<p>MidWest, your post is particularly interesting to me as a former academic with a son who is currently a second year. When, back in his sophomore year of high school, he (and so, we, his parents) began to engage in earnest with the question of where to apply, UChicago wasn’t on any of our radar screens. In my son’s case this was understandable. After all, what does a 15-year old know (a parent’s perspective, of course). However, I fancied I knew something about the higher education game. </p>
<p>I had always admired “Chicago” (as we called it in my day) as the pre-eminent producer of smart and extremely well educated academics, those who had been tested and formed in a crucible hotter and more intense, on average, than that provided by the programs even at HYP. Chicago produced academics and thought leaders and intellectuals and people devoted first and foremost to the “life of the mind.” And that notwithstanding, those with the personalities and the ambition to succeed in the secular world, although arguably a smaller % of the Chicago crop than were emerging from other top programs, did so. They certainly had the chops.</p>
<p>But undergraduate? It wasn’t so much that it didn’t have a reputation for being a top flight program and degree, as that it didn’t have a reputation. We (certainly I) just didn’t think of Chicago in those terms. Thank goodness for a favorite history teacher who told my son, based on the kind of kid he was, and is, that he should look at Chicago, that it might be an even better fit for him than Columbia, at the time our family’s collective front runner. And this from a man whose undergraduate degree was from Columbia. We started to do some research and the rest is history. And, for the record, and not that he wouldn’t have been happy and successful elsewhere, but the fit seems perfect, socially and academically. </p>
<p>And speaking of socially, let me amplify what many others in this forum have expressed: unlike the gloomier days of two and three decades ago, today and, perhaps increasingly tomorrow, UChicago provides the almost total package. The kids have fun, part of that fun even being to tease the world outside about being the place where fun comes to die. They’re a good crop, perhaps less homogenous in “type” than found in other top schools (homogeneity and diversity being not the same thing). Certainly UChicago is a place where it’s not uncool, but nor is it required, to be a nerd, and the campus vibe is low on mean-spiritedness. While the students do need to, and largely want to, work hard at their studies, which may take a little time away from what is available for strictly and only superficial or meretricious conversations and getting blotto most nights of the week, those who want to (and that’s most of them) are richly engaged with the wealth of extracurricular opportunities presented by the school and the city of Chicago itself. Even my son, who never did this in high school nor did he seem inclined to, goes to frat parties on the weekends and drinks. But, yeah, even there some, not all, of the conversations are substantive, from what he tells us, and it’s not considered de rigeur to get blue-blind paralytic drunk. </p>
<p>My qualification above “almost the total package” is with respect to the sports scene. Many play intramural sports. Some of the varsity teams are competitive in DIII, some aren’t particularly. Those on the school teams appear to be quite committed and to have developed a deep camaraderie, though that seems to be in addition to, rather than in lieu of, their identity as students at a fine university. However, the teams are generally under-supported by student rooters, even the very successful ones, which is a shame. Why not take in a game or a meet with your mates? Net, if a Duke-level basketball team or a Stanford-level athletics program or the buzz of tradition around a Harvard-Yale or Amherst-Williams football game is important enough to someone, he or she will need to seek it elsewhere. </p>
<p>A final bit of editorializing: UChicago’s reputation as an undergraduate institution still has not caught up to what it is deserving of, although that continues to change for the better. My sense is that the quality of education (= ability to think critically and well and to organize and express that thinking clearly and persuasively as well as to be in comprehensive and solid command of the content of academic fields studied) at UChicago is such that, on average, its students emerge at a high level of accomplishment built into the undergraduate experience in, as it were, the nature of things. By contrast, at other top schools, HYP and the very best LACs included, such a superior outcome, while certainly possible and perhaps not that uncommon, nonetheless requires a real commitment on the part of the student to obtain it. It’s not “fluoridated into the water,” so to speak. There is no substitute for being a member of the HYP club. None. There is also no substitute for a UChicago undergraduate education</p>