<p>Is there any point in considering UChicago? My son is looking for an intellectual environment but after his visit he’s not sure UChicago would fit because he is not interested in science research or Econ (and references to Scab) seemed to dominate the discussion. His primary interests are Chinese language and culture and computer science.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Why in the world would you think Computer Science was not a fairly popular major anywhere?</p></li>
<li><p>It’s easy to look up the declared majors of Chicago students; the university publishes a census every quarter. Here’s the most recent one <a href=“http://registrar.uchicago.edu/sites/registrar.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/pdf/statistics/eoq/EOQ.Spring2013.pdf”>http://registrar.uchicago.edu/sites/registrar.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/pdf/statistics/eoq/EOQ.Spring2013.pdf</a> </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Out of about 3,900 students with declared majors (and about 5,000 majors declared, i.e., about a quarter of the students have double majors declared), there were 115 Computer Science majors, and 50 East Asian Languages and Civilizations majors. There were lots more Economics majors (840) and various types of science majors (about 960), but together they add up to less than half of the students. Certainly Economics and Biology are the two biggest majors, but good luck finding any elite university where those two aren’t among the top majors.</p>
<ol>
<li> There are certainly other universities with bigger, more popular Computer Science and/or Chinese programs, but most of them are even tougher to get into than Chicago. (Stanford leaps to mind. Harvard, too, but people sometimes complain about its Computer Science department.) Some of the best Computer Science programs are at places where you wouldn’t necessarily go to study Chinese, but I’m sure all of them offer the ability to take lots of Chinese, one way or another.</li>
</ol>
<p>UChicago can be a good fit for students that aren’t interested in science research or Econ. The humanities and non-Econ social science departments are also very, very respected, and it’s pretty hard to go through the Core without coming out with some knowledge of non-science or Econ topics. I have friends who don’t want anything to do with science research or Econ and yet they’ve all found amazing classes/RSO’s that fit their interests and students they can have discussions with about those subjects. As somebody who does not plan to major in any of the hard sciences or Econ, I have gotten heavily involved with many political science type RSO’s and am having a hard time planning my schedule for the next few years (too many classes, so little time). </p>
<p>I don’t have any experience with the Computer Science department, but I have heard from friends that are interested in pursuing the major that it’s very theoretical (anybody with intimate knowledge of the curriculum please feel free to correct me). That’s definitely something that your son should look into in case he’s not interested in that aspect of the field. I haven’t heard anything about the East Asian Languages and Civilizations department, but UChicago has its own center in Beijing (the only other center is in Paris) that offers great study abroad and internship opportunities: [Student</a> Programs | The University of Chicago Center in Beijing](<a href=“http://www.uchicago.cn/student-programs/]Student”>http://www.uchicago.cn/student-programs/)</p>
<p>
I’m a computer science major here. I can’t find a citation for this, but the department says that undergraduate coursework is about half theory and half application. In reality this ends up being a lot of theory, because in talking to students at other schools, I find that their classes are almost all application-/career-oriented.</p>
<p>Thank you, JHS and others for your comments. That report gave much larger numbers than another source I found online. My son will continue to research the comp Sci and Chinese options.</p>
<p>While perhaps not a dominant major on campus, Chicago has one of the best Chinese programs in the US. Columbia, Chicago, Cornell, Harvard, Michigan, Penn are generally considered the top schools for chinese. The Gourman report, while slightly dated, listed these schools as having the top undergraduate chinese programs:</p>
<p>Harvard
Cornell
U Chicago
U Penn
UC Berkeley
Columbia
Stanford
U Wisconsin Madison
U Michigan Ann Arbor
U Hawaii Manoa
U Washington
Yale
Indiana U Bloomington
Georgetown</p>
<p>The selection of applicants and parents posting to any school’s forum rarely says anything about the school itself.</p>
<p>Thanks for the find, JHS. According to this document I was in a “very big” major with about 70 other undergrads.</p>
<p>My best friends from college were in majors with about 10 or 6 others, it looks like (art history, geography, linguistics, computer science + linguistics) but if you look at the course offerings at collegecatalog.uchicago.edu you can see that even for small departments the offerings are robust.</p>
<p>Any student interested in studying Chinese language and culture at UChicago should know that the University runs three different study abroad opportunities in Beijing (<a href=“https://study-abroad.uchicago.edu/programs[/url]”>https://study-abroad.uchicago.edu/programs</a>)</p>
<p>The “hack culture” is probably not as predominant at UChicago as it would be at a school like MIT, say. ([Enrollment</a> Statistics: MIT Office of the Registrar](<a href=“Statistics & Reports | MIT Registrar”>Statistics & Reports | MIT Registrar)) It’s 30 majors in CS compared to 130 at MIT. But there is a “hack at uchicago” organization.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://hack.uchicago.edu/]hack@uchicago[/url”>http://hack.uchicago.edu/]hack@uchicago[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Uh, just a quick comment on JHS’s link. Those are totals across all four years of students at that time (notice that over 1000 are “common year”). So realistically in a given year there are probably 1/3 as many people as listed there in a given major.</p>
<p>Also. Yes this school is known for its econ department, and science but it is also known as one of the strongest and most supportive schools for the humanities and social sciences inthe goddamn country. The school makes its mark by being powerful acrosss the board, even in disciplines more esoteric than the sciences.</p>