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Home Visiting Campus Student Life FAQ Calendar Contact Us |
| FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions
As a prospective student to the University of Chicago, it is your duty to ask a lot of questions about the endeavor you considering here. Here are some frequently asked questions of students here. There is no one representative answer for these questions, so we have included responses from several students so that you can get a flavor for Chicago.
It was the only school where I knew that I and everybody around me was going to be seriously challenged before we received our diplomas. I felt like for the first time I would be able to have a conversation with people concerning academic subjects that were simply uninteresting to most of my friends. I was always inquisitive and a very voracious reader of anything I could get my hands on. As I read more and more I developed bigger and bigger questions. Unfortunately the answers to these intellectual puzzles eluded me and as a result I felt like this university would help me improve as a thinker and make me a well-rounded person. Two words: intellectual quirkiness. Two more words: awesome people. On other campus tours, the guides put academics aside and talked about the social life. At
UChicago, the tour guide took it for granted that people will have lives outside class, and emphasized the academics. That made an impression on me, because what I wanted most from my college experience was academic rigor in classes filled with students who like to learn. And I have not been disappointed. Although UChicago is both a college and a university, as an undergrad, I feel like a lot of attention is paid toward us, and not just grad students. The people and the environment were the things that most stood out to me. This was a place I knew I could fit in and be myself WHILE and BECAUSE I was getting a great education. The Core also sounded perfect for me--I like too many things and the fluffy gen-eds at other schools sounded silly. I wanted to really learn, not just take a bunch of survey courses that I couldn't apply elsewhere. None of this has been disappointing so far, either, and I'm almost a quarter through my first year. The reason I applied and ultimately chose the University of Chicago was because they sent me cool postcards in the mail.
All the postcards and other mail I got made the place seem quirky, creative, and more focused on letting kids prove themselves academically rather than social ladder climbing. Yes, my whole college decision was based on mail. Considering that you average only about three hours of class per day, you really do have the other twenty-one hours to do whatever you want. Of course you are involved in other activities, but I know people who get all their work done during the day and then go out and still get enough sleep and good grades. The adjustment seems to be toughest for those kids who are used to having whole weeks to slack off and then cram in a semester system with a long reading period. At
UChicago, the 10 week quarter system keeps you steadily working day to day, so you rarely have all your tests and papers due at once. Also, while I had less homework per class in high school, we take fewer classes at
UChicago so it is no more difficult. Yeah, it is hard. But the thing is, it's a good amount of hard. Likely if you want to completely overload yourself with work, this is the best school to do it. But if you're halfway decent at time management, you'll be set, and you WILL have fun. Seriously. The University of Chicago is very hard, but it's not so hard that you won't survive. I travel the country with the Ultimate Frisbee team multiple times a quarter, act in a plural number of plays, maintain two jobs, and I still have time to hang out with the wankers at PSAC. No matter what, you will think that your school work is hard, but with your free time you make the work all the more worthwhile. Yes. It's hard. That's why this place is so self-selecting. The way I look at it this; If you love what you do, you will (despite your groaning and complaining) adore this place because of the intellectual stimulation that it provides. If you come here to major in econ or bio or whatever you think is going to make you the most money after college, you'll hate every last minute of it. This school is way too hard to do something that you don't love. Despite how weird we like to consider ourselves, it’s not like we’re doing anything that out of the world here…you know, except build nuclear accelerators in our dorm room for as a scav hunt item. We’re still college kids who enjoy hanging out, watching movies, playing ultimate. But it’s great that we get to do all these things and more in the wonderful city of Chicago (downtown’s only 30 mins away by public transportation). Oh, and we can play midnight soccer, ice-skate,
play broomball, etc. on the Midway; try various ethnic foods in the different neighborhoods like Greektown, Chinatown, Koreatown, Pilsen (the Mexican neighborhood), Devon Street (Indian and Russian), and the Polish quarters; enjoy cheap movies at Doc Films; yada yada. For me, it’s not what we do that’s special, but just enjoying whatever activities we happen to be doing, like going to free jazz concerts downtown or visiting the Lyric Opera, with a great group of friends. For fun, I run along the Lakeshore right down the street from campus, hop on the Red Line Train headed towards downtown, visit the Museum of Science and Industry a few blocks east of campus, head to one of the numerous coffee shops with my friends to discuss our recent debate in my Human Being and Citizen Class, chill-out in the Renold's Club on Shake Day, or simply walk around the campus and marvel at where I live. Well, recently my friends and I have been going uptown and finding cool ethnic restaurants to eat at. I have season tickets to the Chicago Symphony, I go up and see improv sometimes on the north side. In terms of campus fun, I can't remember
a week where we did not have a party of some kind. You can also find me in the crowd every Friday night at UChurch for revues of
UChicago's own improv group, Off-Off Campus (which is, of course, on campus). This is definitely another product of mentality—people who don't have fun are usually boring people to begin with. I really love my dorm and my housemates. I probably spend 95% of my social time doing something with some of them, whether it's going out to eat in Hyde Park on a Saturday night or heading uptown to check out the funky shops in Lakeview or doing a Disney marathon in the house lounge. I'm in Wind Ensemble and that is such a nice break on Monday nights. I met a lot of cool people that way and rehearsal helps me relax and focus on something other than classes for a few hours. Friday night movie showings at Doc Films are amazing, especially when you go with a group of friends. A few weeks ago, Doc showed Harry Potter 5. Afterwards, my friends an I did a midnight Harry Potter Campus Tour, wandering around immersed in the ridiculous similarities our campus has with Hogwarts. In addition to my extracurriculars (Campus Tour Guide, defense on the Women's Ice Hockey team), I love to take my dog for long walks around the neighborhood. There's a dog run here in Nichols Park, and both Gehrig (my dachshund) and I always have a ton of fun. I'm also gonna be honest, going to a frat party on the weekend (or a Wednesday night) is great fun, and a great break from all the intellectual gymnastics we do here. The Core is definitely challenging and it exposes students to texts they wouldn't read otherwise (believe me, I would not pick up Karl Marx on my own time.) It's wonderful though, because everybody around you is reading Marx, or maybe Plato, or maybe Freud, or the Iliad, and they're all turning it over in their heads and trying to make sense of it, just like you are. In that sense, an intellectual community springs up around these texts, and it makes for enriching conversations with classmates. The Core doesn't devour personal freedom in choosing classes, though. You can still do your pre-med. I would defend the Core as the one "practical" component of our learning here; it teaches students to think in many ways about many issues that are not always connected but which are pertinent to everyday life. People who think their Econ degree shows that they have life skills are wrong - it is the Core that
teaches us how to have educated dialogues about politics and religion and science and important facets of society that are so unfortunately hacked to pieces by the citizens of today. I have had good and bad experiences with teachers in the core, but I have had only good experiences with the course content. The Core is one of the main reasons I came here. I looked very seriously at the English system of education, but decided that it was
about so much depth in one subject and without breath in other areas that I would be, in the words of one Cambridge professor, “unemployable except as an 18th century British historian.” The benefits of the
Core already have already become apparent in my upper level classes where we are all working from a common base of knowledge and have reading and analytical skills that that surprise even some of the graduate students in our classes. I arrived absolutely dreading the Core. It was the only thing I didn't like about this school. When I went to register for classes, the math requirement terrified me. The funny thing is, I picked this random non-calc math class that looked "easy," and it turned out to be my favorite class of the quarter. The purpose of the Core is to force you outside your comfort zone and explore as much as you can. You never know what you might end up loving. I send it Valentines' Day cards. I have a love-hate relationship with the Core. I was struck and excited about the ideas coming from the books we read, Marx and Adam Smith for example. On the other hand some have been painful to go through; Aristotle quickly comes to mind. It expands my way of thinking and it taught me that the other side matters and has made me view the world in a different light. My math teacher would give us problems for homework and we would pore over them for hours - literally. Then we wouldn't be able to answer it, and we would go to class ashamed of ourselves. He would ask, "Did anyone solve such-and-such problem?" And no one would raise their hand, but he'd say, "Good, because it hasn't been solved by anyone yet." That, of course, was the whole point: he didn't expect us to SOLVE it, but he expected us to think about it in one hundred different ways so that eventually we could almost understand the problem, if not a solution. He wanted us to be of the opinion that five hours spent vainly looking for a solution was not five hours spent in vain. My favorite UChicago learning experiences have all been outside of the classroom. Going over to a professor’s house for dinner is always a pleasure, as is simply having a discussion during office hours. It is not just the stuff that happens in the classrooms that makes this place stand out, it is everything that contributes to your education that takes place beyond the desks. For my math requirement, I took a class called Studies in Mathematics. Basically, every kid in the class was taking it to fulfill requirements and avoid calculus. It turned out to be this amazing class about how math works. Our professor takes all of the things you think you know, like that one is greater than zero, and shows you how to prove it. It's not about how to perform useless functions; it's about reasoning and logic. My Classics of Social and Political Thought class was great. I sat next to one guy who took notes in Chinese on copies of the readings that he had purchased in German (so he could practice his German) and a girl who wants to become (and probably will) a US Supreme Court Justice. We had some pretty cool people in that class. We were all really passionate about the arguments and we all really bonded. Most of our class still gets together with our professor to have coffee once a quarter. My favorite class was 500 Clown, taught by 500 Clown, a clown troupe based in Chicago. In the class I learned the methods of clowning based on impulse/reaction, action, and risk-taking. This class changed the way in which I react to everyday things and how I make my decisions. It was so freaking sweet. My social science class, hands down, with Aaron Hill. It was my first quarter of my first year, and there is no better way to kick off the
UChicago experience than a room of ten or so students angrily discussing what Smith thought, or if Marx could take Smith in a fight. Prof. Hill would get excited and draw up labor distribution diagrams while the rest of us would bounce ideas off of each other. My favorite class was "experimental" Math 160s last year. It was completely student-led, and we were supposed to think up and present proofs in class every day. I made some really great friends in that class while doing homework and spending (TONS OF) office hours with them, and, even though it was the hardest class I had taken, I felt like I learned more in that class than I had learned in any other class I ever took. Hyde park is a great place to live because of the diversity and life. As part of Chicago, it's far enough away from downtown that it's not congested, yet close enough to be able to get there by simply hopping on a bus or train for a quick ride to the center of the city. I also feel really safe in Hyde Park because of the extensive
University of Chicago Police Department that constantly patrol the entire area. Hyde Park has some nice restaurants, but if you want a movie theater other than Doc Films, you have to go downtown. Safety is about common sense, and blah blah blah. It's a city and some parts are sketchy; you deal with it. That said, Hyde Park is a nice place to be. Quiet, compared to the rest of the City. It has some nice restaurants, and a convenient Walgreens, and other things that it's nice not to have to go far to get. It's the South Side. Of course. You've heard the rumors, people gasp when you tell them where you might be going to school. If you've got common sense, don't walk back from the Green Line stop at midnight alone, don't hang your iPod all out when waiting on Cottage Grove for a bus, you'll be perfectly all right. I always feel safe, the campus police are all over and they do help if you need it. I've used the umbrella service walking home from an all-nighter in
the Crerar library at 5 am, but only because the policeman offered--not because I felt unsafe. They give you good safety tips during O-Week. Listen. Its a beautiful neighborhood- lots of grassy knolls and cute children. It buzzes
with Nobel-worthy genius. Sure, there are some sketchy spots, but Chicago is a big, diverse city. I have never felt unsafe, and the pizza's good. Feels like a suburb in the middle of a city. Different from the city’s northern parts like Wicker Park and Wrigleyville. In terms of activities, Hyde Park is more toned down, giving it the suburb feeling yet it is close to the fun parts so you can easily get to more fun (i.e. bars, clubs, movies etc) if the normal options (Frat Parties, apartment parties) just wont do for you. Buy a full-length North Face down jacket (worth every
penny of $300) and suck it up. The glories of the North Face
full-length down jacket are too great to be put in words. A
linear approximation might be that it is like wearing a
sleeping bag, only in garment form. That's how
awesomely cozy it is. You don't come here for the weather;
you come here for the awesome academics, people, and vibrant
intellectual atmosphere! Chicago is known as the Windy City, and yes, it lives up to it's title. Wear a coat, put on some gloves, and you'll be A-OK. The cold weather gives you another great excuse to head to one of the coffee shops and grab a cup of coffee or hot chocolate. I buy a bunch of acorns from Bart Mart and don't emerge from Burton-Judson until after Winter quarter. But seriously, I'm from Georgia, and if one heavy coat and a few layering tricks can get me comfortably through the winter, they can work the same magic for anyone. I'm from LA, so you'd think this would be a real struggle, but this cold weather thing isn't so bad. It gets pretty cold and there's a decent amount of wind, but with some warm clothing its easy to be charmed by the pretty snow. Wear layers which can be easily shed because outside it's freezing cold and in the classes it will be tropical. You play soccer at midnight the first time it snows, forget what tan skin looks like, and grin and bear it. There if you want it, not if you don't, and it even alternates on a day by day basis. In other words, I'm almost convinced that they work in exactly the same way as the Room of Requirement, and if you don't read Harry Potter, content yourself with the knowledge that the Greek Life is whatever you want it to be... You have to remember that this is The University of Chicago, and the fraternities reflect that. I'm a brother in Psi Upsilon, and I live with varsity athletes, political junkies, poets, and math/stat/econ triple majors. You'll hear people expressing strong anti-Greek sentiments, but they're usually the same people who champion the 'where fun comes to die' slogan. Not so big. There are frats. I do not know where they are. Um, you mean Plato and Aristotle and Socrates? They're alive and well and just about everybody spends at least one full weekend hanging out with them. If you mean frats and sororities, I couldn't even tell you where they are. They're there if you want them. I think. Percentage wise, about 10% of students participate. I do! I love being in a sorority, because there's always someone around to do something fun with me. It's a great way to meet lots of new people on campus when sometimes campus feels a little large. People go to frat parties, obviously, but it's important to remember that even though they're frat boys, they still chose to go to the U of C, meaning they're NOT your typical frat brothers. You'll get so close to your house that you aren't likely to go searching for another community of friends among the frats and sororities. But they do exist, and about 10% of campus joins, and the parties aren't half bad. Economics and Comparative Literature Q: Why is your dorm/house the best?“Why does God love Dodd-Mead House? Because we kill everything we see!” I love my house for our insane references, inside jokes, crazy (mis)adventures, Harry Potter-esque Burton Judson, braving a blizzard for dim sum and bubble tea, reenacting the transfer of baby penguins on the ice skating rink, and attending plays and concerts downtown for CHEAP. We eat our meals family-style at a round table and EVERYBODY comes to our weekly house meetings and study breaks to take advantage of homecooked meals. With 55 of us, it's easy to get to know everybody well and know who to turn to for math help
or for reading over essays, but it's large enough so that you don't see the same people all the time. Not only is Vincent House the best house on campus when it comes to athletics (as proven by the fact that we are the 2005-2006 Maroon Cup Champions…the Maroon Cup being the intramural trophy that is awarded annually to the best house) but it has an amazing dynamic. While everybody has a single room, we all know each other, and get along great. Anybody who says that singles make people anti-social
is wrong. If anything it makes people more social by forcing them to venture out into the house lounge and into other rooms. We are a diverse house
with all years, a wide variety of majors, many ethnicities, and even many nationalities
represented (Czech, British, Jamaican, Polish). Without Vincent…the UChicago would have no rooster to stand at the top of the perch (the Rooster is our house mascot). I only lived in the dorm first year, but everyone who lived in May House from 2005-2006 is still really close. We had great RH's, whose daughter is the cutest kid EVER. From house dinners, to study sessions, to things that I probably shouldn't tell you about, we had great house cohesion. We had a lot of fun. Sometimes too much fun. The other night, I was playing a Steinway grand piano in a gothic study with extravagant fire places, after which I ascended the spiral staircase to my room and enjoyed my view of downtown Chicago in the background and campus proper in the foreground. Go Burton-Judson. Max Palevsky is EASY. The best dining hall, the Regenstein library, the Ratner gym, the academic quad, EVERYTHING is about 2 feet away from the dorm. Plus the bright colors are awesome for insta-happiness. English Language and Literature Q: What's your favorite University of Chicago tradition?Kangeiko! What do you mean you don’t love waking up at 5:20am during the winter to trek across the snowy quads to do yoga at the point in the freezing rain/snow?! Scav Hunt. Dean of Admissions Ted O’Neil wearing his “I admitted your Mom last night” t-shirt and posting it on YouTube for points. You will hear so much about Scav Hunt that you won't want to do it. My favorite so far was O-Week (two weeks of orientation for freshman). It was a great way to adjust to college life. Shake Day! A dollar of creamy luscious get-you-through-the-day goodness, only on Wednesdays at our very own C-shop. My friends at other schools are actually jealous. Polar Bear Run: Everybody streaks across the campus in the dead of winter. The first person across the finish line gets some sort of accolade. I got second place first year and received no prize. Scaring the first-years by telling them how hard the classes are. The Latke-Hamantasch Debate is pretty awesome. Watching a few really smart professors debate the existence of triangular cookies and the "biblical-ness" of potato pancakes makes you realize that the core (with its emphasis on debating, proving things, arguing your point) is actually applicable to something fun--evaluating the merits of Jewish food (latkes are obviously better). Yes, there are sports. The University of Chicago is a NCAA Div. III school with a lot of varsity sports that you can easily get involved in. I'm on the Swimming and Diving team, and I love it; it's a great way to de-stress from all the school and work stuff. Of course there are sports. Although I have never been involved in varsity sports, intramurals
have been a big part of my life. Every season our house is focused and ready for domination…we wouldn’t have it any other way. Given the high number of students who participate in intramural sports it is exciting to win games and move up in the standings. Almost everyone has some involvement with athletics here, whether intramural or varsity. I was supposed to be on the varsity swim team, but decided to play club ice hockey instead. It's less of a time commitment (and doesn't involve jumping in a cold pool at 6 AM in February), and is a ton of fun. It's such a rush and great stress buster to skate around on the Midway Rink in the dead of winter . . . plus we're really good. Right now I'm injured and can't play, so I help coach. I also go to Yoga and Pilates classes at Ratner to stay in shape. I never went to a sports game until this year. And the truth is, the athletes know they don't get a lot of spectators but they play the sports for fun and they really work hard to balance their classes with their practices in order to compete. So they deserve a lot of credit; but our sports teams are more like extracurriculars for the athletes than a symbol of pride or unity for the university. There are many opportunities as far as athletics are
concerned. Ratner and Henry Crown are two great gyms to work out at and varsity athletics are available as well. Intramural Sports takes the majority as far as athletics are concerned here and offer a great break from the academics. Yes! They are actually pretty good. People like to pretend that they aren't though. Our football is ok, but our soccer teams have had several appearances in the NCAA tournament. Again, like Greek life, if you want to go watch games they are there to go watch. If you want to pretend that the athletics don’t exist here, then you can do that too. It is not like going to a D1 school where the Friday before a football game is completely based around the next day’s game. Of course, we don't just do books. Tuesday and Thursday night is indoor soccer days
for pick up teams that play until legs are sore. You can be your own Ronaldinho or Drogba. Biological Sciences Q: How diverse is the University of Chicago?Statistically, the university gets more diverse every year. But there is a diversity that most people don't acknowledge, and that is the diversity of experience. I think there are more people who enter this university than most others having taken time off after high school. I know students who served in the army (U.S. or elsewhere), taught English in Europe, traveled around the world, did volunteer work in poor rural communities, or spent a year at a job. This is a diversity that is not exactly racial or ethnic, but is perhaps more valuable because it shows the type of motivation, eccentricities, and unique personalities that make up the College and make it so quirky and interesting. What I really love is that, not only is the university culturally/religiously diverse, but it also has a large number of international students- there are people from all sorts of backgrounds who inhabit all parts of the world. There are two Muslims, an African-American, and a significant Asian contingent in my Humanities class (22 people total). We're more white than the surrounding area of the South Side, but overall, the University works hard to be diverse. To rattle off countries where people I know are from: Denmark, Malaysia, China, Germany, India, the Czech Republic, Ghana, Japan, Peru, Romania…. <-----------------------------------------------This--------------------------------------------> diverse. Again, I come from small-town Georgia, so my only comparison is this: Imagine if you started in Kansas, ended up in Oz, but then you were carried off by ANOTHER tornado to a land that's a step BEYOND color. Yeah, I went there. It’s difficult, because there isn’t an archetypal student here. There’s some common characteristics, namely intelligence and curiosity, coupled with a sense of self-deprecation over entitlement. Everyone here is exceptional at something. Quirky. What they all share in common is a passion for academics, a passion that exists outside of grades and parental pressure. Besides that, UChicago students come with all types of interests and all types of personalities. Everyone loves to imagine a gothic campus crawling with pale scrawny kids clutching Friedman and Freud—and for the most part this is fairly accurate. However, I have found that a good number of students here are well-rounded: athletic, social, and wicked smart—all at the same time. But what no one can escape is the fact that anywhere else, we would ALL be considered nerds. Q: What's the political slant on campus? As are most college campuses, the UChicago undergrad population leans left, but don’t let that fool you. Coupled with the conservative tendencies from different parts of the university (most notably the Law School and the Economics Department), the dialogue that takes place is intense. This is not a university where students have uninformed viewpoints. Those who passionately defend their ideas, on both sides of the aisle, know what they are talking about and engage the opposition in respective debate. Another question that deserves an essay as a response—but I'll be brief. I am on the Exec board of the UCDems, and although we have a very large membership, most students consider themselves too intellectual to be involved in the 'pettiness of politics.' It is considered cool to have 'other' political views, but I think there is definitely a heavy liberal base. This means that there are a myriad of loosely affiliated, one-issue progressive groups, but they often don't feel like cooperating. Then you have the Libertarians, the Socialists, and the Neo-conservatives, all with dedicated followers. Liberal over conservative, but every side has a fierce libertarian streak, befitting a tolerant atmosphere. Both sides are vocal, and activist. Professors actually occupy both sides of the spectrum, which means everyone gets to argue with their prof. at some point. One girl here who went to my high school was elected to be the Republican committeeman for the 20th ward, along with another Republican student for the 5th ward. Apparently, there aren’t many republicans outside of campus in Hyde Park so the Chicago GOP chair asked and funded the President and the Treasurer of our republican club to run. That said, most of the undergraduate student body seems to be socially liberally and economically conservative (20% are econ majors). More questions? Email the Prospective Students Advisory Committee at psac@uchicago.edu. Questions about the current FAQs or anything on this page should be addressed to Weisheng Liu. |
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