Another commonality among the UCDS obsessed. When they’re called on their BS they say they’re leaving… but they never do. They’re too invested. Just can’t quit.
@mfwan at #39: it’s been my impression that universities in general are publishing less, not more, data. The Penn dean may be accessible and very nice, but I’d like to see his yearly stats on legacy, per @Cue7’s earlier comments. BTW, UC admissions tends to answer any question posed to them such as how many get admitted ED (answer: about 50%) or How many were admitted TO last year (answer: about 10-15%).
“But just because Stanford has become more opaque it doesn’t mean UC should remain opaque with their admissions info.” - say what? Stanford followed UChicago’s example LOL. (Actually, I thought they had stopped announcing early for Class of '21, same year as Uchicago, but maybe I’m misremembering). Perhaps they see the wisdom of de-emphasizing admit rates and application numbers. Anyway, why shouldn’t that apply to everyone?
I don’t think any university releases data by demographic group. So I don’t know of any university that releases the following
of first gen applicants, # admitted, mid 50% SAT range of applicants, mid 50% of admitted
of Black applicants, # admitted, mid 50% SAT range of applicants, mid 50% of admitted
of Hispanic applicants, # admitted, mid 50% SAT range of applicants, mid 50% of admitted
of White applicants, # admitted, mid 50% SAT range of applicants, mid 50% of admitted
of Asian applicants, # admitted, mid 50% SAT range of applicants, mid 50% of admitted
of legacy applicants, # admitted, mid 50% SAT range of applicants, mid 50% of admitted
of Pell applicants, # admitted, mid 50% SAT range of applicants, mid 50% of admitted
of General pool applicants, # admitted, mid 50% SAT range of applicants, mid 50% of admitted
You would need that kind of detail to really make any sense of admit rates and real chances of admission. Otherwise it is just noise and not any better than just saying
Total applicants, # Total admitted
Releasing ED rates vs RD rates might seem to give more information, but it really doesn’t. It just gives the ** appearance ** of more transparency
@JBStillFlying - good catch above! You’re correct, at Yale, it’s 17% of those who go into grad schools who get PhDs - so their total number of grads who get PhDs is probably small.
I wonder what Chicago’s stats here are, nowadays? Back in the day it was something crazy (I think) - like 15-20% of the class - of the TOTAL class - went on to get PhDs.
@Cue7 you’ve sparked my curiosity. I’ll do a bit of snooping around and post what I find.
I don’t know if he’s nice. The legacy number is in the link from my post above: 13% legacy for class of 2023.
. . . and here you go. From the newly-updated Admissions website:
“University of Chicago undergraduates find considerable success in applying to and pursuing top master’s and doctoral programs around the world. Within five years of graduation, around 85 percent of UChicago students are attending or have attended graduate school, and 15 to 20 percent go on to receive PhDs.”
https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/after-graduation/graduate-school-preparation
I’m astounded at that 85% statistic! @TheVulcan, what are your thoughts? Is this more evidence of that “Land of the Brave” upper-class privilege, or might there be something else going on here?
@Mwfan at #45 - found it! Thanks!
Great original post. I will add the following…
It is true that UChicago has a disproportionate number of students who are very academically focused and understand that you cannot become a serious intellectual without putting learning front and center in college. It is important that there is a college in the top ten that continues to explicitly endorse this approach (I would argue Caltech and MIT also do so). Ultimately, a mathematician, physicist, life scientist, area studies specialist, classicist, etc. of any real consequence requires leaning fully into the subject at hand. Particularly for those aiming to do a top tier MA or PhD and make something of themselves afterwards in a credential conscious area, this is nine times out of ten the route that must be walked even at the tender age of 18. On net, I feel a plurality of UChicago undergraduate still fall into this mold.
That said, like Ivies UChicago has tried to attract some subset of (still numerically strong) bright-well-rounded students who view academics as but an element within a mosaic of extracurricular activities, internships, etc. which may have little or no relation to their academic specialism. As your original post suggests, in most cases I think this multifaceted approach to college conflicts with its academic objectives but it is clearly compatible with going on to leading professional schools. UChicago is unique insofar as this type of student is not a majority by a large margin. Certainly, this student profile dominates both numerically and culturally at most leading universities and is noticeably favored by admissions.
There is a final student archetype though whose presence I find no redeeming value in and seems to be fundamentally different than the Reagan era Yalies you spoke of. I would color them as the “pre-professional at all cost class” insofar as they are almost singularly focused on getting a job at an elite professional services firm or tech company. They view studies – either proximally or at the graduate level – as merely instrumental to this end and contribute almost nothing to the intellectual community outside the classroom. While I appreciate that snagging such a job is not easy when you are not marketing a hard skill (and these students are not, they are aiming for generalist roles by and large), the winner takes all, sharp shoulders attitude they bring to college is very off putting. While it is hard to screen against these types in the admission process, my hope is the College does not proactively encourage this kind of behavior going forward (by say giving vocally billing to related students organizations).
In summary, while some balance between academically oriented students and bright-well-rounded kids was key to making UChicago less like Cal Tech and frankly more livable than it was in the dark days of the 80’s and 90’s… This third personality type is of no use at all in my view. They remain a small part of the student body but a not insignificant one and merit mentioning.
I did not go to UChicago for college but I went there for grad school. I am encouraging all my nieces and nephews to put UChicago on their list instead of the usual Berkeley, Stanford and Caltech mainly because it’s the most similar to the undergrad experience that I had - majoring in Computer Egineering and Chemistry and minoring both in Theology and Philosophy with a liberal arts core. The Stem majors got me my job but the liberal arts got me my promotions. At places like IBM where the catchphrase is “think”, one relies less on what was learned but on the methods and philosophies of how to think.
I think part of the UCDS crowd do not appreciate the latter. I certainly do and make it a point to mention it to my nieces and nephews. UnLike me and many of the 1st gen immigrants on this board, those who are born and educated here can and should Consider “risking” learning more than just what needs to be done for the next or first job. They have that luxury. They should use it because it pays off in the long term.
Personally, I think that learning stem in a liberal arts college gives the best outcome. (It’s tough when one is doing it because of the heavy workload but it opens so many doors since one can relate with so many people outside ones degree of specialization
I think this "type"comes in varying degrees. The O-Aids during my kids’ move-in weekends were very involved, natural leaders, had their fingers in many pots on campus, and so forth. But they also seemed to be serious students, from what I could gather during my conversations with them. While they may have a lot of non-academic stuff going on, it seems that academics still takes a front seat. They may just have the personality and time-management skills to handle some major multi-tasking. IMO, this kind of “multi-facetedness” is very different from significant EC’s such as a D1 sport or running a major non-profit, as those activities may take you pretty much everywhere but the classroom. Those who show up on campus in order to do something “meaningful” that doesn’t involve academics are clearly not putting the latter on the same plane. That’s a different type of “busy” student than the uber-busy UChicago kids I met. (Not that they don’t exist at UChicago - I’ve just never met them).
Welcome to this forum, @novusdoctrina . New blood and new thoughts are always good. Your observations of the typology of the present UChicago student body were most interesting. Even from my day I recognize that third type - having no real interest in the subject matter of studies except insofar as they tick a box. As if an education were an elaborate Rube Goldberg device (or even a Kafkaesque one) designed to torture the student in arcane ways before delivering him to a well-paying profession having little or nothing to do with his studies. Incidentally, something like that is the thesis of a very interesting recent book, “The Meritocracy Trap”, by Daniel Markovits, a Yale Law prof and grad. I dare to hope that his depiction of the same type you describe above is more applicable to the Ivy League schools, but I too, like you and our OP, worry that the type may be growing more numerous at Chicago. Their after-college lives, as described by Markovits, are not what I would wish on my own children - driven, joyless, one-dimensional. Even allowing for some exaggeration it is not a picture of fulfilled lives - not to mention the deleterious effects on everyone else.
@JBStillFlying agree the bright-well-rounded-types come in varying shades… I reiterate they serve a purpose and balance out a campus. There were too few when I arrived on campus in the early aughts.
@marlowe1 Daniel Markovitz LSE lecture on said book should be watched by any parent sending a child to a selective college. I would disagree with his characterization though that students who behave this way have so little moral agency.
@novusdoctrina and @marlowe1 I wonder how much the college size expansion has to do with finding more of the bright well-rounded types. Or maybe the arrival of Jim Nondorf kicked it off? He has the same energetic spirit. It’s like he admitted a whole lot of “Mini-Dorfs”
Markovits does overstate his case on the details in the interests of creating an overarching thesis - that we are all imprisoned in this iron cage of meritocracy, which divides our society between those who can succeed and those who can’t, both of whom are rendered miserable - the ostensibly successful because in the course of climbing the greasy pole they have lost their humanity and doomed themselves to killing hours of meaningless work, all for the sake of achieving wealth and status; and all the rest of us, who have been thereby rendered poor (relatively), idle (relatively) and of low status (definitely). He presents these as if they were the only choices, and he denies, as you rightly point out @novusdoctrina , any effective agency on the part of any of us to remove ourselves from this particular rat race. This seems simply false in respect of most of us, though possibly descriptive of the set the author himself moves in. Be that as it may, the book is very interesting, and I agree that it should be read by prospective students and parents. It very much put me in mind of all those books from the fifties and sixties (which he constantly refers to), “The Organization Man”, “The Affluent Society”, “The Other America”, which shaped my own youth and which I took as “How Not To…” guides for my own life. Those were not procrustean beds I intended to lie down in. No more do I think do most U of C students intend to lie in the bed Markovits has made for them. Yet his thesis may be a cautionary tale to the extent it describes a danger and a tendency found in that third type you describe above.
It is probably the case, JB, that the present-day U of C has more academic-loving “laypersons” (i.e. studious kids with real academic interests but not intending to become professional academics) than formerly. However, it has always had those types. That is more or less the way I would describe myself and my own friends once upon a time, though my intentions were far from clear even to myself. What may have changed due to the reforms is that these types may have reached a certain critical density on a newly fashionable campus whose tone changed subtly when it became stuffed with high-spirited undergrads who are more overtly cheerful and even ebullient than was once the case. My intuition would be that the kids who fall into that category are nevertheless imbued with real academic seriousness to match and leaven their increasingly high spirits.
U of C has a long tradition of skepticism regarding the relation between society and the academy. At my graduation decades ago the main speaker invoked the image of Plato’s cave, warning us about entering the world of shadows and encouraging us to stay in the real world of intellectual pursuits. Markovits doesn’t really question the liberal proposition that education is useful rather than an end in itself. Chicago’s willingness to challenge it has been a key element of its distinctiveness.
That’s an interesting observation and very true in my own experience, @Machiavelli1532 . I remember Mortimer Adler in the sixties making the point that the Chicago idea of education should be seen in opposition to that of John Dewey (who of course began his academic career at Chicago). Put bluntly Adler and Hutchins thought the reading and analysis of original texts was the central activity of learning, whereas Dewey thought learning came as a discovery from doing things - a personal exploration in the world, not the tedious gleaning of wisdom from old books that are mostly wrong-headed anyway. The Chicago model, as you say, maintained some distance from any idea of immediate usefulness. That distance is reflected in many small and large ways in the culture and history of the University. That’s an underappreciated factor that I believe makes Chicago very different from the peer schools and, I hope, more resistant to the utilitarian forms of personal aggrandisement described by Markovits and sometimes praised on this board as the ultimate rationale of an education.
Hi–Sorry, I just remembered that I forgot to reply to the question whether my son applied EA or ED. He applied ED–Chicago was by far his first choice.
I have a question: what is intellectual? what is U Chicago Intellectual? I ask this question as someone whose parents were both university professors and whose husband is currently a university professor and myself has two masters and unfinished PhD and working in industries. I think I have enough exposure and demonstrated intelligence (even by professor standard) to confess that I am profoundly confused about it.
So first step for me is to google the word:
Cambridge Dictionary: relating to your ability to think and understand things, especially complicated ideas:
Dictionary.com: a person of superior intellect.
a person who places a high value on or pursues things of interest to the intellect or the more complex forms and fields of knowledge, as aesthetic or philosophical matters, especially on an abstract and general level.
an extremely rational person; a person who relies on intellect rather than on emotions or feelings.
Cant find any official definition of “U Chicago intellectual”?
So is MIT engineering intellectual or not? Or it is only applicable to people interested in history, politics, philosophy, law etc?
So is medical researchers or medicine intellectual?
Is the person who designed the under ocean tunnel intellectual?
If the subject of interests involves $ or making profit, is it excluded as intellectual pursue?
@jhchicago those are good questions and of course opinions will vary on the answers. Personally it would mean the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake with altruistic motivation. So no, the pursuit of knowledge for profit would not qualify as intellectualism in my book, however the pursuit of knowlege may have the unintended result of monetary gain. Intellectualism would fit more with Plato, Aristotle and the other great philosophers whom were scientists before science became separated from philosophy. Again intellectulism for me speaks more to the motivation then anything else.