University of Chicago



         



©University of Chicago

Motto: Crescat scientia; vita excolatur. (Latin: Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched.)
Founded 1890 by John D. Rockefeller
School type Private coeducational
President Don Michael Randel
Location Chicago, Illinois
Enrollment 4,400 undergraduates; 9,000 graduate and professional students
Campus surroundings Urban, parks
Campus size 211 acres (850,000 m&sup2)
Sports teams Maroons
Mascot Phoenix


Students by the Ryerson Physical Laboratory

The University of Chicago is one of the foremost research universities in the world. Just over a century old, many of the departments and committees including Physics, Economics, Music (theory), Sociology, Linguistics, Political Science, Social Thought, International Relations, Anthropology, Mathematics, Astronomy & Astrophysics, Ecology & Evolution as well as the schools of Jurisprudence, Business, Social Service, Public Policy and Divinity are considered amongst the best internationally.

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Location and campus

The university is located eight miles (13 km) south of the Loop in the Chicago neighborhoods of Hyde Park and Woodlawn. The university is also noted for its gothic architecture, imported from English universities at the school's foundings (primarily Oxford). More contemporary buildings have attempted to complement the style of the original buildings with mixed success. One of the most striking buildings is the brutalist Regenstein Library.

A two billion dollar capital campaign (as of 2004 over half way completed) has brought unprecedented expansion to the school. The last few years have featured: the unveiling of a new first year oriented residential dormitory (Max Pavelsky), a dining hall (Bartlett), a parking structure and office center, a downtown business and events center (the Gleacher Center), two business school centers in Barcelona and Singapore, the Paris Center (for study collegiate study abroad), several new wings of the University of Chicago Hospitals, an athletic center (Ratner) and an interdivisional science building. The University plans to direct the next stage of its ?masterplan? towards revamping and consolidating dormitories at all levels, many of which are scattered throughout the architecturally aging local community.

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History

The University was founded in 1890 by John D. Rockefeller (of Standard Oil fame). Its inception came at the end of a wave of university expansion from the middle of the 19th century until the turn of the 20th (MIT, Stanford, The California Institute of Technology, Northwestern, Washington University in Saint Louis, Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins and Vanderbilt also came into being at this time). Westward movement, population growth, and the industrialization of America lead to a increasing need for elite schools outside the East coast, whose focus would be on issues vital to national development. Rockefeller?s choice of Chicago ? he was urged to build in the New England or the Mid-Atlantic States ? demonstrated his outspoken desire to see Thomas Jefferson?s dream of a ?natural aristocracy?, tried by talent as opposed to familial heritage, rise to national prominence (he himself having risen from obscurity by his own merits). His early fiscal emphasis on the Physics department showed his pragmatic, yet nevertheless intellectually rigorous, desires for the school. Founded under Baptist auspices, the University today lacks a sectarian affiliation. The school's traditions of rigorous scholarship were established by Presidents William Rainey Harper and U.S. News & World Report currently ranks the College at the University of Chicago 14th in the nation, tied with Cornell University and Johns Hopkins University The college’s applicants, according to The Princeton Review "often prefer" Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia, and apply to the full spectrum of top 15 schools, both Ivies and their associates. However, The Princeton Review has also rated the University as having the "Best Overall Educational Experience" for undergraduates among all American universities and colleges (the student-to-faculty ratio of 4:1, ranked the second lowest amongst top 50 American Universities, allows for small class sizes and exceptional faculty interaction). The difference between these rankings reflects the longstanding dichotomy between the College’s academic institutional quality (which is consistently grouped alongside Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, the California Institute of Technology and Stanford) and its far lagging admissions selectivity, which is more comparable to schools such as Johns Hopkins and Carnegie Mellon.

Ironically, the two factors which precipitate the latter admissions problem are the same factors which earned the school the highest accolades from the The Princeton Review - academic zeal and rigor. First, The University of Chicago is marked as the place "where fun comes to die" (a contentious matter amongst students), which nevertheless deters many potential matriculants (for some time in the 1990's the college finished a few spots short of last amongst national rankings of party schools, alongside the service academies, e.g. West Point, and religious instituions such as Brigham Young and Wheaton). Secondly, the rigor of the school academically has lead to notoriously low graduation rates (one in seven students do not finish, compared to one in fifty at Harvard College) and also GPA's ("In 1998, the National average GPA of those matriculating to allopathic medical schools [was a] 3.58; from the College [a] 3.48. This was the lowest for any college in North America" - The Univesity of Chicago Health Proffesions Handbook). Nevertheless, it has been reported that more students go on to graduate school from Chicago than at any other college in the country.

Its professional schools also rank highly: the Graduate School of Business ranks 6th , 2nd (BusinessWeek) and 4th (Financial Times), the Law School ranks 6th and 2nd , the University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the country and publishes The Chicago Manual of Style, the definitive guide to American English usage. The University also operates a number of off-campus scientific research institutions, the best known of which is probably Fermilab, or the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, managed by the University of Chicago for the U.S. Department of Energy. The University also operates the Argonne National Laboratory, owns and operates Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, the Oriental Institute, and has a stake in Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot, New Mexico. The University is also a founding member of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation.

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Contributions to scholarship

The school's more important contributions to science include Robert Millikan's 1909 Oil-drop experiment, which determined the charge of the electron; the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, carried out by Enrico Fermi and his colleagues as part of the Manhattan Project on December 2, 1942; and the Miller-Urey experiment in 1953, considered to be the classic experiment on the origin of life.

In the social sciences and humanities, the school is also known for its important contributions, most notably to: modern sociology (considered its American birthplace), economics (one in five of all Nobel Prizes awarded for reasearch done at the University, 17 John Bates Clark Medals likewise), international relations, archaeology, political philosophy, literary criticism and paleontology. In many of these areas there developed in the latter half of the 20th century the "Chicago School of . . ." -- where many members of a department adopted a consistent and often radical approach to the study of each of these subjects. The most popularized has been the free market and individual liberty oriented, or classical liberal, stance of the Economics department and certain notable Law School professors. One of the great influences over many of the Chicago Schools was the neo-Aristotelian philosopher, Richard McKeon, whose intellectual rigor, in the context of the collegial atmosphere of the University that encouraged cross-departmental discussions, engendered a fresh look at the study of these subjects

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Sports and traditions

The school's sports teams are called the Maroons. They participate in the NCAA's Division III and in the University Athletic Association. At one time, the University of Chicago's football teams were among the best in the country (winning seven Big Ten titles), but the school, a founding member of the Big Ten Conference, de-emphasized varsity athletics in 1939. In 1935, Chicago's Jay Berwanger was the winner of the first-ever Heisman Trophy.

The school's mascot is the Phoenix, so chosen for two reasons: in honor of Chicago's rebirth after the great fire and also in honor of the previous University of Chicago (whose origins were unrelated to the current), which folded due to financial reasons (thus making this a second and far more glorious incarnation of the University).

One of the more famous traditions of the University is the annual Scavenger Hunt, a multiple day event that pits teams (often composed of hundreds) against each other with the goal of getting all of the 300-plus items on the list. The event was created by a resident of the Snell-Hitchcock dormitory in 1987 and Snell-Hitchcock dorm continues with a long history of victories including 2004's Hunt. So far, each year has also involved a lengthy road trip to find many of these items in obscure parts of the United States, involving treks as far as New Jersey, or as mind-bogglingly obtuse as Zion, Illinois (where students had to "flip the switch at the last city of man," a reference to the city of Zion in The Matrix). While items such as Michael Jordan have not appeared, in 1999 two students built a working nuclear reactor for Scavenger Hunt.

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Students, alumni and faculty

Called the "teacher of teachers", academia is the most popular career choice for its graduates, with one in seven taking an academic appointment (a rate matched by no other University). Scholars affiliated with Chicago have obtained a total of: 75 Nobel Prizes (the most by any institution in the world except Cambridge University), 26 MacArthur Fellowships (or "genius grants"), 220 Guggenheim Fellowships, 17 John Bates Clark Medals, 36 Rhodes Scholarships, 12 Pulitzer Prizes, 3 National Medals of the Arts, 11 National Humanities Medals and the Charles Frankel Prizes, and 13 National Medals of Science. Moreover, in 2004, for the 18th consecutive year, University students won more Fulbright-Hays fellowships than any U.S. educational institution, with 23 students (68 percent of applicants) receiving awards. Chicago is also home to the Robert McCormick Adams (Ph.B.’47, A.M.’52, Ph.D.’56) Archeologist; Secretary Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution

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