<p>Unlike many of the other colleges I’m looking at (Swarthmore, Reed, Pomona, etc.), the University of Chicago has a large population of graduate students.</p>
<p>I’m wondering if the professors that teach undergraduate course are the “lesser” professors. Or, if teaching is generally mixed, do professors show a favoritism toward graduate students? Do they dislike undergraduates or have noticeable disrespect for them?</p>
<p>I understand that this varies individually, but I’m wondering if there are any general trends.</p>
<p>One way to avoid the issue is to attend your favorite LAC first, and then UChicago for grad school. Some of us feel that it’s better to attend two different schools (in case you consider UChicago for both segments).</p>
<p>My answers to those questions are no, no, and no.</p>
<p>“Lesser” professors: some of the best professors I’ve had (the same professors grad students try to cozy next to) say that their favorite classes are undergraduate core humanities and social sciences courses. Lots of major-major league professors teach and continue to teach not only in core, but also undergraduate sections.</p>
<p>Attitude towards grads/undergrads: if you’re in a mixed class, you don’t wear a sign that says, “Hi, I’m an undergraduate!” and mostly likely the grad students in your class will be at a similar-ish intellectual level to you… they might be experts in an area that you know nothing about, but that area is probably not directly related to the course. (For example, in one grad/undergrad class, the prof had us explain why we chose the class and our familiarity with the topic. None of us were familiar with the topic, though the grad students knew a couple more languages than me). I think you have the same opportunity to be respected in class as grad students do, with a little more help from the prof.</p>
<p>For example, I took a grad/undergrad cinema studies class where the prof had the undergrads do an ungraded trial paper to make sure they were on the right path, and made grad students write longer papers. Twice I’ve had profs make grad students write longer papers. If anything, I think they respect the undergraduates who choose to take their course.</p>
<p>The exact shakedown in the sciences might be different, but from what I’ve seen, Chicago students do lots of original research and get as much attention as could be wanted.</p>
<p>To me, the primary difference between an LAC and a school like Chicago is a social one. S, R, and P (to a lesser extent) have a distinct undergraduate-only identity with a pinched-off campus. Chicago appears very vast and massive in comparison. When I was in your shoes I decided that I preferred the social potential of 4500 undergraduate and countless more grad students, and I did not warm to the “summer camp” or “bubble” feel of various LAC’s (I’m thinking of Vassar and Haverford in particular as feeling “not for me.”)</p>
<p>I heard it both at Columbia and Chicago that one of the main purposes of the AdCom was to choose a class that would make their professors happy and excited to be teaching. As far as I can tell Team O’Neill does a pretty good job year after year.</p>
<p>The best class I have ever taken here was an undergraduate course taught by Roger Myerson last fall, during which he won the Nobel Prize in economics. He was the nicest, most down to earth professor I have ever had and was always willing, even eager, to sit down in his office hours and spend hours helping us understand what (to him, anyway) must have been an incredibly trivial concept.</p>
<p>It’s important to understand some of the different dynamics of graduate and undergraduate students. </p>
<p>A professor’s relationship with the graduate students he or she advises is a really deep one. For three to five years, the grad student is essentially the professor’s slave – a really smart person thinking all the time about how to please him more, and doing whatever he tells the student to do. The grad student’s future is almost completely dependent on one or two professors is his department. The professor probably picked the grad student for admission personally. The grad student is being advised by that professor because they have similar interests, and the grad student has made a long-term commitment to working on those topics, and has learned a lot about them. They may talk every day, or only a few times a week, but it goes on for years, and then they are lifelong colleagues, with the student’s success contributing significantly to the professor’s lustre.</p>
<p>Undergrads show up a couple of hours a week for one term. Some of them may come to office hours once or twice, or ask the professor to lunch. Often they are completely unprepared. They skip a lot of the work, and hand stuff in late. They often have unrealistic ideas, or mistaken preconceptions, about what they should be learning. But often they are smart, and fun, and come at things from unexpected angles, and they are much more willing to challenge conventional wisdom than grad students are. And they have lots of interests, and they have fun, and they usually aren’t depressed all the time. So they’re a hoot. Professors like them, but don’t always take them seriously right off the bat until they show that they’re willing to put in the work and have tested their interests and ideas a bit.</p>
<p>So, of course professors at research universities are going to pay more attention to graduate students. They should, the graduate students deserve it. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t willing to pay attention to undergraduates, too. They are, but it generally has to be on THEIR (the professors’) terms, and the undergraduates are expected to work rather than try to get everything spoon-fed to them. Lots of undergrads never get that.</p>
<p>Be prepared, be insistent, be respectful, be committed, and you will have lots of faculty guidance wherever you go to college.</p>
<p>The “deep” relationship you describe is only true for those few students being advised by a particular prof. </p>
<p>How likely is it that that particular prof will be teaching a class with his advisees that contains undergrads? Given typical teaching loads, not likely.</p>
<p>Far more likely is that the grad and undergrad students are taking a class where both are strangers to the professor. And unless that professor makes a great effort to get to know students by name, (s)he will not even know (and will probably care less) who is grad and who is undergrad.</p>
<p>Faculty I’ve known at UofC have told me that often the undergrads in their mixed classes are the best students.</p>
<p>
Has this been your first hand experience? At UofC? Seem to be a rather sweeping generalization and not at all consistent with what I have heard.</p>
<p>I was addressing the generalized claim that at research universities like Chicago faculty only pay attention to the grad students. You are absolutely right to point out that, when you have a mixed class, the students are likely to be more on an equal footing.</p>
<p>I was basing what I said on: The experience of being an undergraduate in graduate classes. The experience of being an undergraduate and developing close relationships with famous faculty in my department, hanging out with grad students too. The experience of being a graduate student in mixed classes with undergraduates. And a recent long discussion on the topic with several professors from universities and LACs. None of this happened at the University of Chicago, but it didn’t happen in radically different sorts of universities, either. Of course not all undergraduates are unprepared, late, or full of drama, but if you get a bunch of them together, some of them will be, even at Chicago.</p>
<p>Note that I did NOT mean to suggest that grad students crowd out undergraduates, at Chicago or anywhere else. W/re the research uni vs. LAC divide, I am solidly on the research uni side. What I DID mean to suggest was that if, as an undergraduate, you want faculty attention, it helps to be thoughtful about it and to respect the grad students. From whom you can learn a lot, too . . . both my wife and I have had the experience of watching the grad students to whom we were closest have really distinguished careers.</p>
<p>Never, that I can remember. Maybe it was just that they knew how to shut up and keep a low profile if they didn’t know what they were talking about. (Of course, undergrads could do that, too.) </p>
<p>Most of the grad students I knew were very impressive; contact with them was a completely positive part of my undergraduate education. From my perspective, the presence of strong graduate students is a plus for undergraduates at top research universities like Chicago.</p>
<p>My D’s first year, she was in a combined undergrad/grad seminar, as part of the AP5 sequence. She found the most clueless person in the class was a grad student. How much of this was the grad student’s effort to impress and such, I do not know, though.</p>
<p>I’m glad to hear that JHS. S’s other choice was a school with few postgraduate programs and the word was that by default, I guess, they really catered to the undergraduates as opposed to Chicago with a ratio of 2 to 1 of graduate to undergraduate students where they might be “neglected.” Never thought of the postgraduate students putting pressure from the top on the undergraduates and most assuredly raising the level of the classes.</p>
<p>I think of us as a school of 4,500 with a course catalog for 15,000. It’s a pure intellectual feast as far as courses are concerned, and, like JHS mentioned earlier, I think your contact with your profs will depend on your attitude and your prof’s attitude more than it will your registration status of graduate/undergraduate.</p>
<p>I attended and was a TA for combined grad and undergrad courses and found there to be no different treatment, except, from time-to-time, a little more work was required of the grad students. The professors do know who are grad students and who are not because they receive printed (or online) rosters, they just don’t care. As a grad student, undergrads in a course often meant one had to work harder because the undergrads were often the smarter ones. Grad students at Chicago have a deep respect for the undergrads, as do the professors. I think the following is instructive.</p>
<p>From the 1999 Faculty Handbook:
I found this to be the case when I attended and S1 reports he typically finds it the case today.</p>