UChicago vs. Cornell

VSGPeanut101
Sat, 20 Sep 2014 18:42:44 +0000

Re: living in Chicago. I agree with @harvestmoon1 U of C/Hyde Park is like an island with limited public transportation in and out. It is not that easy to get into downtown Chicago and there is really no place to go on the south side. I found it fairly oppressive, especially during the long winter. It was 100% different living and working on the North Side after graduation - I could hardly imagine that it was the same city.
Re: major. If you are confident about majoring in engineering, I would be cautious about U of C. New programs need time to find their feet and there is likely to be a learning curve for the faculty. I would suggest U of C as a strong interdisciplinary program for now, not a strong engineering major.

I am a proud U of C grad and think its a great place - probably stronger general reputation than Cornell, but of course, no reputation in engineering since the program does not yet exist. I would not go there to live in Chicago (Northwestern is better on that score - much as it pains me to admit anything positive about Northwestern). Go to Chicago for the Core, reading great books, being maximally academically challenged. There was a great David Brooks quote many years ago to the effect that “the University of Chicago has attracted the greatest concentration of juvenile neurotics than any time since the Children’s Crusade”. It was true when I was an undergraduate and as far as I can tell is still true today. It was (and is) the perfect place to be a Type A personality intellectual elitist (man we loved talking about reading Thucydides and Foucault). If its the right place for you, maybe you go there and major in chemistry and then get a masters in ChemE. It is very different from Cornell. Just because they have similar mean SAT scores, does not mean you will find similar cultures.