September 30, 2006
Posted by Sam Jackson
University of Chicago Information Session (Ted O’ Neill)
This information session was last Tuesday, September 26th.
Ted O' Neill, director of admissions for the University of Chicago, came last Tuesday to do interviews (mainly for anyone applying early); that evening, he stayed around to give us a little bit of information about U of Chicago and to answer any questions we had about the school.
My only real interaction with the University of Chicago has been my glancing contact with their application, more through their great blog (Chicago's Uncommon Application, 2007-2008) than through the actual application itself. I've looked at the essay questions and absolutely love them; they're very creative and demand even more creative responses, in stark constrast to the prompts from other schools or off the common app--prompts which a lot of the time can be parsed to mean "be narcissistic and self-aggrandizing: 500 words." Aside from really liking the application, though, I hadn't really gotten to explore Chicago--I wanted to visit, but it was too "midwest" to be driveable in the time I had over the summer for visits.
From everything I've researched about the school, though, I definitely feel I am going to apply: Chicago students seem to have a sort of "passion" in the sense that they work and play hard. O' Neill reinforced this notion when he spoke about (or was asked about) the student body.
There were 18 people gathered in Mayer to ask questions and hear from Ted, which was a smaller crowd than I would have expected. Tuesdays are busy nights, though, and I didn't have anything to base my expectations upon. Interesting, the lead off was that the University of Chicago is a school that "matches up with Exeter nicely" in terms of similar truths and untruths about both--in work, in character, so forth and so on. This was the intro to the general heme of rigorousness and seriousness which did permeate some of the talk.
I asked my 'interdisciplinary' question (What does the school do to encourage / support interdisciplinary study?) and got a rather indirect answer; O' Neill spoke about the way in which the Core was itself interdisciplinary. There was an additional allusion to some interdisciplinary majors, but nothing really concrete: the 'world-famous interdisciplinary committees' were also named, but weren't really explicitly described. Looking these up later, I did learn a good deal. The $200 million spent on a new interdisciplinary studies building (I think?) seemed like good evidence towards interdisciplinary studies being supported.
The only problem I had was that too many questions seemed to go back to "Core core core core!" as the answer. I understand that the Core, as its name implies, is at the heart of the University's curricula--but it was a little bit tiring to keep hearing about all its virtues and wonders. I'm not opposed to Cores, mind you, but they scare me a little bit sometimes and hearing so much about them can get me a little jittery sometimes. Ted trashed distributional requirements later on as being good if you're "responsible" but not otherwise, since you don't take courses you don't want to and therefore lack necessary components of a liberal arts education. Makes sense, I suppose.
I had one other question I asked: "does the rigor lead to competitiveness?" Thankfully the answer was a resounding "no," although I'm not sure anyone would want to answer that question honestly. "Collaboration" is such a buzzword. If I were going to an MBA graduate school information session, though, that would sure be a fun question to ask (n.b.: recent study showed 50%+ mba grad students confessed to having cheated in the last year).
One last note, which touches on marketing (again!) ... someone (Kelly Hoffer, perhaps?) brought up the postcards which the University of Chicago has been sending out, which often include a sample creative essay question from the uncommon app or some other clever written vignette of some kind. O' Neill said they "turned off 10 for every 1" but it seemed like everyone in the crowd there was a "1" as we all did like the postcards. I certainly did.
The University of Chicago sounds very cool, but I would like now to talk to some current students to get another perspective on it. Maybe I will go look for some on college confidential...
I'm currently a rising senior at Yale University and I've been blogging about college admissions and higher education marketing trends since I began my college application process in 2005. I now also write about my experience here at Yale.
3 Comments
October 14, 2006
Why not Stanford?
I found out yesterday that it costs around $55K/yr (incl. dorm)
I also heard that their grading model pits students against each other. In order for someone to do better, someone else has to do worse. It works as far as producing blood sucking monsters but it does nothing for the benefit of society.
UC Berkeley seems to be the school Ivy Leaguers are choosing for their kids. My only exposure to UCB is by way of having used UCB Unix v4.3 back in the 80s. It wasn't an OS. It was the greatest non-yogurt culture...
. [Ctrl-D] [vi:ZZ] [vi:!w] [and if everything fails: Ctrl-Z then read the man page]
my personal OS only recognizes dzzt.
October 14, 2006
I walked out of the stanford info session asking myself the question "oh no--do I have to apply here, too?" because I was quite enthralled by Martin Walsh's presentation and description of Stanford. Looking into it and talking to my counselor, it did turn out that Stanford might have been an interesting place for me. The trouble was that I still wasn't really 'visualizing' myself there-- I had always discounted it because it didn't have snow there, and the architecture didn't particularly appeal to me. All the same I kept it off my list just because it was a) already 15 schools long at the time and b) there wasn't quite enough compelling evidence that put Stanford 'above' certain other schools of equal or greater selectivity. There were other places that I was interested in more and it wasn't worth my time or the possibility of taking a slot away from--something like 10 other people--to apply to another place. Never mind the application fee!
December 28, 2006
I was with Shail at the meeting (with absolutely no interest in the school, I just like stuff like that), and I brought up the postcards... I'm just taking credit for that because this blog seems like it is garnering some attention and I like attention.
On a side note, Microsoft word just said the “blog” wasn’t a word. Shame on you, Microsoft Word 2004!
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