I know who went to Reed was pretty quirky. And the head-in-the-clouds intellectual went to Swarthmore. I agree, of course, that these generalizations are overstated, but there is some truth to them, too.</p>
<p>^^ Of course, there is some truth that one will find examples of quirky kids at Yale and head-in-the-clouds at Swarthmore. At the risk of repeating it, this was the sentence that raised the eyebrows: </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Now that proverbial equine might be buried. It’s been dead for a while. </p>
<p>This was once an interesting thread full of hard data about early admission rates for the Class of 2019. Can we get back to that?</p>
<p>^ Sure, Baltimore … why not start with adding a few of your own? </p>
<p>Please. ANY time the University of Chicago is mentioned, people have to jump up and down to reiterate that just because the school positions itself as a haven for quirky intellectuals doesn’t actually mean that a) all QI are found only at U of Chicago and b) no QI could possibly be found elsewhere. It’s a blinding flash of the obvious. </p>
<p>^^I went to grad school there, so I can say “It’s where fun goes to die.” They didn’t help their image, or hurt it (depending on your perspective) when they built the library on the site of the football stadium. The library was super busy on Saturday night, although they had the comfiest chairs, great for napping, although you might have found me at one of the South Side blues clubs listening to Buddy Guy. When they resurrected the football team a petition went around asserting that when Chicago left the Big 10 it was with the idea that Northwestern would be kicked out when the Maroons started up football again.</p>
<p>I find it amusing that every time when someone mentioned anything good or sometimes remotely positive about U of Chicago, a certain forum members in cc would go wild. Those UChicago 'haters" are helping UChicago without knowing it. It gets Chicago more attention that it deserves anyway, but in a good way, ironically. People who may not know anything about U of Chicago will start digging and getting to know it better and a lot more about the University than the non-UChicago fans had bargained for.</p>
<p>Just as a disclaimer, I am not a Chicago alum but a fan. I believe with this lengthy discussion on UChicago in an off topic thread, our senior member Hunt would take notice and be attempted to grant more milliHavards points of prestigiosity to UChicago if you guys do not stop talking about UChicago. LOL. </p>
<p>Happy Holidays to you all!</p>