I’m curious to hear from some of the prospective parents of chicago students: did you see this as an apples to oranges comparison to other schools, or apples to apples?
Was chicago offering something that seemed to be a true difference in kind, or degree?
Well a sample of one, but my son chose Chicago primarily for its academic reputation whereas its similarities to other elite schools provided a strong assist. So for this 18 year old class of 2024 kid he saw apples to apples. Proximity to the city of Chicago was also a large positive.
^@River65, did your son apply ED1, ED2, EA or RD? I wonder how much a current student’s perception influences the application plan?
Would think that there are three application plans: ED2, RD and, to a lesser extent EA, where UChicago is will come out as a difference in degree more than in kind. ED1, on the other hand, might be based on more of a “difference in kind” perception.
It’s quite possible that Admissions recognized that with the larger class size, they are attracting a variety of reasons for attending and not just something as simple as “because it’s different” or “because it’s not that different” from other schools.
Thanks for the take @River65
Any other prospective or current parents/students? @CateCAParent and others - any other takes? Was this an apples to apples comparison to other schools, or did Chicago seem to be a difference in kind from its peers?
Ah yes. The reputation for being Oddballs. Here, from Boyer’s book concerning a report that Hutchins’ successor Lawrence Kimpton made to the university trustees in 1954, following a comprehensive survey of high school administrators:
“Every high school principal and college counselor knows precisely the kind of student they think we want, and they endeavor conscientiously to urge these students to come to the University of Chicago. The stereotype varies a bit in different parts of the country, but it adds up pretty well into a certain kind of youngster. First of all, he must be odd and not accepted in games and social affairs by the other students. He must be bright, not necessarily in the conventional sense of high I.Q., but in some extravagant and unusual way. He must have read and pondered esoteric things far beyond his years. He draws a sharp breath when reference is made to Aristotle, St. Thomas, John Donne, and James Joyce. He wears glasses, does not dance, deplores sports, and has advanced ideas on labor and the theory of relativity. But he is confident that he would have been happier had he lived in the age of Pericles or during some obscure period of the Middle Ages. The converse of this stereotype is also the case. As one college counselor phrased it to me, “it simply does not occur to any of our normal students to go to the University of Chicago.” As one tries to get to the causes for the creation of this stereotype, many things are mentioned. It is widely understood that we read only the Great Books at the University of Chicago and ponder the 102—no more, no less—Great Ideas. We have insisted that the purpose of a university is to train the mind, and the inference has been drawn that the rest of the person may go hang so far as we are concerned. We have deplored fun, snorted at anyone who wanted to develop himself physically, and sneered at anyone who conceived of a college education as having any vocational or practical significance.”
It’s safe to say that most of the students are NOT like this today.
@JBStillFlying - the fewer oddballs as described above, the more chicago seems to converge with the other great intellectual colleges across the country. But, I suppose reasonable minds can differ on whether chicago is now a degree of difference - or set apart entirely - from its peers.
I do love hearing the current/prospective folks chime in though. What say you?
@Cue7 - w/o doubt. A couple have already done so when they or their kids were admitted ED1 this year.
Son is admitted into Class of 2024 (he is not yet committed but is heavily leaning towards UChicago). He is attracted for its strong academic reputation …the theoretical approach to build a strong foundation and prompting students to ask deep questions are his reasons (he wants to get into research). Similarities to other universities including ivies are a positive from us/parents perspective - student does not really care much about that aspect (whether they alike or different aspect).
Degree vs. kind depends to some extent on the level of abstraction at which you begin. If you begin with “American private research universities that are members of the AAU” – a proxy for private universities of recognized high academic quality in nonprofessional fields – everything might just as well be a difference in degree, and not much of one. They all resemble one another a lot more than they differ, and the differences over which we obsess here are trivial relative to the fundamental similarities.
If the question is “How does the Chicago undergraduate experience differ from that at Stanford or Princeton or Penn?” the answer may well be “Quite a bit,” but the “bit” is significantly different compared to one or another of them. A better question would address “the range of undergraduate experiences,” because in fact there would be considerable overlap among all of them. Marlowe1 may believe that there is some ineffable core of a Chicago education that almost all of its students receive and that is completely unavailable at the institutions to which we are comparing it, but that just ain’t so, and it ain’t been so for quite a while, if it ever was. (Maybe it was true in the 70s if the ineffable core was the combination of intellectual richness and poverty of just about everything else. There may not have been anywhere else where one could get such a fabulous education and at the same time be so miserable and be so immersed in a community of miserable peers.)
Chicago does have a brand for undergraduate education, and it does stand for something different from other hyperselective universities (all of which, in turn, have their own brands and stand for something a little different, too). Chicago’s brand includes intellectual rigor, constant debate regardless of subject-matter silos based on shared intellectual experience and shared understanding of how academic debate should be conducted, and a commitment to classroom learning as the most important element in a college education. And all of that in the middle (sorta) of a world-class city, but not much distracted by it. (Sure, that could be Columbia, too, but it isn’t.) I love Chicago’s brand.
He applied RD. I grew up in Europe and immigrated to the US as an adult but I loved everything about UChicago on our visit. Both the 2020 campus with its Four Seasons dorms, its beautiful Gothic architecture and most of all the students we met. My son was initially less enamored despite his high school also believing it was a good fit. After he was admitted he spent a few days talking to current students and became excited. He had been deterred by the reputation of a poor social life. He was easily dissuaded about this. A bigger issue is that he is a nationally ranked athlete in a sport Chicago doesn’t play. While he wasn’t recruited for the sport elsewhere he could have played at as a walk on at some of his other admitted choices. So that was a factor. I like to believe Chicago saw he was a fit first and that my son agreed after the fact! As he didn’t expect to be admitted RD he had not invested a lot of time thinking about the school until March.
^ @MohnGedachtnis at #108 - I wouldn’t say the ineffable core is completely unavailable elsewhere but you might have to swim upstream to get it. My son thinks that the opportunity to read and discuss the texts he’s been covering in hum and sosc this year would be pretty unusual for a first year student elsewhere. However, it’s not simply that the curricular opportunity is unusual - it’s that so many of his classmates are sharing the same experience and enjoying it as much as he is. He has a group to relate to for his rather esoteric interests; he’s not swimming upstream. Nor does he need to worry that his choices will fall prey to contemporary sentiments about certain cannons of thought, whether by student or faculty petition. I think these examples illustrate some of the key differences between UChicago and other places. Had he attended Yale, he would have been very disappointed about that art history survey course getting the axe. That news served to confirm that he made the correct decision to ED2 to Chicago.
Cool! I’d beware of falling too much in love with those “Four Seasons” dorms, however, lest he end up in Max, BJ, Snitch, or I-House. Dorm assignment is random this year, although I believe that you might be able to specify whether you want a single or double.
I have tried to find it repeatedly, and never succeeded. Maybe one of you can do better:
Sometime in 2005 – we were on the mailing list because our daughter had been accepted to Chicago, and maybe by that point had already committed to it, or possibly even have started – we received a special issue of whatever that official newsletter is (or was) that they sent around to alumni and others. This was long and dense, and on newsprint, I think, and it consisted entirely of a report by some faculty/administration committee on the future of the College, which had been assisted by McKinsey consultants. It was really detailed and really informative. I think I remember that it was also a little curious to be getting it in 2005, because it was dated 2002 or 2003, and many of the concrete steps it recommended were already being implemented.
As I remember it – and memory can be hazy and selective, I know – it definitely leaned towards the Cue7 side of this constant debate. The big bones of the story it told was that the University had made a series of terrible mistakes with the College in the 40s and thereafter, the cumulative effect of which had been to cause significant harm to the University as a whole, and to threaten its long-term viability. This was contrasted at great length with what had happened at HYP and elsewhere. In essence, the College was not big enough, and it was not producing enough alumni who (a) thought warmly about it and wanted to support it and (b) were rich. (The report was much more focused on the role of alumni giving than on the role of college tuition, although it discussed that, too.)
Undergraduate alumni giving was the critical backbone of the peers’ glowing financial health, and it was a glaring weakness at Chicago crippling the institution. In terms of sheer numbers, Chicago was running behind. The College had shrunk after WWII, while its peers grew, and grew again in the 60s and 70s, so that they were graduating up to twice as many people per year as Chicago. And by the 90s boom years it was clear that a much higher proportion of those much larger alumni corps was giving to their alma maters. People felt warmly about their colleges, wanted to support them and send their children there. Meanwhile, a high proportion of Chicago alumni felt angry and resentful about their college experience, and did not want to support the institution or send their children there.
Moreover, compared to its peers Chicago’s alumni were much more likely to be pursuing careers in public service or academia than their counterparts at peer colleges, and they were less likely to have access to family wealth, too. Chicago was getting nowhere near the number of transformative megagifts from undergraduate alumni that its peers were getting.
The report did not talk at all about compromising Chicago’s academic culture. It was viewed as a key asset, one that would be attractive to a much wider group of students than had been previously applying. But it was a clear message of the report that the Ivy League was vibrant and growing, and Chicago was having trouble keeping up, because Chicago was not enrolling the right mix of students, and not taking good care of the ones who enrolled. Chicago needed to enroll a mix of students that was much more like that in the Ivy League, and to do that it needed to treat its students a lot more like the Ivy League colleges did.
The report’s concrete recommendations included:
– increasing the size of the entering class by 30%, from 1,000 to 1,300
– marketing the University of Chicago to a wider range of students, and admitting students with a wider range of interests, including some who wanted to be, or who were, wealthy
– improving undergraduate quality of life, by increasing the volume and quality of on-campus housing, making more and better extracurricular activities available, emphasizing traditions, strengthening the house system, and providing better career counseling
I thought the report was being given such wide circulation because it described actions and goals that were very much in progress. And it sure looks like that is what they were doing then (before Zimmer’s appointment, by the way), and what they continued to do even more aggressively after he took the reins.
Anyway, that’s what I remember. Maybe someone can find it and expose my biases by telling me what it really said.
^ All that is also covered in Boyer’s book, which probably makes reference to the same document (or the same primary sources that resulted in the document).
@MohnGedachtnis that report… enrolling a mix of students like the Ivy League, and treating the students like the Ivy League colleges did, while keeping the school’s academic culture… this sure sounds like creating the “academic ivy,” doesn’t it, @JBStillFlying ?
Also, if that report is accurate, it sure sounds like Chicago was taking its cues and guidance from the Ivy League! I mean, where is the Chicago exceptionalism here? It sounds much more like they were falling in line, rather than exhorting their anomalous positioning.
This sounds like McKinsey encouraged Chicago to take the ivy model, but keep the academic flavor. It’s funny to think the game plan for Chicago’s change was created - of all places - by a consulting firm.
@Cue7 - Since you asked, let me ask if any of you have seen “Rashomon” by an award winning Japanese Director Akira Kurosawa (circa 1950). In this classic, Kurosawa reveals the complexities of human nature as four people recount different versions of the story of a man’s murder and the rape of his wife. This is of the same incident unlike what we see here spanning several decades in terms of the UChicago experience and exchanges with Dean Nondorf (undoubtedly at different times and perhaps not even in the same decade). I sometimes see UChicago from Texas Philosopher @marlowe1’s perspective from a handful of decades ago, other times from @JBStillFlying or @CaliMex’s perspective a decade later and other times from your perspective sometimes after that. I don’t think you get a complete picture from just one and that’s probably the way it should be? No?
@Waitlistedparent - I agree - all the perspectives are important. My biggest takeaway from this thread, though, is that the dominant perspective (the one that catalyzed the creation of this academic ivy) was… McKinsey’s! Again, of all places.
I would have thought the genesis for the change would have come from the bowels of some Chicago faculty/admin committee (maybe w members from the fabled comm of social thought?)
Instead, it looks like sonnenschein/randel et al just went to a corporate consulting firm and said “here… tell us how to fix this mess.” And McKinsey came back and said, “hey! You know what? Be more like the Ivy League - they are successful!”
Where was JZ Smith or Herman Sinaiko or Andrew Abbott yelling, “McKinsey?! McKinsey is going to tell the University of Chicago what to do??”
I can’t find anything to object to in @MohnGedachtnis ’s formulation in #108. Whether the Chicago brand amounts to a difference in kind or a difference in degree is a faux-scholastic quibble without an answer. I’ll settle for his “standing for something different from other hyper-selective universities”.
A current first-year posting in another forum answers the question of what is unique about the College in this way: “[It is] the culture of the majority of the student body. UChicago has an amazing community of learners who are passionate about what they are learning. People who live and breathe academia would love it here (in addition to just curious learners).” Yet she acknowledges that the College also contains “a fair share” of pre-professional and practical types who are “simply here for the degree” and even “a small portion of the student body who are party people.” Those proportions haven’t changed much since the sixties.
A Chicago education is not at all “ineffable” - we describe it endlessly in this forum - and even at my windiest I do not aver that it is “completely unavailable” at all other institutions. The significant point - made by the student commenter above - is that learning is the main event at Chicago as it is nowhere else. That is the principal if not the exclusive denominator of the student body. Within that common culture there will be differing personalities. Some will be monastic, pointy-headed, rébarbative, etc - the types especially associated with an earlier era and despised by @Cue7 ; others will be passionate learners without utterly excluding other interests and activities. Cue is happier with that latter type, as is Mohn. I prefer the former and believe they set the tone. However, I can accept all of them well enough, even the ones just there for the degree or the parties.
Just don’t make me gag on the incessant ivy triumphalism, else I will pick up my books and go back to Prairie View A & M.
Perhaps, but in a former life, I was in consulting. (Not McKinsey level, but our boutique competed with Booze Allen on occasion.) My partner used to say that a client will purchase a consultant for one of three reasons: 1) they don’t have the technical expertise in-house; 2) they have some expertise don’t have enuf staff nor time to complete the project; or, 3) management knows what they want to do but need an outsider to confirm the direction and help sell it to the Board. (It also gives management an out if the Board hates the idea.)
So, it’s entirely possible the UoC Prez (Randel?) knew the direction he wanted to take in the mid-oughts, but brought in (unassailable) McKinsey to help close the deal with the Board, and more importantly, faculty.
UChicago used McKinsey on a number of occasions over the decades. McKinsey, after all, was founded by a UChicago alum who also served on the faculty of the business school in the early years. So not quite the bowels of some faculty/admin committee, @Cue7, but not far removed either.
Can’t find a reference to the specific report that @MohnGedachtnis mentions; however, the issues and strategies are well documented in Boyer’s book and were forthrightly put to the faculty by Sonnenschein in the 90’s. Implementation began in the late '90’s so @MohnGedachtnis is correct - well before Zimmer’s time. In fact, it was around the time that @Cue7 maintains that he attended the College. Surprisingly, Cue has provided no “on the ground” facts which is a tad odd, given the vocalization of so many in the College at the time.
The correct size of the college had been a subject of debate since Lawrence Kimpton’s era (so 1950’s) and, in fact, Kimpton had argued for a size matching approximately what peer schools were achieving by the 90’s. Kimpton was on record - apparently on many occasions - as stating that the university needed a large, thriving undergraduate program in order to sustain itself financially. Other schools were merely doing what UChicago had wanted to do decades ago but tabled due to financial considerations and various factional disputes. Sound familiar? (read: Housing).
UChicago has made no bones about comparing itself to other Ivy-Plus schools (Boyer even uses that term). At the university level, they are all world-class research institutions and Chicago has always competed with these peers for top faculty and grad students.
The Hutchins era was hard on the university and seems to have set it on a 50-year detour that required serious catching up. That’s pretty obvious. Now that the university has successfully addressed the deficits concerning the College, it has begun to focus on the quality of the graduate programs, particularly in the humanities and (some of) the social sciences.