<p>A few things from a current student at Chicago:</p>
<p>. Attempting to quantify a student experiences in an individual department at any college is a completely meaningless endeavor. I have no idea what factors the NRC rankings took into account, but what does a .02 point difference between MIT and Chicago mean?! I can assure you that if you ever find out what that actually means - and do share if you do - it will become an insignificant difference when you consider the myriad of factors that go into a student’s experience at any given college.</p>
<p>In terms of job placement, I do know for a fact that 3% of the graduates from the COLLEGE went on to JP Morgan last year. If you consider that somewhere around 18% of students graduate with an econ degree, that should give you a pretty nice indication of the proportion of econ majors who go into Ibanking (granted that several students who go that route have majored in other areas like math or physics). </p>
<p>By far the most significant measure of the school’s committment to its undergraduate students is the access that the students have to its top faculty members (For us, that list would include Roger Myerson, Nancy Stokey, Steven Levitt, Robert Lucas Jr, Gary Becker, Robert Fogel, James Heckmann, John List, Kevin Murphy, Ronal Coase… you get the picture). Just to illustrate the point that is also obvious, Levitt’s econ of crime class can be taken by any student who has fulfilled the ECON 201 requirement (which, for the most part, is any second year). Robert Lucas Jr, in fact, teaches ECON 202, which is the third quarter of our INTRODUCTORY econ sequences. Do also note that none of these classes have had more than 50 people in them (I think Lucas’ last quarter had just over 20).</p>
<p>That’s all and great, but what would really be impressive is if the school ensured that its students could take advantage of the fact that they are in a major research university. This comes in two parts:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>First, a student here would expect to have options open for research assistantships. From my experience, every first-year student with whom I have talked to has gotten a research position if they were looking for one, regardless of which department they were in. Given that we have such a highly reputable business school, you’d imagine that it is a popular choice. Well, as it turns out, the Decision Research Lab hires numerous undergraduate students to help out with research, and several professors at the GSB have posted job offerings for college RAs. Plus, I know a guy here who worked in Heckmann’s computation program over the summer - after his first year. So, research opportunities are plenty.</p></li>
<li><p>Secondly, a good measure of the school’s committment to undergraduate teaching is if it allowed its students to take graduate level courses. Do know that at Chicago, a college student can take classes in all its professional schools (Divinity, GSB, Law, Medical, etc…), and also enroll in graduate level classes in the arts and sciences. For the professional schools, one has to go through the registrar to make it happen, but since the GSB is such a popular offering, there is even a streamlined process for it. Nonetheless, navigation through that system is pretty simply. For PhD classes, all that separates you from it is instructor consent, and I have yet to hear a case in which the professor has refused to allow an undergrad to enroll (excluding one case in which the class was exceedingly crowded).</p></li>
</ul>
<p>I hope this helps…</p>