@bluebayou - to answer your question about timing, my recollection is that Randel oversaw a good amount of building at the time and surely the university was getting continued advice on how to grow and expand. However, most of the decisions to do so were made prior to 2000 so during Sonnenschein era. It’s Sonnenschein who should be credited with where the College is today. He made the right call, and he took the bullet for it as well.
Oh wow! I will never forget that very contentious thread. Lots of UCDS on that one.
Founders are “well rounded”? Not necessarily.
The most successful founders I know were like dogs that found a bone and never let go. They put their heart and soul into learning and doing everything related to a topic of interest, a service or a product.
In my book, that is kind of “quirky”.
@JBStillFlying - a lot is made of McKinsey being founded by a Chicago accounting professor (James McKinsey), but I encourage people to read “The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business.”
The writer posits that the next gen of McKinsey leaders like Marvin Bower (a HLS/HBS grad) - after James McKinsey - actually set the tone, and adopted an extremely staid, Ivy League approach to the firm. They loved Harvard athletes and Princeton eating club types. In fact, until Chicago made McKinsey’s recommendations (per @MohnGedachtnis recollection) to accept more of a mix of students like the Ivy League, and give them treatment more similar to Ivy League colleges, McKinsey didn’t even recruit at Chicago undergrad.
Also, JB, at my time at Chicago, I remember a lot of discontent with sonnenschein, but also recall that it wasn’t like the entire undergrad was sitting in on the quad or protesting all the time. Most of us were still in the Reg!
Again, I always figured, just as most major U policy was formed by our brainy leaders (read: the core, accepting women and minorities before it was vogue, accepting brilliant high school sophomores in the post war period, etc.) that the current changes had foundation in that approach. Instead, it may have been a bunch of McKinsey Harvard grads telling Chicago to be more like the Ivy League. It’s practical, it aligns with what I’ve been saying for years. It’s just so… uninspired.
@Cue7 - well, perhaps they were hoping to get back on track with the College so that it could do more brainy things like go ED or TO . . .
What was the undergrads’ biggest beef with Sonnenschein?
A couple of thoughts about University of Chicago’s brand, and the changing pool of target applicants. Caveat: this is coming from the perspective of someone new to analyzing college offerings, and is not intended to be scientific. It is totally based on what I can glean from the messaging from various sources available to a mom of a high school sophomore. In other words, rumors with a dose of marketing spin.
Start with the premise that high schools don’t generate monks anymore. Kids, especially those with academic prowess, are groomed to be multi-faceted, and above all else, Interesting. Parents think about college applications while the baby is in utero. It isn’t a question of will they play a sport. It is a question of which oneS. And then, which one will they specialize in (a decision typically made when the child is 10). The same goes with music and social/charitable activities. And yes, hopefully also robotics or math competitions. All the boxes must be checked. I am talking public school kids in middle and upper middle class families. Private school kids have it worse. I wouldn’t be surprised if people spend as much grooming their kids for college than they will spend ON college. So, (a) it is rare to find a kid who by force of will carves out space to be purely, passionately academic. and (b) students for darn sure want to have their childhood sacrifices pay off with acceptance to a name college, preferably with a scholarship.
If UC wants the modern day version of a monk, it has to position itself to satisfy the student who does a lot of stuff all at the same time. For the modern monk you can’t separate out athletics from learning, or any of the other stuff they do. Multi-tasking is how they learn. They have been trained from birth to track multiple things at the same time. Social media has just reinforced the trend.
UC fills a sweet spot for the modern monk. It is different than a liberal arts college because it is in a city, bigger, has graduate students, and spins itself as geeky tough not geeky soft. It likes sports but without the jock culture that can overwhelm a school’s raison d’être. It isn’t all stem all the time, either. It has structure, but only in so far as structure enables the primed mind to shoot off it the direction it is pointed in at a that particular moment. For kids who have kept their inner monk alive somehow, being surrounded by others with inner monks is bliss.
The other thing to keep in mind is that college can no longer be just for the joy of learning, and these kids know it. Not many monasteries are hiring. So all this love of learning stuff gets you nowhere if there isn’t a job offer at the end of it. UC offers a life after learning too with an alumni network, opportunities for grad school, and a stellar reputation for job placement.
For the right kid, UC has everything without the annoying stuff.
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@JBStillFlying - as I recall, students mistrusted Sonnenschein. Many believed he wanted the “Princetonization” of Chicago. It was strange when I was there - many students looked at the ivy league (and by that, I mean HYP primarily) with a mixture of distrust and envy.
Also, Sonnenschein had the right plan, but not the right delivery. He came across as aloof to many students. Randel continued Sonnenschein’s plans, but his approach was much different - softer, and more nuanced. While Sonnenschein seemed dogmatic and arrogant, Randel seemed gentle and patient. (It’s too bad Randel left so soon - he was a great Chicago president.)
Extending the McKinsey analysis (which gives a strong nod to the Ivies’ strengths), it seems imperative for Chicago to solidify its linkages to the ivy plus group. It looks like the ivies build strength by being in this “club” together and Chicago should strengthen its status there. Indeed, the takeaway message from the McKinsey report seems to be: status matters.
I hope ivy plus becomes more of a “thing”!
@CateCAParent - thanks for the wonderful narrative. The “grooming” for college sounds awful. Chicago is at the mercy of its applicant pool. Finding those diamonds in the rough is increasingly hard (and expensive) to do. While Chicago will look in Texas and the plains of the midwest, most of the appropriate talent lies on the coasts (and many at boarding schools). It looks like a new brand of student exists: the well-rounded monk. I much prefer those to the rebarbative students @marlowe1 describes.
@CateCAParent 's summary is a reasonable description of many of the reasons UChicago was my son’s top choice. I’d add one more, though. During the time my son was doing most of his research into colleges, incidents like the Yale Halloween costume kerfluffle were regularly making news. He was horrified at the idea of that type of PC culture and it definitely played a role in how he viewed colleges and where he’d be comfortable.
The Ellison letter to the class of 2020 describing how the college is committed to open debate of all ideas and that there would be no trigger warnings was very influential in my son’s choice. If you knew my son you might be surprised that this was a factor since he’s fairly middle of the road, isn’t into discussing or demonstrating politically, would never wear an offensive costume and is just a quiet, scholarly type. But for him, the PC culture that appears to be so pervasive at most of the other top academic unis fell into the category of the “annoying stuff” he wanted to avoid.
Whether it is truly how UChicago operates or a more cynical marketing ploy, UChicago’s stance on academic freedom - and the culture associated with that - is a substantial draw for many of these modern monks.
Very cheeky and astute, @CateCAParent . Brought home how fortunate I was - and even my own children were - to have avoided that particular roller-coaster ride. Like you I do suspect, however, that there is an inner monk buried inside many of today’s kids. Let us hope the Chicago ethos can tap a longing hard to satisfy while riding the roller-coaster.
A thought about the Hutchins experiment… As described by many of the students of those days, including William H. McNeill, the extremity of the academic focus at the U of C was tremendously exhilarating and fostered a sense in its students that only here did serious learning exist. There was no truckling to the ivies in those days. Chicago was for a time a magnet for the brightest kids there were. That excitement dissipated over time and ran into practical barriers of the sort described above and in Dean Boyer’s book. It still existed in the sixties, at least in the minds of those of us who had chosen Chicago, if not in the minds of the not inconsiderable cohort of our fellow students who thought they were getting simply a less prestigious ivy. From all accounts the balances between those factions shifted ever more disastrously in favor of the ivy-wannabes over the next two decades. A renewal was required. It took place on many fronts. One of these was making the College attractive enough and well-known enough to increase the number of applicants, with the result that the Chicago type got further redefined to include not merely the lean and maggoty-minded monks but some of muscular conformation and even some with “bellies with fat capon lined”. (That’s as close as I can bring myself to uttering the odious expression “well-rounded.”)
My point is that Chicago would not today be known for its special difference from the other hyper-selective schools (whether a difference in kind or difference in degree) were it not for the grand and simple idea from the Hutchins era that a College is a place for learning things, not a playground, finishing school, and courting ground for the wealthy. This big idea morphed, transmogrified, and adapted itself over the subsequent years (and, yes, came to a point of nearly terminal exhaustion at some point in the eighties) into the very thing - “the brand” if you excuse another odious term - that today distinguishes the College from all others and accounts for its peculiar appeal both to the skinny, the muscular and the rotund among its entering classes of monastics.
Come all ye monks, of all shapes and sizes, ye shall be honoured and shall find sustenance, sayeth Lord Robert Maynard Hutchins through his prophets and interpreters, fathers Boyer and Nondorf.
If you think about it, boarding schools are as close as you come to a modern monastery. They offer seclusion, community, work ethic, deep thought, crappy dorm rooms, the whole she-bang.
It still offers the high brow stuff for those who want it, but for families looking for a focus on academics (and can get financial aid) - they are unparalleled. In my biased opinion. For the right kid.
Would a monastery for girls be a Convent? Abbey? Nunnery? ?
Yes, let’s not forget the girls. I would put them in this metaphorical monastery as well and call them monks of the spirit. If I start thinking of nuns and convents the metaphor begins to fray and puts me in mind of the not entirely instructive case of Abelard and Heloise.
Re @CateCAParent’s post, David Brooks (alum) wrote a great piece about 20 years ago called The Organization Kid. A great read and still applicable today (if not worse).
The Chicago Statement on free expression is another distinguishing feature of the university, coming as it did in the midst of many controversies over speech on campus, including some fairly weak-kneed responses by administrators (or active attempts on their parts to control it). It’s not exactly “new” because UChicago has reaffirmed free expression and inquiry throughout its history, but the committee’s statement was certainly timely. According to FIRE, 71 institutions have signed on over the past four years, including a few other Ivy+ schools fairly early on.
Hutchins’ footprint is still very much present in the College’s ethos as a serious institution known for academics rather than sports or EC’s. This reputation still causes concern for new admits or prospects, as we read every year in CC or other forums. The Core - not just in concept but also in curriculum - still includes Hutchins-inspired sequences, although over the years other options have been added to keep the curriculum updated and relevant to contemporary areas of research. That level of choice reflects both the Hutchins’ push for the eternal truths to be found within the Great Books and the original goal of educating the undergraduates broadly in the various specialty fields (natural and social sciences as well as humanities) using contemporary research methods.
If UChicago is “well-rounded” anywhere, it’s in the curriculum. One third of your academic experience is Core, another is major and a third is free choice (including another major or minor if desired). What other Ivy+ school has the same degree of curricular “well-roundedness?” It would be interesting to start comparing schools this way, since curricular issues tend to be so prominent in why students end up choosing UC.
@Waitlistedparent and @marlowe1 - “nunneries” and “convents” are often referred to as monasteries as well. And aren’t most boarding schools now co-ed?
On the subject of monasteries not hiring, I’m a little bummed - Chicago undergrad is still not in the top 25 feeders for Harvard and Stanford Business Schools.
While Harvard, Yale, UPenn, etc. are all well represented, per the deep dive, Chicago sends an insignificant number to HBS and Stanford Business School.
The 2020 business school grads probably graduated college around 2014 or 2015 - so in the Nondorf era.
It kind of makes me want to throw my hands up. Despite all the change, bigger class sizes, etc., Chicago only places marginally better now at Yale Law, Harvard Law, and is pretty irrelevant at H and S business schools. What are all these chicago grads doing? What’s it going to take before Chicago at least places as well as Duke or Dartmouth?
(Relatedly, McKinsey still offers scant recruiting resources for Chicago undergrad - they only have one recruiting contact there, as opposed to teams of four or five at UPenn, Dartmouth, heck, even Williams…)
https://www.mckinsey.com/careers/students/undergraduate-degree-candidates/university-of-chicago
Compared to
https://www.mckinsey.com/careers/students/undergraduate-degree-candidates/dartmouth-college
I mean seriously - 2nd best SAT scores in the nation, ~8% accept rate for years, business econ major… when will the placement actually be as good as Chicago’s “lower” peers? Do elite employers/schools still look at us like the weird kid in the HS cafeteria?
Could it be a combination of factors?
—The Ivy alums and old boys just keep on tapping each other endlessly
—UChicago grads aren’t as enthralled with living on the east coast as the kids who actually attended east coast schools
—UChicago grads are more able to resist the allure of prestige
—Chicago exceptionalism remains intact in this as in all matters
I can’t say that this troubles me one little bit. Cue, in your day what percentage of your classmates or your personal friends intended to go to business schools? In the sixties I knew precisely no one with that aspiration. Had that changed by the nineties?
“Grooming” for college in the ways that @CateCAParent describes are specific to certain demographics. They are not the norm, even though it feels like that in certain coastal areas, large cities, and affluent suburbs. Not to digress, but it is one of the main reasons why privileged kids are now considered at risk when it comes to mental health.
If you are a college admissions officer, this is the demographic segment where you will find potential full pay families.
@marlowe1 - in my day, very few aspired to business school, law school, etc. I actually think I know more grads who literally went on to become monks (literally!) than went to an elite business school. I didn’t hang out with many econ types, though. Some had interest in this, but it wasn’t “in the air.”
My concern here, however, is the McKinsey report highlights the importance of establishing a wealthy alumni base. HBS and Stanford and Yale Law grads tend to be quite wealthy and influential. For the health of the college, it’s important for Chicago to place lots of students at these places.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be happening, at least not in a way that’s commensurate with the strength of incoming classes.
If we’re #2 for SAT scores, how are we #12 for Yale Law placement, or #30 for HBS placement? How is it tiny Williams College gets more McKinsey recruiters than our undergrad of ~7000 students?
The inputs seem great, but, on the other end, the numbers seem to lag.
The pipeline doesn’t seem nearly as strong as I would suspect.
@Cue7 - USNWR lists business schools in the following order:
1T Stanford
1T Penn Wharton
3T NU Kellogg
3T UChicago Booth
5 MIT Sloan
6 Harvard
…
Staying put, other than to aspire for Stanford or Penn, makes sense in this case, yes?
It also matters a lot on your concentration…
@Waitlistedparent - I’m sure Chicago undergrad sends a healthy number to Booth, but HBS and SBS are especially big draws. To be outside the top 25 at these benchmark schools is pretty bad…
In contrast, per the Forbes report, Stanford undergrad sends plenty of students to BOTH HBS and its home business school (Stanford B school). Harvard undergrad also does the same.
I don’t know why Chicago would be any different, if its b-school applicants were as compelling. It just looks like, while the talent coming into H or S or Chicago isn’t that different, somehow, elite employers (like McKinsey) or elite b schools are less interested in Chicago undergrad.
For instance, McKinsey has five recruiting contacts at Harvard and Stanford undergrad. Chicago undergrad just gets one - and she’s not even specialized for the school, she’s the general recruiter for the area.
What gives?