<p>i’m trying to narrow down my list of what colleges to apply to.</p>
<p>so can you tell me 5 things i need to know before deciding whether or not to apply to u of c? like the most important 5 things i’d need to “be” or “like” to be happy there? (i.e. big sports culture or liberal or outgoing or greek life, etc)</p>
<ol>
<li><p>We don’t have majors in business, engineering, education, nursing, physical therapy, journalism, etc. This is not to knock those majors-- actually, I have high school friends at different colleges who are majoring in each-- but rather to emphasize that first and foremost, the University of Chicago grants a liberal arts education. </p></li>
<li><p>Core Curriculum. Lots of books to read.</p></li>
<li><p>Div III sports. </p></li>
<li><p>Chicago is cold.</p></li>
<li><p>We have some fraternities and sororities.</p></li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><p>Want/enjoy a culture that values intellectualism, rigorous logic, critical thinking, mutual respect, and evidence-based arguments, and not get driven crazy when sometimes that slips over into intellectual pretentiousness. Note that this is a niche culture in American society, and it is not very compatible with religious or political fundamentalism of any sort.</p></li>
<li><p>Believe that excellent education is a value unto itself, even if specific employment-oriented training, qualification, or networking is not provided. You may believe that education will enhance future job performance and thus provide economic value in the long run, but not that it should prepare you for a specific job.</p></li>
<li><p>Enjoy classroom education and assigned reading/homework, and not mind a lot of the latter.</p></li>
<li><p>Want to participate in a shared intellectual culture with fellow students, and not mind that such culture is dead-white-Western-male-centric.</p></li>
<li><p>Want to take advantage of living in a large city, and not freak out because some of it is ugly, poor, and scary (sometimes with good reason). You can’t really want a cloistered environment.</p></li>
<li><p>Enjoy, or at least not mind, that most of the people around you (and therefore you, probably) are spending less time and money on personal appearance (clothes, hair, makeup) than they might elsewhere.</p></li>
<li><p>Not expect to live in the world imagined by “Girls Gone Wild” videos (or, for that matter, all sorts of popular-culture depictions of college life).</p></li>
<li><p>Not need your team to be BCS-eligible, go to the Big Dance, or have a roster of future professional stars. If you are an athlete, not need to be recognized as such when you are out of uniform.</p></li>
<li><p>Get the jokes – on the t-shirts, on the Scav Hunt lists, in old Ted O’Neill welcoming addresses.</p></li>
<li><p>Not be especially prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder; cold and snow make you feel braced and pure, not horribly depressed.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>It helps if you like: Improv comedy, John Malkovich, Joss Whedon, subtitles, Wilco, Andrew Bird, The Decemberists, Vampire Weekend, The Clipse, Common, hot dogs, greek and polish food, thick layers of cooked tomato and cheese with buttery, somewhat crumbly crust, wide roads, flat terrain, skyscrapers, big words.</p>
<p>JHS: That was classic. Well said.</p>
<p>JHS, it is students like you and Unalove that have inspired me to apply to UChicago. So eloquent and quirky…You seem to enjoy playings with words and semantics. Thank you for being the type of students I wish attended my highschool.</p>
<p>JHS is a dad, but inspiring nonetheless.</p>
<p>Litlhurry, I am a parent with a kid at Chicago (formerly two kids, until one graduated). It would be creepy if I attended your high school.</p>
<p>Hahaha, my mistake then. </p>
<p>And yes, yes it would be XD</p>
<p>^ lol 
another huge thank you to unalove and JHS for their great input
and a woohoo for Andrew Bird!!!</p>
<p>thanks, jhs!</p>
<p>let me see how many i can check off…</p>
<ol>
<li>Want/enjoy a culture that values intellectualism, rigorous logic, critical thinking, mutual respect, and evidence-based arguments, and not get driven crazy when sometimes that slips over into intellectual pretentiousness. Note that this is a niche culture in American society, and it is not very compatible with religious or political fundamentalism of any sort.</li>
</ol>
<p>(yes!!! most definitely. i want the college to be very intellectual. i’m a very logical person, an atheist, liberal [though not crazy liberal], bisexual, eccentric…seems like i’d fit this one!)</p>
<ol>
<li>Believe that excellent education is a value unto itself, even if specific employment-oriented training, qualification, or networking is not provided. You may believe that education will enhance future job performance and thus provide economic value in the long run, but not that it should prepare you for a specific job.</li>
</ol>
<p>(i’m probably gonna save my specialized-career-training for grad school, so this one can probably be checked off too.)</p>
<ol>
<li>Enjoy classroom education and assigned reading/homework, and not mind a lot of the latter.</li>
</ol>
<p>(hmmm…now, how much hw are we talking about exactly? :P)</p>
<ol>
<li>Want to participate in a shared intellectual culture with fellow students, and not mind that such culture is dead-white-Western-male-centric.</li>
</ol>
<p>(yep, yep, definitely!)</p>
<ol>
<li>Want to take advantage of living in a large city, and not freak out because some of it is ugly, poor, and scary (sometimes with good reason). You can’t really want a cloistered environment.</li>
</ol>
<p>(hmmm…this one i’m not so sure of. i think i’d prefer a campus that is really campus-centric and not so much city-centric…)</p>
<ol>
<li>Enjoy, or at least not mind, that most of the people around you (and therefore you, probably) are spending less time and money on personal appearance (clothes, hair, makeup) than they might elsewhere.</li>
</ol>
<p>(eh…i like looking put-together, but it’s not that big of deal. but you know, i’d really like to date a nice girl or guy in college, so are there still a lot of attractive looking people there? [yeah, i know personality/intelligence is more important, but physical attractiveness does play some part!])</p>
<ol>
<li>Not expect to live in the world imagined by “Girls Gone Wild” videos (or, for that matter, all sorts of popular-culture depictions of college life).</li>
</ol>
<p>(what do you mean exactly? i’m not looking for tons of parties, sports culture, etc. but i have heard that u of c is ‘where the fun goes to die’…i mean, i do wanna have fun in college…)</p>
<ol>
<li>Not need your team to be BCS-eligible, go to the Big Dance, or have a roster of future professional stars. If you are an athlete, not need to be recognized as such when you are out of uniform.</li>
</ol>
<p>(yeah, i don’t care about sports much.)</p>
<ol>
<li>Get the jokes – on the t-shirts, on the Scav Hunt lists, in old Ted O’Neill welcoming addresses.</li>
</ol>
<p>(hopefully i would!)</p>
<ol>
<li>Not be especially prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder; cold and snow make you feel braced and pure, not horribly depressed.</li>
</ol>
<p>(i’m not sure since i’ve never seen snow before!!)</p>
<p>Glad I directed you over here cadillac?</p>
<p>yes i am! there are a lot of things about u of c that sound up my alley, but i do still have those few concerns (city-centric, heavy heavy hw, possibly not a fun atmosphere?)</p>
<p>Crap. I didn’t fit any of JHS’s stuff at the end there (or recognize much). It’s okay - I still love UChicago. I can, however, proudly agree to 1, 2, part of 3, part of 4 (is it okay if we induct living people, non-whites, or women as well?), 6, 7, and 8. I never understand the UChicago jokes and I’m still deciding whether #10 is going to make or break any of my northern schools. Crappy weather is rough on the chronic depressive. As for lots of reading now… I hate it now because I hate high school, and am thinking it will be better when I have a better atmosphere in which to enjoy it. All of my potential majors at all of my schools are very reading-heavy (humanities and social sciences), so I doubt that will be make or break.</p>
<p>People are always trying to induct living, non-white women into the canon. I should have made that clear. But, still, you’re not going to be able to avoid gaining some substantial familiarity with Homer, Plato, Dante, Kant, Hegel, Smith, Marx, Freud, Durkheim, and Benjamin. And whoever wrote Genesis. (Good news! Harold Bloom says “J” was a woman, and not a European woman, either.)</p>
<p>hey, jhs, do you think you could answer my questions above about u of c?? thanks in advance!</p>
<p>I’ll try.</p>
<p>City-centric: Chicago isn’t at all like NYU, where it’s the coolest, most vibrant place on Earth, but there’s nothing resembling a campus. It also isn’t at all like Stanford, where thick bands of eucalyptus and golden foothills keep the Real World away, and everything is color-coordinated and landscaped. It’s campus is pretty campus-y, especially in the middle with its gothic quads and modern Temples of Knowledge, although at the edges it interpenetrates with a low-key residential neighborhood. But you’re always aware that you are in an enclave in a big, jazzy city; from lots of places, you can see whatever they call the Sears Tower now.</p>
<p>Homework: I am not convinced that there’s really more of it than at its academic peers, although the quarter system may make things feel more intense. What may be different is that students actually do a lot (not necessarily all) of the reading. And in lots of courses, there is a bias away from textbooks that some colleges might use. So instead of 50 pages of textbook, you’ll have 300 pages of original source material, and you have to figure out what the textbook would say about it.</p>
<p>Where Fun Comes To Die: That’s one of the jokes. People have fun if they want to, and most want to. But I think it isn’t much like Animal House, or Penn State, or Duke – just not that frenzied, a little pulled-back from the wild-and-crazy edge. Or maybe just more thinly populated on the wild-and-crazy edge. Also, it’s not like there’s ever nothing to do but go to the big homecoming party and get blasted. People will go do stuff around the city together – that’s fun, too, but less visible.</p>
<p>But don’t worry – if you put 5,000 18-22 year-olds together in one place, they are going to be enjoying themselves, using various intoxicants if they want to, doing a few stupid things, and specifically having sex with each other.</p>
<p>thanks, jhs! :)</p>
<p>well, i’m still scared of the hw thing. i’m kinda a slow reader cuz i really want to understand every little thing i’m reading so i don’t know how i would do with that much reading. :-/ i mean, i know i’ll have a lot of reading at any school, but it sounds like u of c is more intense about it in particular. hmmm…but i guess it depends. 300 pages of source material…has to be read by when? like would that be the hw for a class and you have 1 day to do it? 2? a week? </p>
<p>also i don’t know how much you know about nyu but the two schools do sound kinda similar. could you elaborate on any major differences they have?</p>
<p>I was being illustrative, not precise, with the 300 pages (but I was thinking a week). Actual students would give you a better idea of actual assignments, especially if they knew what you were interested in.</p>
<p>NYU and Chicago are actually very, very dissimilar (except, of course, for both being excellent universities in big cities):</p>
<p>NYU is mainly a bunch of nondescript buildings (except for the gorgeous library) salted around one of the hippest parts of New York City. There’s no campus at all, but it’s really exciting. Chicago has a campus, and the part of the city it’s in is a little drowsy. NYU has all these different schools – business, education, arts & sciences, performing arts. It’s very differentiated, and there’s certainly no core curriculum to bind people together. NYU is more than twice as big as Chicago, too, on the undergraduate level. And, although it has an excellent faculty, its main attraction is being Right There! In The Heart Of Manhattan! People mainly go there because that’s where they want to be. ("If I can Make! It! There! I’ll make it anywhere . . . ") At Chicago, the academics is the main draw, and the city somewhere behind that. So the character is pretty different. You would never, ever find the Olson Twins at the University of Chicago.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to trash NYU, by the way. I really like NYU. I have friends who teach there, and I know the president somewhat and admire the heck out of him. But if you are confusing it with the University of Chicago, you aren’t paying close enough attention to either.</p>
<p>I have fallen in love with UChicago even more after reading this place. It sounds exactly like the kind of atmosphere I’d love. Unfortunately, I’d require heavy aid to go there, and I’m an international. :(.</p>
<p>I’m going to just pick a bone with the White-male-centric thing for a bit-- though Chicago gets high ranks from the academic conservatives, my academic experience has been wayyyy womyn-of-color-centric, and the course offerings in a variety of departments-- English, Anthropology, Sociology, History, etc. will confirm that.</p>
<p>As far as reading goes, you learn what to read and what to skim. And sometimes 100 pages of a history book can be lighter reading than 15 pages of Kant, for example, so quantity is not the best determinant. Also, sometimes the class might be more lecture-heavy than discussion-heavy, so there’s less accountability for each reading.</p>