Chicago 2013

[socgrad2013]

I am considering an offer from Chicago but was not able to attend the visit days. Can anyone who did attend share their impression of the department, and of the other prospective students? What was the format of the visit, and what were the department's main selling points? Has anyone been admitted with less than full funding? Thanks!

[hunny24]

Can i also get in on the above request for info from those who went to visit?  I too did not make it for campus visit days.  Thanks

[johnjohnson]

I've been in close contact with a few really helpful senior graduate students, and relatively closely with faculty.  The situation at Chicago has improved immensely over the last five years.  That said - it was definitely toxic about ten years ago.  The quals are not impossibly hard, and the core training is an advantage over other programs.  Time with faculty is pretty structured -- there isn't a lot of bandying around underdeveloped ideas.  Everyone I've talked to has a meeting with their various advisers once a quarter, about.  That said, the graduate students take care of each other and have each others' backs (presumably because Chicago funds for 5 now and they aren't all competing for funding).  It's still an aggressive place, so interactions will still be deeply critical and potentially uncomfortable for people who don't like that old school academic bloodbath.  But it seems like it's not as much of  a problem getting the attention in the first place to get bled through (and improved).  Abbott, Levi Martin, Clemens, and Clark seem to do a majority of the advising.  Evans is picking up more students, but is real busy.  

 

Those are my limited impressions.  I told Professor Clemens that I was actually pleasantly surprised with the warmth of the department.  That said - it it's still Chicago - the Chicago culture extends across campus.  There is an air of pretension throughout the campus; people are not ashamed of it either.  That may be of greater or lesser concern to you depending on your background and tastes.  

 

I met one student whom is not funded for his first two years.  There may be others, but if the visiting cohort was representative -- very few.

[mbrown0315]

http://dailysophist.com/stories/280-is-uchicago-full-of-hidden-bigots

 

To those of you going to UChicago, read the posts and comments on the Facebook page. I can't wait to TA classes with some of these undergrads.

[gilbertrollins]

That has nothing to do with UChicago.  It's a result of anonymity.  Witness the exact same culture blossoming at:

 

4chan.org

xoxohth.com

poliscirumors.com

poliscijobrumors.com

econjobrumors.com

reddit.com

 

These sites draw in a small subset of the population.

[mbrown0315]

Oh, I'm sure there are plenty of people like this at other schools. I just thought UChicago peeps would be interested in the goings-on.

[gilbertrollins]

Yeah apparently it's a real shit storm over at Rochester right now too, because of Steve Landsburg's thought experiment on his blog.  Have you seen those videos of the idiots up at U Toronto protesting and blocking people from seeing speeches they don't like?  Some people's ethics about speech on University Campuses are pretty unbelievable.  

[mbrown0315]

The protests over the men's rights speeches? I did see those videos. Pissed me off, too.

[gilbertrollins]

Those and the videos of the huge protest that broke out of a pro-Israel speech.  Jews ended up getting physically taunted, kipas torn off.  Personally I don't support dogmatic zionism, but it's an issue I don't know a lot about.  So speaking as one of the ignorant, it makes me all the sadder to see opportunities for sane dialogue breaking down into frothing mobs.  We all lose when differences of opinion don't get heard.

[gilbertrollins]

For instance, Landsburg was attempting to call attention to the fact that a criterion of physical harm is an insufficient judicial criterion to build policy around (which notably goes against a strong tradition of arguments from physical coercion among libertarians -- by a libertarian).  He was attempting to build a stronger dialogue around the attrocity of rape.  The response by students who haven't listened to anything beyond their misreading of his comment, has been to call for his dismissal.  

http://www.campustimes.org/2013/04/11/students-lash-out-a-landsburg/