Opposites: Dartmouth v.s UChicago?

neogop
Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:55:26 +0000

I think Darmouth and Chicago are more alike than you would like to think.
They both have similar populations of undergraduates, similar type students, quarter system, etc. I do, however think the main difference is twofold:

1. Dartmouth is in the middle of nowhere, whereas Chicago is in the middle of everywhere.

2. Dartmouth has ~1,700 grad students whereas Chicago has ~10,000.

So overall, while Dartmouth IS a research university, it doesn’t have nearly as much as Chicago has… probably because of reason number one. That being said, you’re going for and undergraduate education, so the grad students really ought not matter too much. From what I garnered this past trip to Chicago, there are really phenomenal teachers teaching in the College. However, these professors are surprisingly young (30s and 40s). They are recent PhD recipients from world-class universities (Oxbridge, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, LSE, King’s College, etc) who need to find work. UofC puts them up for a few years, allots some research opportunities, and has them teach “lower level” classes (Sosc, Hume, Civ, Math 130s-160s, etc). Despite that, these professors are not up for tenure. So you’ve got these wicked good professors, doing research, heavily focused in on undergraduates, but who (in all likelihood) will not remain at Chicago for a significant amount of time. Conversely, the “true” professors (i.e. those intensely focused on cutting edge research) are teaching 1-2 classes, usually graduate courses, and focusing the rest of their time on globally enhancing their specialized field.

I can’t really compare/contrast that with Dartmouth, but at Chicago, while you’re not getting the Milton Friedmans in your basic classes, you’re getting the post-doc’s who are very excited about teaching undergrads and are not as focused on their research… but you do have the hope of getting a Milton Friedman professor maybe in your third or fourth year.

I would say Dartmouth has a tad more prestige, and also money on its side. I read a study recently that Dartmouth grads (ones who don’t go to grad school, that is) have the highest starting salary of anyone in the country. You can take this for what its worth, just a factoid or a big predictor of future successes. On the other hand, Chicago has one of, if not THE, highest percent of undergrads who complete PhD’s. Again, take that for what you wish.

Your conception of Chicago being the place where fun comes to die is 100% false. I spent last Friday night with Pierce people, and fun certainly was not dead. I think if you wanted fun to die, you could make it, but no one there wants to. The fun coming to die schpiel is from a T-shirt that carried said title. It caught on with the students because of the [massive] amount of work they had to do, however, most of the students LIKE and HATE the work at the same time. So the “where fun comes to die” thing is just self deprecating humor: “We have massive amounts, and a lot of the time it sucks. But we like work so it’s okay for us to laugh about how much we like the ridiculous amount of work we have to do.”