University of Chicago Essay Questions released for 2010-11

As you can see from many previous postings on the school, the University of Chicago has always been one of my top choices, and I couldn't agree more with the school's ancient academic philosophy. Recent additions to social improvements and amenities on all levels of the university, from re-introducing a football team (they used to be a member of the Big Ten!) to implementing the house system of living for undergraduates, have made that age old, gold standard, academic intensity more accessible and enjoyable for enrolling students. If you've not looked into the school, I would highly recommend it for those who prioritize "the life of the mind" (as the college's saying goes).
 

Chicago has long been defined by its quirky, intellectual essay questions, mentioned in a few previous posts. If you want to get a head start on Chicago's application for the 2010-11 application, the just released essay questions are as follows:

Essay Option 1: Find x.
Inspired by Benjamin Nuzzo, an admitted student from Eton College, UK

Essay Option 2: Dog and Cat. Coffee and Tea. Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye. Everyone knows there are two types of people in the world. What are they?
Inspired by an alumna of the Class of 2006

Essay Option 3: Salt, governments, beliefs, and celebrity couples are a few examples of things that can be dissolved. You’ve just been granted the power to dissolve anything: physical, metaphorical, abstract, concrete… you name it. What do you dissolve, and what solvent do you use?
Inspired by Greg Gabrellas, A.B. 2009

Essay Option 4: “Honesty is the best policy, but honesty won’t get your friend free birthday cake at the diner.” - Overheard in the city of Chicago.
Does society require constant honesty? Why is it (or why is it not) problematic to shift the truth in one’s favor, even if the lie is seemingly harmless to others? If we can be “conveniently honest,” what other virtues might we take more lightly?
Inspired by Eleanor Easton, a second-year in the College

Early Decision results from The Choice

As you may know by now, I am a huge proponent of Early Decision programs as a way for students and institutions to connect over a common interest in bringing the most motivated, eager students to world renowned campuses across the nation.

Here are the admissions statistics from the 2009-2010 admissions season for Early Decision and Early Action programs. The accompanying article is very typical of those published yearly by guidebooks, noting exaggerated increases in applications.

I found these interesting simply because they vary so much from school to school. As opposed to the common story pitched by guidebooks that applications increase 20% at every school, every year, these statistics are pretty refreshing. Of course, at many schools, admissions chances are bleaker than last year (see the University of Chicago with a 56% increase in Early Action applications this year).

However, there is really only a substantial difference in about a quarter of competitive schools. Plenty of colleges like Williams got as much as 12% fewer applications this year, with most liberal arts colleges just about flat year over year.

In case you were wondering, there is still hope for most of us out there, and the admissions process is not cycling out of control - for this year at least. The problem with the process as a whole is that it is not forgiving year over year, and often times decisions come down to pure luck depending on where we are in the cycle at the particular time an applicant applies. Unfortunately for students seeking admission to places like the University of Chicago, this year was outright devastating.

Insight into the Admissions office of UChicago

The following article is quite dated (from a 1999 Newsweek issue), but quite telling as for the kind of thinking that admissions officers are forced to utilize when forced to meet so many quotas. What may seem to be a negligible distinction between two applicants often makes the cut, and the article lists a few great examples that most people wouldn't have caught on to.

I mentioned quotas before, and I think the U of C approach to them is interesting.

"Their ethnicity, something that many applicants don't divulge, still isn't known in the aggregate. Chicago prides itself on using no gender, racial, geographic or other quotas in deciding whom to accept. "We're not 'building a class,' creating this ideal little world with so many of these and so many of those," O'Neill says. "We accept the best, and hope to get as many as we can."

This is a constant struggle for me when I am looking into campus demographics; trying to objectively interpret a campus culture from mere statistics or snippets of student input. What I have found true for most schools is certainly not consistent with Chicago's statement above; most top colleges are indeed statistically (racially) diverse, but are still overly homogeneous in opinion and politics.

This statement is surely taken into account by people viewing "diversity" statistics, but I don't think most people account for how true this problem really is on college campuses. The product of this thinking is generally an unbalanced and overly liberal student body which, though open to new ideas, is intrinsically closed to much of America's real political sentiment, inadvertently hampering campus "diversity".

The article is linked here: University of Chicago Admissions - Newsweek

The University of Chicago

Chicago, Illinois
August 9, 2009

I don’t even know where to begin the account of my experience with UChicago. Just the name gives me goosebumps. Growing up in a suburb of the city itself, it has long been a college on my mind, and is a relatively popular choice at my school, due to its notable prestige and academic prowess. Of course, plenty of people, even in the Chicago area, don’t understand how important the school really is, often mistaking it for the University of Illinois at Chicago and not realizing that the 7th best university in the world (QS 2009) is in their backyard. Even more dangerously, many of my fellow prospective students don’t realize how unique Chicago is. They don’t know enough to understand that Chicago caters to a relatively small, specific demographic of students: those willing to sacrifice a raging social life, extra-curriculars, and their sanity, all for a nearly unmatched academic atmosphere and all around collegiate education.

Let’s begin with just that: the education. The main components of Chicago’s curriculum can be broken down into three sections, each consuming about one third of a student’s time at Chicago; Core classes, or required classes of all undergraduates, major requirements, or classes required for each department’s major, and elective classes, or free choice classes to round out the experience. This is an alarming level of requirements for a modern college curriculum. There are few other top colleges with such extensive core-curriculums, much less ones so rigorous. Courses required of all undergraduates range from exposure to great books and philosophy to more general math and science reasoning courses. Because of these demanding requirements, it is a long hike to earn a Chicago degree. It is a truly stimulating amount of work, and one has to make a lot of personal sacrifices to complete it. However, Chicago is one of the leading schools in terms of sending grads on to get PhD’s as well as other professional degrees. Employers and graduate schools know how demanding the academics at Chicago are, and they look highly upon how well the school prepares its students for academic life.

Chicago’s campus is equally amazing. Located about twenty minutes (by subway, bus, or car) south of downtown Chicago. Though the immediate area surrounding the university’s neighborhood of Hyde Park is quiet and upper class, as little as a few blocks off the campus can put you right in the middle of some of Chicago’s worst south side neighborhoods. The school takes advantage of its location, offering field studies in Chicago and urban studies to study these surrounding areas. Due to the campus’s location, crime is fairly high, and students are always on the lookout. This is a downside to any city campus though, and should be taken with a grain of salt; the immediate area surrounding the university is well policed (by the largest private police force in the country) and well lit, so as to provide a bubble of relative safety around the campus.















Chicago is a city I think everybody should see sometime in their lifetime, and the university only adds to the city’s magnificence; UChicago has a jaw-dropping campus. The reason it is so beautiful and symmetrical is because it was built from the ground up from Rockefeller’s fortune, so the school was planned from its first days as a university, unlike most college campuses, which are architecturally eclectic because they were built over time and on budgets. It simply looks like a place to learn. The campus is still mostly composed of the original collegiate-gothic buildings, but plenty of interesting, modern, buildings add to the scene. When I first visited the campus, I couldn’t help but to just lie down for a few minutes in a quad and stare at the hundred year old oaks and the ivy on the buildings rippling in the wind.

Among these buildings, the Regenstein Library, also known as simply “the Reg”, seems to be a campus favorite. This building has seven full sized floors of material, and the university is expanding the library this summer with a state-of-the-art underground book retrieval system to house even more books. There are plenty of rumors surrounding this building, but nearly all have to do with students “never leaving” to fulfill their tremendous workloads. The Reg is an amazing facility which I really enjoyed my time in, and it provides a great atmosphere for Chicago students to work in, in addition to the many great coffee shops on campus.














Essentially, the best way to wrap your mind around Chicago is that it is a uniquely academic place and that a school can’t have everything. The university has accordingly been nicknamed the place “where fun comes to die” due to its weak social scene and high workload. Though the school is making great steps towards introducing a more vibrant social scene to the campus, it seems almost counter-intuitive to add this element to only increasingly rigorous academics. One of these elements that seems extremely popular is the House system of first year housing. Students are assigned to a social house (think Harry Potter), which becomes their family for the next four years. Students eat meals at their house table, and even after upperclassmen move off campus, many still attend social house events.

However extreme the school might seem, keep in mind that the Princeton Review dubbed Chicago “school of the year” in 2007 for overall undergraduate experience. I see that ranking more political in purpose than genuine (the Princeton Review has for quite some time been labeled as too focused on social aspects of institutions), but the point still stands that this is truly a great place to spend your four years. As long as you have done the research and have truly established academics as your number one priority, Chicago could very well be the place for you. This sort of self-selectivity where students are “afraid” of the school has kept the school’s admissions numbers relatively lenient compared to it’s Ivy League competitors. However, Chicago saw a 100% increase in Early Action applications for the 2009-2010 admissions season, so the school may well be on the track to catching (back) up to the biggest names out there.