@MaineLonghorn , the Texas diaspora, which you and I belong to, keeps its identity and is highly infectious. My children and grandchildren here in Canada consider themselves honorary Texans. The Texanization of the civilized world can’t be far off. First we take Chicago…
^ I’m still a Texan even though I haven’t lived there for well over 55 years.
Earlier in this thread another poster asked why I suggested that UChicago intiate merit scholarships specifically for applicants from Texas, and not for other states such as Arizona, New Mexico, etc.
The reason is that this thread is about UChicago’s intiative to make inroads into the state of Texas.
The mashup of Texas exceptionalism and University of Chicago exceptionalism may not be tolerable for the rest of us.
Well, let’s see…
That didn’t take long at all, did it?
The lady doth protest too much, methinks. 
^Vulcan just can’t quit Marlowe.
I am his most reluctant fan;-)
@TheVulcan will never be satisfied with anything on the subject of the U of C short of silence. As Big Brother once said, Description is Agression. And as for sallies of wit - forget it, someone might take offence. Only happy talk is permitted - and a ritual genuflection before laundry lists of identical schools separated by nothing but someone’s ranking scheme. Ugh. That’s a ring of hell I refuse to visit.
Must I now admit my crimes against HYPS because I asserted that neither athletes nor starlets were to found on the Hutchins campus, that U of C students weren’t as wealthy as the ivy crowd, that they spent all that time in the library and were intense and mouthy? If that’s your smoking gun, my friend, I am ready to put your evidence to the jury before I drink my draft of hemlock.
Admittedly I share your disdain for “college athletics” (a uniquely American oxymoron) and the culture of privilege, but I dare hope that the life of the mind exists in more than one place in the Universe (even if it manifests itself differently in different environments).
Is athletic recruiting a recent development at UChicago?
https://athletics.uchicago.edu/athletics/recruiting
At any rate, so long as you leave M out of your HYPS condemnations, I think we can remain friends (such as we are).
re#106: what I am saying is that contrary to subsequent objections #59 is substantially correct IMO.
I think the molecular biology stuff is engineering. Of a sorts.
Financial engineering is too. In both cases they have little to do with the established fields of conventional engineering at which MIT excels, across the board. A school that just has these does not compare to MIT, in the sense of post #59. Where the poster said " I agree that it is decidedly not the case for technical majors MIT is world famous for." The poster is correct.
That’s all I meant . I gave my opinion I am not debating it.
Up thread, @marlowe1 asks me: “What you are really after is the eradication of all that is traditional or distinctive in Chicago education and students because you have a loathing for them. Have I got you right?”
That’s completely incorrect. What I’m really after is for Chicago to return to its apex predator status, no matter the culture of the College (bookish, athletic, whatever). In 1920, the 3 most powerful american universities were harvard, yale, and chicago (with some rising publics gaining steam). In 2020, Harvard and Yale are still up there, Chicago is not.
There’s no question Chicago has lost wealth and standing over the past century. I want it back.
If great books and eggheads (and strange Hutchins-era plans, like admitting 15 yo high schoolers, reducing the BA degree to 2 years and granting a 4 yr grad a masters, etc.) meant that Chicago would maintain its apex status, I’d have no problem with it.
The lens of history shows us, however, that many of Hutchins’ plans led to bigtime attrition of Chicago’s standing. Every university president ultimately has one goal: to burnish the institution’s eminence. Hutchins failed even when he was handed a loaded deck. That, to me, is what’s unforgivable.
(And, to bring this back to the OP’s point, if the road back includes recruiting the children of texas oil magnates, well then, hook 'em. If it means embracing the “Academic Ivy” position, do it. My basic premise is, being the apex predator takes money - lots and lots and lots of money. Being the dominant - or near-dominant - player across as many fields as possible, medicine, law, humanities, social sciences, business, etc. etc. takes a lot of cash. What gets us there?)
@Cue7, I love you, brother, because you too went through boot camp and came out with your stripes on the other side. But for a Chicago grad you have a most peculiar idea of what a great university is all about.
You remind me of Thrasymachus, Socrates’s first interlocutor in The Republic, for whom the good in life is equated to power. I don’t quite believe you, however. You talk too much of your dislike of the University even during your student days and too much of your longing for the Harvard that spurned you. You have never to my recollection given an instance of a Prof, a class, an idea, a neighborhood, or even an activity or experience at your Alma mater. I can glean from your voluminous writings only that you had an aversion to characteristic U of C types (“that kid”, etc) and characteristic activities (busting your butt in the library). Why aren’t you willing to simply admit that this was not the life for you and that you ended up at a school to which you weren’t suited? That happens. What undergrad knows or cares about a diminishing endowment? Did you at the time? If you are on about it now, that’s because it’s a convenient stick with which to beat the place you hated. Any stick would do, and you have used almost all of them. Come clean. It’s no sin to have made a mistake as an 18-year-old. Many have, and many will.
@marlowe1 - there’s a quote about West Point that can illuminate our dialogue:
“Not a great place to be, but a great place to be from.”
You’re right - I found the Chicago experience to be spartan. What really stuck in my craw, though, was its lack of eminence (outside a small sphere at the time). Also, 20+ years after graduation, I don’t find it to be a particularly good place to be from.
Far removed from the experience, I don’t particularly mind its difficulty. I do lament the lack of recognition (and the practical benefits that come with it).
Call me shallow if you will, but I could’ve gone to my local state u, saved a lot of money, self-designed a great books program (which was a nice facet of the education), and probably had the same outcome. I recall my Chicago experience, on the other hand, as being a kind of grueling, expensive book club.
Had Chicago held its previous reputation, the entire experience would have been more palatable.
Right now, to me, I characterize the old Chicago as:
“Not a great place to be, and not a great place to be from.”
That’s why I’m still grumpy about it.
Nice and very interesting to read the honest dialogue between Marlowe and Cue.
@monydad et al: The ME major actually offers three tracks: biology, chemical/soft materials, and quantum. The way to measure the success of this program of study would be to observe the outcomes. It’s a new major, so this will be something that will become more observable with time. However, from what I’m learning, some fields of engineering at the advanced (ie graduate) level of study don’t even require an “engineering” undergraduate degree (and certainly not an “ABET-accredited” program). Those grad students can pick up whatever they need in “engineering” in the course of their graduate studies. What graduate admission committees are looking for is sufficient amounts of Physics, Math, Chem, Bio, etc. (whatever is relevant to the particular program). This will likely depend on specific field; for aeronautical, for instance, the ME major gives you the sufficient STM preparation, and you can pick up whatever you need in “E” when you are admitted to graduate study.
UChicago isn’t interested in “conventional” fields of engineering, particularly at the undergraduate level. Their focus is to graduate scholars who can think of engineering problems at the highest levels. In that sense, it’s very comparable to MIT. However, if you are a top STEM kid who wouldn’t care for the more broad-based liberal-arts focus of UChicago (particularly the heavy reading and writing requirements) then MIT or similar might be more your taste. It all comes down to “fit.”
@Cue7 - It’s easy to lay “all” the blame on Hutchins; however, things like the Great Depression (which happened pretty early in the university’s history and right after Hutchins was sworn in) and then WWII were also huge factors in the draining of resources. Hutchins was a more a radical experimenter than a prudent financial manager; it’s possible that the university today would be more “financially healthy” had someone else been at the helm at that time, but it would also be a different undergraduate program than current. In any case, the fact that you are applauding the university’s vigorous quest for money should help you connect a few dots: ED helps build up a happy alumnae network 
Also, Cue, your comments at #132 underscore the importance of “fit.” Like for any college, the experience at UChicago is what you make of it, but the particular intensity and pace isn’t for everyone - even the smart guys. Despite the positive changes that they have made over the years, the place is still a “grind” and attracts those who are seeking that experience, see the benefits of it and put it to good use once they graduate. To repeat what Marlowe has been saying throughout these threads, the experience speaks particularly to those who are “UChicago-Types.” One can still benefit over the long run w/o having enjoyed the place, but IMO that does risk a whole lot of negative impressions down the road. Can’t help but think that those vibes are not lost on prospective employers, grad admission committees and the like. Without deliberately attempting to circle back to sing the praises of ED at UChicago, I do think there’s a very specific reason why Nondorf and Boyer wanted to institute it (and to admit so many from those pools) that has nothing to do with solving financial issues in the short-term.
Oh, please! That was the most cynical move ever. It didn’t have to be solving financial issues in the short term, and probably didn’t actually solve any of them. What it did was to let them boost the perceived selectivity of the college and to redeploy the financial aid budget more efficiently, while screwing over a lot of students of the sort marlowe1 waxes poetic about. It wasn’t personal, it was just business. But it wasn’t about improving the educational experience by keeping out the Ivy riffraff.
As for Cue7’s lament, my kids – roughly ten years his juniors – have found the University of Chicago a great place to be from. In one case, in East Coast financial and philanthropic communities, and in the other case, well, at the University of Chicago. I also have some cousins who would have been Cue7’s contemporaries – I think they graduated in '97 and '00. They are both pretty ambivalent about their experience there, and I don’t think either has traded much on their undergraduate degee – one because he has a high-quality math PhD (and I do think UChicago helped with his admission there, but only a little, beyond teaching him a lot of math), and the other because she is a labor union state government lobbyist several states away, and bragging about where she went to college would not advance her career at all.
Yada, yada, the same old canard that ED was about boosting the numbers. Someone within Admissions will some day have to tell us what the thinking actually was. As for me, I am more focussed on the effects - identifying among all the tens of thousands of applicants these days those who are the Chicago type. ED is a helpful tool in that sorting out. In the days of self-selection and few applicants that was not necessary. It is today. If it keeps out the ivy riffraff I won’t be too particular about the motivation. I will wax poetic about any kid of any SES who has Chicago as his or her first choice. And any kid deterred by the complexity or by the marginal advantage to be had in casting his lot broadly will have to settle for prose.
“What it did was to let them boost the perceived selectivity of the college and to redeploy the financial aid budget more efficiently, while screwing over a lot of students of the sort marlowe1 waxes poetic about. It wasn’t personal, it was just business. But it wasn’t about improving the educational experience by keeping out the Ivy riffraff.”
Um, not quite sure what “Ivy riffraff” is, but what ED might do is help keep out those who wouldn’t be happy there. And if they aren’t happy, they aren’t likely to stay connected to the university over the long-haul. Universities benefit from their alumnae network, and UChicago could use a much stronger one. Clearly there are UChicago Types admitted in all the rounds; but a good number do apply binding, as UChicago found out the first year they introduced ED.
re #34, it does not all come down to fit. It comes down firstly to what you want to study. If you want to study and major in one of the traditional engineering fields, you can do that at MIT, which excels at all of them. You can’t do that at Chicago.
In that respect, per post #59, Chicago and MIT are not comparable.