Perceived Differences Between Chicago and other Elite Universities

Colleges & Universities University of Chicago
101

I’d be disappointed if UChicago’s college administration appropriated “Where fun goes to die” and started adding it to class memorabilia. Part of the charm of a phrase like that is that it should drive admin up the wall and that they would try to expunge if from the UChicago lexicon. Institutionalizing it would sound like the dweeby parents are trying to mimick the cool kids or something . . .

“Where fun goes to die” has morphed over time to reflect UChicago’s kinder-gentler image. As the school is still more rigorous than most of its peers and, realistically, at least in part because UChicago undergrads are passing it on, it’ll be awhile before the phrase goes away (if ever). “Oddballs” took decades to shake off, although admittedly that was coined by Hutchins’ successor so maybe it was bound to take longer than usual.

Any elite applicant - including those to H and S - whose casual acquaintance doesn’t get past “where fun goes to die” wasn’t really considering UChicago to begin with. The school simply won’t be attracting every Harvard or Stanford applicant chasing prestige. Despite having all the right stats to make it look extremely “prestigious” in its own right, the University of Chicago actually wants your transformation to occur AFTER you walk through Cobb and Hull Gates, not before.

102

@Zoom10 - yeah, as I understand it, the issue with Ivy sports is it’s a sliding scale - with extreme preference given to those who are good at kicking a ball or swinging a racket. What @JBStillFlying says above aligns with what I’ve seen - there is a LOT (a LOT) of diversity in SAT scores for athletes. Some are the 1500 SAT/football wunderkids you describe, but there are some with scores far, far lower than that.

For me, I’d rather slots for low SATs go to students overcoming tremendous hardship/poverty and show great promise, rather than those who tend to be reasonably smart, generally wealthy, and are mediocre D1 athletes (that describes most athletes in the ivy league – most Ivies are fairly middling D1 schools).

Again, as much as I love sports, some of the Ivy preferences really look outdated in today’s day and age. Do we really want to offer coveted spots at top schools to people who are smart (lets say 1350+ SATs), but are good skiers or sailors or squash players? Also, for Chicago to emulate this is way, way, WAY too expensive - the startup costs are big.

A high powered intellectual destination that has an institutional need for sailors or fencers seems strange. Yes, private schools can set institutional needs as they see fit but… really?

I’m all for Chicago showing a love for sports in other ways - bring on the data analytics and community centers!

103

@sushiritto: I understand that the Univ. of Texas at Austin generates the most revenue from athletics among all colleges & universities. (Recently I started a thread on the topic of athletic revenue by school.)

The University of Texas, somewhat similar to Notre Dame, does not share revenue generated by the UT television network–if I understand correctly.

While UT-Austin can dictate terms to the Big 12, the Big 10 is the most successful conference financially among the Power 5 Conferences. Without Texas, the Big 12 might not exist. The Big 10 does not need Texas & the Big 10 does not need Notre Dame in order to thrive financially. On the other hand, the Big 12 needs Texas in order to survive.

With respect to the University of Chicago, what can UChicago offer to the Big 10 Conference ?

104

Publisher, you’re absolutely right that Big 10 doesn’t need Texas or ND but if it got them, the Big 10 would be more powerful than the lame NCAA and could dictate the terms of college athletics to every other conference. And yes, the Big 12 would collapse if Texas were to leave, but Texas has resisted doing that so far because it likes being the big dog of the Big 12 whereas it would be taking its marching orders from Michigan and Ohio State in the Big 10.

Cue, I am with you that certain sports like skiing, fencing, and sailing should not be part of any college’s varsity offerings, but I am confident saying that those athletes will have high SAT/ACT scores on average. At the Ivy’s, the sports with the most leeway and lowest scores on average are football and men’s basketball for obvious reasons. However, given that you said you would support lower scores for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds, then you should be in favor of these allowances for Ivy football and basketball players because these players tend to come from less advantaged backgrounds than your fencing, squash, or sailing recruits. The fact that Stanford and Harvard even sponsor a varsity sailing team is ludicrous and that alone should knock them down 10 places in the USNWR rankings.

105

I’m not sure that’s saying much. My nephew, a Yale graduate, reported that it was harder to get a C than to get an A.

In other words, Harvard and Yale can be as easy or as challenging as a person wants to make it. Students can determine where they want to work really hard. Some may focus their efforts on humanities, others STEM, and some athletes may choose to take the easy path in everything.

106

Oh, I know you know, but I took the chance to slight Maryland and Rutgers, even considering Maryland can be good at men’s soccer and LAX and Rutgers has their old football coach back and are expecting big things.

I have no problem adding Chicago to the B1G, just please make sure they’re placed into the East Division, since the West Division is already weak enough. :smile:

107

@Cue7 and @Zoom10

Why does this “seem strange” and why “shouldn’t it be part of varsity offerings”

108

@Zoom10 , I believe you are downplaying just a bit the extent of the boost recruited athletes get in admissions. From the Arcidiacono study (p.23):

“Recruited athletes are universally weaker than non-ALDC [non-athletes, non-Legacy, non-Development, non-Faculty-child] admits on these ratings [i.e. the academic ones]. This is not surprising, given that we know athletes are stronger on the athletic rating [i.e. all Harvard applicants are rated as athletes]. But for some race and rating combinations, the differences are striking. At most, 28% of white athlete admits receive a 2 or higher on the academic rating. In contrast, 89% of white non-ALDC admits receive a 2 or higher on the academic rating.”

That statistic is telling us rather clearly that though, yes, some athletes are high academic achievers, most are not. They got in because they were athletes, and they took a seat away from someone who was not and who had a higher academic rating.

Even those fencers you reference only have to stay within a standard deviation of the norm. That’s not a very high hurdle to clear, and fencers might be the brainiest of the bunch.

Look, I have nothing against athletes. I myself played baseball for the Maroons fitfully once upon a time, and I applaud in general the livelier sports environment at the old school. Indeed, I like it that so many now participate in sports (something that would be lost if D1 recruited athletes shouldered them all aside). It’s a question of where the line is drawn, especially at a school like this, in which studies must always come first, demand so much time and energy, and, frankly, are what this institution is all about. Weaker students will struggle, students who spend large amounts of time training and playing their sport will struggle. These students will miss the main event at Chicago. It sounds like at Harvard they could work around those things. Not so at Chicago - unless the culture changes. I don’t advocate such a change. Do you?

No, I say play your sport as you wish, but come in to this school on your academic merits, and sink or swim on them. Whatever may be Harvard’s “institutional needs”, Chicago has its own needs, shaped by its own history and its own ethos. It is a different sort of institution, per the study with which this thread began.

109

Fencingmom, I apologize if my post may have touched on a personal note given your tag name, but I do believe that colleges need to draw the line somewhere with respect to the number of varsity sports they sponsor. Of course, any institution is free to decide that for itself, but I don’t think most would argue that some sports are extremely nichey and have very low participation amongst the public as well as other colleges. After all, for the tiny number of colleges that even sponsor a varsity fencing team, don’t they just end up competing against each over and over?

That’s not to say that an accomplished fencer or squash player doesn’t spend just as much time trying to be excellent in their sport as any other athlete, but that also doesn’t mean that colleges should sponsor these sports or at least give any kind of admissions consideration to those athletes (the college can field a fencing team of pure walk-ons if it chooses to have a team). So how does one determine which sports are “worthy” vs those that are not? Of course this is largely subjective and I don’t think it should be based purely on popularity, but I will go on record in saying that I would laugh if a college decided to sponsor a varsity luge, bobsled, curling, table tennis, etc team. I acknowledge that these players have high skill in their chosen sport and work hard at it, but I will still laugh.

110

IMO there are so many problems coming down the pike with Division 1 sports (in the revenue programs) that it makes zero sense to take a bite out of that apple.

111

Zoom10 writes:

but enough big dog money alums would love to see Chicago on TV against Michigan and Ohio State and their names on new athletic building.

Who, pray, are these “big dog alums”? My sample size of “big dog” UChicago alums is, admittedly, very small (and only includes two trustees), but none of them would have the slightest interest in this prospect.

112

Mom, I can’t name any names of UChicago alums who might be interested as I’m not an alum myself and not connected to the Chicago community at this time, but as soon as my kid starts school this fall I’ll do my best to find out if there might be any interest in this and other topics when I do begin to participate in the donor community.

113

@Zoom10 you should speak to the trustees first. They’ll let you know directly. UC’s trustee are very active in the university community and knowledgable about the mission of UC. Typically around this time of year they are hosting accepted events. Hopefully at some point - later this summer - there will be send-offs so that might be another opportunity. Also, there are two or three athlete parents who follow this forum. I’m surprised they haven’t commented yet. Maybe there’s a reason for that :wink:

Also, anyone can begin to participate in the donor community at any time! No need to wait!!

114

Sorry to break up all the creativity on this thread, but, my outlandish ideas aside, here’s some reality:

Donor dollars are hard to come by, and top U.'s have big ambitions. While Chicago’s $5B campaign was nice, I bet if you asked top administrators how much they’d like, to fit their immediate aspirations, they would ask for THREE TIMES as much.

And that’s not so they can engage in flights of fancy like building a top D1 sports program from scratch or advertise with the Lakers.

As a thought experiment, let’s ask: if cash was more plentiful, what is President Zimmer’s wish list? Here are my thoughts:

1.) Spend $2-$3B to build a top-flight engineering school

2.) Invest $6-$7B in the med school and hospital plant, and expand the research footprint of the biosci division

3.) Invest hundreds of millions (probably in the $300-$400M range) for Comp Sci: upgrade facilities, bring in star professors, etc. make it top-notch

4.) Put $2B in the Law School and Booth endowments for student aid, to essentially “endow” the schools. This would make the schools free for students. Imagine the caliber of students we’d get, if no one paid. Use another $500M-$1B for faculty recruitment.

5.) Big-time investment ($500M?) in the Harris School, SSA, etc.

6.) Pour $1-$2B in college financial aid - essentially, “endow” the college, to make tuition free for all who make the cut.

7.) Billions ($2B?) in capital projects - updating facilities, tearing down Max P and building a better dorm in that space, expanding and updating libraries, creating more student spaces, expanding bio sci, etc.

8.) Hundreds of millions for the social sciences division, etc. - invest in professors, recruit grad students, etc.

9.) $1B for hundreds more endowed professorships - push Chicago’s faculty pay well above peers, for anyone on the tenure track. If the avg. tenured Chicago faculty member makes $350k (as opposed to $230k at Harvard), what would that do for faculty recruitment?

(And, maybe improving sports would make the top 50.)

Maybe it’s time to bring it back to reality folks… this thread is a flight of fancy…

Thoughts on Zimmer’s wishlist?

115

^ My thought is that perhaps someone should try to glean a real Zimmer’s Wishlist from Zimmer’s actual comments.

116

Zimmer would never present a wish list that presumes $15B-20B in funds, @JBStillFlying - you know that!

If you want to know how Chicago approaches a world of limited resources, read the chicago maroon’s report on the “ratio between eminence and resources”

But I’ll take your curt comment to mean you don’t want to play this game…

117

Cue, what is your guess as to whether Zimmer has asked or will ask Bill Gates to become Chicago’s next trustee (maybe he’ll hold off until his son graduates in 2 years for optics reasons).

Microsoft’s current CEO is already a trustee, now let’s get Gates on the Board and I think we might see a brand new sparkling CS building 5 years from now!

I don’t think Chicago should try to raise $15 billion because even if it were feasible, likely a lot of that money would be “wasted” on silly projects or added bureaucracy that don’t really add to the university’s eminence.

Although I stand by my desire to build a D1 program gradually, I did rank that #4 in my wish list below investing in CS, Engineering, and your suggestion of improving the medical school and biological sciences division.

118

Cue7–I completely agree with you regarding the need to boost the apparently lackluster standing (by elite university standards) of the med school. Obviously medical research is a hugely important field of intellectual/academic endeavor, and UChicago Medical School’s research ranking (according to USNWR, an imperfect authority, I know) is 17th (behind Harvard, Hopkins, Penn, Stanford, Columbia, Duke, Yale, Pittsburgh, Cornell, NYU, UCLA, UCSF, Wash U and U of Wash). https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-medical-schools/research-rankings

119

PS–sorry, Zoom10–I should have added that you, too, emphasized the importance of improving the med school.

120

@Zoom10 - yes, with nadella (current ms ceo) on the board and a gates scion at chicago now, my suspicion is zimmer et al is hoping for big investments in CS.

My guess is that cs and engineering will be two of the biggest areas of focus for the school.

Med plant is important, but super super expensive. Northwestern invested hugely here (to the tune of around $4B - they spent like $1B alone for a big research center downtown) - they are actually running budget shortfalls bc of it. NU I believe is the top hospital system in the area now.

I imagine med will be a big part of the next campaign, but it’ll be very, very costly. Not sure they have the fundraising capacity to pull it off.