4 ms·

I'm a graduate of Uchicago (from shortly after you), and to offer a different perspective, I'm still paying off my loans (and will be for another 6 years), but

I'm a graduate of Uchicago (from shortly after you), and to offer a different perspective, I'm still paying off my loans (and will be for another 6 years), but I'm incredibly glad I went. I thought the undergraduate experience was perfect, and about half of my friends from around the world are people I met while I was there. I did get much worse marks that I had ever gotten before, but the University being very difficult is part of the package. One question: I think a large part of the social experience for me was based around the house system. Even though I moved out of my house when I was a second-year, the house and dorm I was in provided a big chunk of my social network. Did you not have a good experience with your house? And if so, were you placed in the house you wanted to be in?

angry_octet 7y ago
So how does having more realistic grades (i.e. not everyone gets B or above) feel when it comes to graduate admissions? I went to the university with the hardest admissions score for EE, some of the brightest people I've met, graded on a curve, and yet for graduate admissions I'm competing with people who took much easier classes and ALL have much better marks. The GPA system is just insane really.
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  I don't know what's happened in the last 25 years since I last went. But my college started testing the snot out of incoming freshmen. Basically they didn't trust the students GPA or the classes they took in high school to tell whether they were ready for college level classes.
- sjg007 7y ago
  Ace the GRE and get letters of recommendation and it doesn't matter.
- eindiran 7y ago
  It helps a lot if the university you're coming from had a reputation for difficulty and grade deflation. Academia is incestuous enough that people will usually be clued into that. Barring that, having excellent rec letters and GRE scores, having been published or done research in a lab, having written an undergraduate thesis etc can all help provide signal that you'll make a good candidate for the department you're applying to. I don't know much about EE departments, but generally grad school admissions will be more holistic and thoughtful than undergrad admissions.
  - angry_octet 7y ago
    Well, I found UdeM pretty awful, difficult to talke to anyone, took a long time and really screwed me around. In retrospect I would say hard avoid based on the incompetence of the admin (DIRO specifically). It seems like if you're coming from overseas they really don't know what to do, and its impossible to get past the admin. In retrospect, talk to professors first, do admin process second, and allow at least 12 months for the process.

angry_octet 7y ago

So how does having more realistic grades (i.e. not everyone gets B or above) feel when it comes to graduate admissions? I went to the university with the hardest admissions score for EE, some of the brightest people I've met, graded on a curve, and yet for graduate admissions I'm competing with people who took much easier classes and ALL have much better marks. The GPA system is just insane really.

Gibbon1 7y ago
I don't know what's happened in the last 25 years since I last went. But my college started testing the snot out of incoming freshmen. Basically they didn't trust the students GPA or the classes they took in high school to tell whether they were ready for college level classes.
sjg007 7y ago
Ace the GRE and get letters of recommendation and it doesn't matter.
eindiran 7y ago
It helps a lot if the university you're coming from had a reputation for difficulty and grade deflation. Academia is incestuous enough that people will usually be clued into that. Barring that, having excellent rec letters and GRE scores, having been published or done research in a lab, having written an undergraduate thesis etc can all help provide signal that you'll make a good candidate for the department you're applying to. I don't know much about EE departments, but generally grad school admissions will be more holistic and thoughtful than undergrad admissions.
- angry_octet 7y ago
  Well, I found UdeM pretty awful, difficult to talke to anyone, took a long time and really screwed me around. In retrospect I would say hard avoid based on the incompetence of the admin (DIRO specifically). It seems like if you're coming from overseas they really don't know what to do, and its impossible to get past the admin. In retrospect, talk to professors first, do admin process second, and allow at least 12 months for the process.