UCHICAGO workload/social scene/safety

JHS
Mon, 31 Mar 2014 13:20:19 +0000

If you are really familiar with the “safety” situation at Penn, then you can pretty much gauge what your reaction to Chicago will be, because the two schools’ situations are very, very similar. There are a few differences, basically due to the fact that Penn is much closer to the central business district in Philadelphia than is the case in Chicago, and Penn sits astride more major transportation routes. Hyde Park is a little more affluent than University City. But really the things people mean when they use the word “safety” are pretty much the same.

It’s not really anything to do with safety. Students at both universities are about as safe as students anywhere, and to the extent they face safety threats, it’s mostly from other students. It’s really about the feeling of comfort living in an urban environment where you see people of different ethnicities and different economic circumstances on a regular basis. But that feeling of comfort can be an important part of one’s overall wellbeing. Bottom line: if seeing poor people who are African-American walking the same streets you do freaks you out, you may have trouble feeling comfortable at Penn or Chicago.

Anyway, social life at Chicago is fine; people have plenty of fun. There is a greek system, and it is generally pretty weak, but not so weak that the people in it, and some first years, don’t enjoy it. Most students pretty much ignore it after their first year unless they are members. Social life revolves around clubs and other activities, doing stuff around Chicago, and parties in the off-campus apartments where most upperclassmen live.

You are probably less likely to get a freakazoid for a roommate at Chicago than at Harvard or Yale, not because there are fewer freakazoids there (my guess is there are a few more, but a meaningless number in absolute terms), but because many more first-years live in singles. (In four years at Yale, my roommates included a serious marijuana addict, a serious alcoholic, a full-bore paranoid schizophrenic, someone who took a leave because of clinical depression, and two science nerds with creepy sexual proclivities . . . .)