<p>I’m not sure how familiar many of the posters on this thread are with the University of Texas @ Austin but I will be attending the Plan II Honors program there and I have been doing some research and it seems highly possible that the core requirement for Plan II is largely based on the University of Chicago’s core that was established in the early to mid 1930’s.</p>
<p>Here is a excerpt from Plan II’s website explaining its core curriculum and its history.</p>
<p>Education for a life, not a living, wrote Dean Parlin, the founder of the program; and by way of recruitment he would promise students that in Plan II they would learn everything a [person] should know. This, of course, is too grand a promise; even in middle age no faculty members feel they know all they should. What can Plan II reasonably promise? A baccalaureate education that lays the foundation for a future of self-education, and feeds its graduates curiosity so well that most of them will make on-going learning an essential part of their life-plans in a broad range of disciplines. We have learned that we can reasonably promise this from the alumni who testify that they have received such an education, starting with the first class of 1939 and continuing to the newest cohorts.</p>
<p>Plan II is a four-year interdisciplinary major in a core curriculum in modern arts and sciences. The University of Chicago developed a similar program in the early 1930s, and theirs may have been the model for Parlin in 1935. Plan IIs original aim comes close to what the ancient Greeks meant by paideia education for active citizenship as opposed to vocational training.</p>
<p>The core curriculum creates a common experience that allows for a high level of conversation among Plan II students and graduates, thus creating a broad-based interdisciplinary community with a shared vocabulary and range of concerns.</p>
<p>A distinctive feature of Plan II is its interdisciplinary character. Plan II students take pride in being part of an arts and sciences program, and they major in virtually every area of the university. They are rarely planning to major in the areas that Plan II requires them to study, their career interests cover the range from architecture to zoology, and they have the power to bring their interests to bear on any class they take. Plan II classes typically create dialogue among science, business, engineering, and liberal arts students.</p>
<p>Has anyone heard about this before??</p>
<p>I hadn’t heard of Plan II before CC, but I had heard of UT-Austin. </p>
<p>Where it sounds different is that the core is a major in itself for Plan II kids, who can choose, if they want, to add another major. (That’s what I understood from this): [Plan</a> II Honors Program](<a href=“http://www.utexas.edu/cola/progs/plan2/about/description/]Plan”>http://www.utexas.edu/cola/progs/plan2/about/description/)</p>
<p>I once started to collect a database of schools that required some kind of rounded “great books” program for all students. The more I think about a program like great books and the core (especially because I’m on the other side of it now!), the more I think it’s one of the most important things I could do as an undergrad. </p>
<p>My list had Whitman, Columbia, St. John’s College, and Reed on it, and now Plan II. Maybe there were a few others? Anyway, maybe I should renew my efforts?</p>
<p>Fine choice. </p>
<p>Quite familiar with the program (had about 30 or so friends do it) - definitely has a great placement record for graduate programs along with the Deans Scholars initiative (notably medicine). In fact, a lot of “Ivy” caliber talent with multiple offers at selective colleges end up in one of the two programs, especially in light of the large Asian immigrant community in Texas that will not / or cannot consider paying for a private institution at the UG level. Yet, in contrast to Chicago the bottom end of the Plan II student body has more the feel of a GW or BU student mix, but so it goes. </p>
<p>However, it does not really strike me as very common to UChicago at all by way of the core. Part of the core experience is the intellectual dialogue you have amongst students both inside and outside of the classroom, and honors dormitories like Blanton / Carothers along with the propriety honors courses don’t give off the same vibe. Plan II students seem more grounded in their schoolwork at hand than persistently mulling over big ideas at large, e.g. an A student dots his is and crosses his ts, and drills his O-Chem notes in his sleep. It may seem like a subtle triviality to some students, but depending on your personality it can be quite big. There are a lot of students at Chicago would go down in flames in Plan II, and vice versa. </p>
<p>Likewise, Plan II is grounded in the sense you are an honors student and are supposed to be somewhat flawless in your work at the level that UT assigns it, whereas at Chicago it becomes apparent from day one you dont know crap compared to your professors and the odds or expectation of being a straight A student is nothing shy of a pipe dream for most. Some people dont do well without the validation of the honors label and a slew of positive professorial feedback, others like the challenge of having their intellectual edifice knocked down and rebuilt every quarter and would be bored otherwise. All in all while it is a much abused cliché it really is about putting yourself in the environment where you are most likely to thrive in advance of graduate school.</p>
<p>“Plan II students seem more grounded in their schoolwork at hand than persistently mulling over big ideas at large, e.g. an ‘A’ student dots his i’s and crosses his t’s, and drills his O-Chem notes in his sleep. It may seem like a subtle triviality to some students, but depending on your personality it can be quite big. There are a lot of students at Chicago would go down in flames in Plan II, and vice versa.”</p>
<p>Now I’m pretty sure I understand what you mean and that is not the vibe I get, here are some quotes from faculty, students, and others familiar with the program that illustrate the type of learning and “big thinking” students Plan II either breeds or strengthens.
“Plan II excites curiosities. Its core is the study of literature, philosophy, society, and natural sciences, all in the form in which they have the most meaning for the lives of real individuals. Its spirit is the freedom to cross intellectual boundaries and to seek understanding wherever it is to be found. Plan II students have explored everything that makes us human in the best sense, from poetry to the latest discoveries in physics or cosmology.”</p>
<p>“The Plan II Honors Program is in all respects excellent. Moreover, it is nearly a perfect example of a front-loaded honors program, one that directs most of its resources to laying a foundation in the first two years and then leaves students to engage in maximum self-realization. It is one of the least expensive state programs, not just relatively but absolutely. . . This is one of the best bargains in American higher education.”</p>
<p>“Though I came to the University thinking that I would become a practicing architect, I have realized through my Plan II classes that the improvement of entire communities––not just single structures––is my real passion. The Plan II curriculum has freed me and many other students to discern for ourselves who we are––and who we want to be.”</p>
<p>“Now I’m pretty sure I understand what you mean and that is not the vibe I get, here are some quotes from faculty, students, and others familiar with the program that illustrate the type of learning and “big thinking” students Plan II either breeds or strengthens.”</p>
<p>To clarify, I am not saying that Plan II student’s don’t take courses that are considered canonically within in a liberal arts vein, or do interdisciplinary work, but rather that there is a palpable difference in tone that I picked up conversing with my friends who did very well in the program. I just found there to be many more “excellent” students in Plan II versus “intellectual” students (on average!). Then again, there are more excellent students at Harvard Law, Medicine and Business than intellectual students, since the virtues of the former are far more important than those of the latter to academic success in the majority of subjects. To reiterate, you can be very well rounded and worldly, and still not intellectual in the sense that many a UChicago student gives off (or more starkly, the core faculty). </p>
<p>Meanwhile, diligent workers are not really what the core at Chicago is pitched to, and you definitely find a lot of UChicago students as a result that get tired of say tweaking objectively good papers to fit the cultural or political pretenses of their professor, or dealing with classmates that cannot stay on topic in a seminar even if their comments might be insightful. The fact that a large fraction of students also allow in class perceptions of performance to influence private social relations is also kind of off putting (at least to me). I always had to laugh in college when I saw many people let their friendships deteriorate over seemingly pointless intellectual battles, e.g. her positions are insufficiently free market (who gives!), or I don’t see how he can think that way and purport to be a Methodist (like it’s any of your business). </p>
<p>To repeat, I think for certain majors and certain people - almost independent of the rock bottom price - it really might be the superior choice en route to graduate school. I doubt you will be disappointed, and will most certainly be in good company. Best of luck in the fall, and enjoy the weather!</p>
<p>Chicago had been my number one choice since I was a sophomore in high school. I was accepted regular decision there however, I had already committed to the Plan II Honors at the University of Texas in an early round selection process. The U of C does and will always fascinates me, nevertheless, in retrospect I am firmly behind my decision to attend UT. As of now my parents are at that financial threshold were they really get screwed out of a lot of the need based scholarships and grants. With this financial situation in mind I didn’t even bother filling out the financial aid for the U of C since the deadline was after I had committed to P2. Moreover, after running spreadsheets and tons of EFC calculators etc I knew that U of C would put my parents in an uncomfortable financial situation with my older sister attending a private college in Minnesota. Quite frankly I know I would not have garnered any helpful merit based need considering my SAT scores weren’t anything stellar (2070 total) and my greatest EC’s were Boy’s State and Class VP. In the end I knew I needed a more balanced lifestyle (socially and intellectually) that Austin and UT could afford over the University of Chicago.</p>
<p>One more question, when you polarize the majority of students in Plan II(as being excellent) and U of C students(as being intellectual) tell me why these two criterion for defining the types of students at upper-level intellectual institutions aren’t overlapping? I view an intellectual student as being excellent in their own sense, in the sense that they are liberal and introspective thinkers that often battle with themselves internally as much as they debate the moral or social tendencies of other students(singular) or the aggregate tendencies taught perhaps by many profs in a field of learning. Excellence as you define seems to correlate to the amount of accomplishment or number driven(rankings, grad school placement etc.) but this in my opinion is far too narrow a definition of excellence. While chronologically speaking you have more experience with both programs however, it is my position that students as a whole and individually are both intellectual and excellent. In fact I think they go hand in hand with each other.</p>