U of C/Harvard

grasslands
Sat, 02 Apr 2005 09:45:27 +0000

My S attends Chicago as a first year so I will try to be of some assistance. Of course it would be interesting to know what your son would like to study. My S also turned down an Ivy, and turned down scholarships to top 25 universities to attend Chicago. Words to describe his undergrad experience include intense, exhilerating, tiring, challenging. He has found the school to be diverse. In one math class he is taking there are just a few white males, most others are Asian, Eastern European, etc. Students are serious and enjoy the tag that Chicago is where “fun goes to die”. He has found time to attend the Chicago symphony orchestra, snow ball fights, Doc movies, and the classic conversations at coffee shops until 2:00 AM. He has attended seminars given by Nationally known academics but also spent hours preparing for his classes. He looks forward to taking graduate level classes offered to undergraduate students probably beginning Junior year. He is a strong proponent of the core and so far has read Aristotle, St. Augustine, Dante, Kant and many others. He has been very impressed by his professors. He has had one class taught by a TA but enjoyed the TA tremendously-shocked with his knowlege. My S was recently selected for a National Science Foundation scholarship to study and research math this summer for 8 weeks. There are several USA Math Olympiad students in his class. He firmly believes he was selected because of the reputation of Chicago in the academic community. Sporting events at Chicago are not well attended as the students are less interested in that aspect of the college experience. There are fraternities and sororities but not heavily emphasized.
I will leave it that for now, if you have more questions, I would be glad to respond.