Quote:
Originally Posted by AGDee
University of Chicago is not a safety school. Their admission criteria is as strict as Northwestern's. The area right around it didn't seem bad. There were a lot of people out and about in the neighborhoods and it seemed like mostly hipster types. That's usually a sign of gentrification, at least in the Detroit area. The lack of activity on campus on a beautiful fall Saturday afternoon was disconcerting to her. Northwestern had students all over the place. I know it's a smaller school but you'd think we'd see more than 20 students on a campus of 6000. Even when we drove by DePaul there were students on blankets all over the lawn. Some were hula-hooping, some were studying, some were just hanging out, but they were outside.
I kind of think finding the right school is like finding your home in a sorority, buying a wedding dress or buying a house. When you walk on the campus, it just feels right, like home. I know it was like that for me. She felt that feeling at Barnard, Columbia, Northwestern and to a slightly lesser extent, Brown. Personally, I was really uncomfortable on the U Chicago campus. I felt really anxious there and I don't know why. It wasn't the neighborhood. There were two weddings going on at the campus with brides taking pictures in the area. There were a variety of elderly people sitting on benches on the campus. But, where were the students???
And yeah, it would be a stretch financially for me to bring her home for things like Thanksgiving if she was in California. That's a really pricey flight. Providence was a really pricey flight too. NYC or Chicago, easy peasy to get home. With Chicago, there's always the train to Detroit (which is how we got there this weekend).
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University of Chicago is, in my opinion, the epitome of the ivory tower. The campus is disconnected from the community, and if you look at the academic focus of many departments, they are laden in theory and removed from practical application (for example, they don't even have an engineering program). For years, it had the reputation of being "where fun goes to die", and they actually remade their brochures recently to make sure that they featured more smiling students. It's a great school if you want to live "the life of the mind", but it is its very own world.