Where else did you apply and why Chicago?

uchicagoalum
Wed, 14 Aug 2013 20:40:32 +0000

Final decision was between JHU (engineering 5-Yr BS/MS), Chicago, LSE, Berkeley for econ. Dinged at Oxford, Wharton, Yale.

My thinking as an 18 year old was limited to I should go to a good school and choose a marketable major. Basically narrowed it down to JHU and Chicago, and then it became a pre-med vs. Economics PhD/MBA/JD thing. The fact that medical school placement is so cruddy at good schools (that is, a lot of kids who go to ivies end up in med school at jumbo state schools) turned me off to the whole notion of doing premed despite some allure to being at Hopkins.

Don’t regret that decision, but in hindsight I would have taken LSE (three year degree) over Chicago. Having gone to a good prep school, the core was at best dilettantish and at worst a waste of time (I had like 11? 12? AP 5’s plus a couple of 4’s). I should note that I had no clue a core as such existed until I got the course guide in the mail over the summer and realized it was not just some random distribution requirements. True, I got to graduate from Chicago in three years, but still, I there was a year of fluff (and accordingly, stuff I wished I had learned like programming).

At the time it was not a big deal, but in I cannot believe from an adult perspective I spent time and energy studying doing humanities, Japanese arts history, physics (again), biology topical courses, etc.