UChicago Area and Med School

truth123
Sat, 08 Dec 2012 10:43:31 +0000

I went to UChicago for undergrad, not medical school, so if you want to find out more about the latter, I am not the best person to talk to.

In a very anti-intellectual country and world, UChicago lives up to its reputation for believing in the life of the mind and caring about education and how it can transform an individual. Unlike HYPS, it isn’t just a place to hang out on the way to your Wall Street job or professional career. I think even some people who didn’t think it would have an effect find that it does. (Ask Alfred North Whitehead, he’ll tell you.)

(I am always shocked when I meet people from HYPS by how little they read. Perhaps you remember Barbara Bush saying she had never seen her husband read a book in 25 years, which seems to be the Yale way.)

OK, so back in the day Hyde Park was not exactly Santa Monica. But, then, I prefer Santa Monica to any college town, including Cambridge, Palo Alto, and New Haven. But, look, there’s always downtown Chicago.

And I do think much of the downside has been addressed by some of the changes. The larger undergrad population has brought more life and activity to campus, they’re moving the dorms to the center of campus rather than stringing them out throughout the neighborhood. They’re bringing more restaurants and shopping to the neighborhood.

It’s a good time to be at UChicago since it’s on a major upsurge, which I would compare to Stanford’s uptick in the 1950s. (Of course, UChicago always had the quality but it’s becoming more popular overall.) We could debate all day whether this a good thing from the point of view of the student body–and I think it probably is–but it will also have an effect on the quality of the faculty as well.

Clearly, the University wants the Medical School to be in the top 5 like the Law School and Business School and I think you are going to see that happen over the next decade. And that will have tremendous benefits for the University as a whole as well.

Gee, and they don’t even pay me to write this stuff. Hope it helps…