You’re making two very distinct points–one about selectivity, and another about quality of education. As a preface, let’s get something out there right now: you haven’t made any statements capable of “proving wrong.” So I’m not sure what you’re really asking for here. As to the second (loaded) question, you are asking for empirical proof about things that cannot be empirically proven. There simply is no effective or meaningful way in which to compare academic experiences or quality of education.</p>
<p>In any event…</p>
<p>How are you defining “selectivity?” Is it the ability to attract applications which you can then turn down? If so, Chicago is not very selective. The fact is, very few applications are as difficult to fill out as Chicago’s. You cannot submit the Common Application, nor can you submit your standard “personal growth” essay that you can for the majority of other schools. Chicago’s “Uncommon Application” requires multiple original essays on very unusual topics. It requires substantial time and thoughtfulness.</p>
<p>Some schools play the rankings game (I won’t name any school in particular). They use the Common Application, send out applications willy nilly hoping lots of people will apply (that they can turn down, thus lowering their acceptance rate), and extensively use waitlists to ensure better yields and lower acceptance rates overall. Chicago does not do these things.</p>
<p>Couple this with Chicago’s general lack of name recognition amongst laypeople, and you can see why there aren’t many people applying to Chicago just “for the heck of it.” If it wanted to, Chicago could spend millions of dollars giving out applications and fee waivers to students just so it could turn them down. It could also switch to the Common Application, thus encouraging students just to apply for the sake of applying. But why would it do so? It has successfully attracted the types of students which make it unique for over a hundred years.</p>
<p>Does that mean that the same person who goes to Chicago would not have gotten into a school with a lower acceptance rate? No, it does not. The number of unqualified people you turn down has no bearing on the quality of people who actually are accepted. That is why it is more important to look at the SAT figures for incoming student than it is acceptance rate. A student with a high SAT score/GPA had other options. He or she selected to go to UChicago for one reason or another over other schools. That, in my mind, is selectivity.</p>
<p>As for academic experience, no one equates Chicago’s grade deflation (even assuming it still exists, which some argue it no longer does) with academic rigor. Nothing like setting up a straw man and knocking it down. Similarly, you talk about “success” without providing any information as to how you are defining it, citing any sources that validate whether certain grads have achieved it, and presuming that it originates from the quality of education one received in college. In other words, you try to appear as if you are making positive distinctions when in fact you’re making purely normative ones.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, many believe that a solid foundation like that provided by the Core Curriculum is necessary before a person can effectively study, understand, analyze and discuss any particular field. I tend to agree. And this is what some refer to as “learning how to think.”</p>
<p>Many schools (and not just Columbia) have subject requirements that arguably achieve the same goal. What is more unique, however, is having such a strong, core curriculum within a major research university. We are talking about a place that produced the Big Bang Theory, first measured the speed of light, split the atom, invented the process of radio carbon dating…(and I haven’t even gotten into the social sciences like econ, sociology, etc.). Thus, students at Chicago learn how to think from the leaders in their respective fields, and then take more specialized classes where they contribute to that field. In comparison, many schools (again, I won’t name names) treat the undergraduate experience as if it’s an extension of high school–they teach TO their students, they don’t collaborate WITH them. In many ways, this stems from the fact that professors at non-research institutions are themselves not contributing to their fields. Put more harshly, I consider them glorified high school teachers. Even worse, many schools use graduate students to do their teaching. At UChicago, I took more classes with graduate students (i.e., as peers in the same class) then I took from graduate students (where they were my “teacher”).</p>
<p>There is a big difference between learning economics from a grad student who teaches (in broken english) from a text book, and discussing economics with the professor who first espoused the ideas printed in that book. There is a big difference between learning about anthropology, and acting as an anthropologist. That is the difference between being taught to, and actually participating in, academia.</p>
<p>These sort of things also occur in other major research institutions. In larger ones, however, the size of the classes and student body in general is prohibitive in terms of both meaningful interactions in the classroom, and meaningful contributions outside of it (i.e., as research assistants, etc.).</p>
<p>Therefore, if you limit the pool of schools to those with core-like curricula, those within a major research university, and those with a relatively low student-faculty ratio, the list becomes much, much shorter.</p>
<p>When I was at UChicago, I took classes at the Law School, at the GSB (now Booth School of Business), I had internships in finance downtown, I was a research assistant for a professor that made one of the most significant contributions to his field (which was subsequently published in Nature, with my name listed as a contributor). In fact, most of my classes during my third and fourth years were dual-listings whereby graduate students were taking the same class.</p>
<p>Do some other schools allow you to take graduate level classes? Of course. Are other schools located in major cities allowing for internship opportunities. You betcha. Can you be a research assistant at other schools? Surely. Are there schools that have similarly small class sizes? Of course. But at the end of the day, finding all of these things in one place is not that common. Together, they make for an educational experience which is more unique, and represents quite a different model than sitting in a gigantic lecture hall, having someone who has a PhD read to you from a text book, or sitting in a small discussion room, listening to someone who (while very intelligent, for sure) hasn’t actually made a significant contribution to their field since leaving the big research university that granted them their PhD.</p>
<p>I remember my first day of law school, I had to purchase books at the bookstore at the University of Michigan, and something just felt off. After a few minutes, it finally dawned on me: everywhere I looked, there were stacks of these colorful text books. When I was at Chicago, I rarely had text books. We had more journals, actual books, etc. And here I was, staring at a textbook that literally had a snowboarder on the cover. I wondered if the professor assigning that text book was going to require her students to cover it in paper grocery bags (you know what I’m talking about). And this was the University of Michigan, one of the world’s preeminent universities.