Recently, the University of Chicago not only added a new application round but also took the lead in updating the supplementary essay topics for the 2024-2025 application season, which makes people say that "the difficulty is still as hard as ever"; at the same time, considering that it is the summer of 2024, the school also especially shared 8 reading lists for students for reference!

The University of Chicago SSEN Policy

The University of Chicago has opened the UChicago Summer Student Early Notification,Chicago Summer School Student Priority Notification Application, referred to as SSEN.

Starting in the fall of 2024, high school students who have completed the UChicago Pre-College Summer Session Programs (online/offline) can apply for undergraduate admission to the University of Chicago through the Binding Early Notification Option from September 1 to October 15, 2024.

This policy applies to any student about to enter the last year of high school and participate in the University of Chicago summer course during the summer of high school. However, because SSEN is binding, it is most suitable for students who have already determined that the University of Chicago is their first choice and will enroll if admitted.

Students attending the University of Chicago Summer School will learn about SSEN during class, and parents of summer school students will be invited to participate in the "Zoom with the Dean" at the end of the summer so that parents can fully understand the situation and ask their questions. From September 1 to October 15, any high school student who has completed the University of Chicago Summer School can participate in SSEN, and students will receive admission decisions three weeks after completing the full application.

So this is a chance for students to apply to the University of Chicago in advance, but receive a decision before the ED 1 deadline of other universities.

How do SSEN students start the University of Chicago application?

1.According to official requirements, applicants should create a UChicago account and select "Early Decision I (ED1)"; secondly, they should create a Common App or Apply Coalition to apply to UChicago.

2.Students who plan to participate in the SSEN application round should submit a Student Early Decision Agreement in the "Forms" section of their UChicago account instead of using the ED agreement in the Common App platform or the Apply Coalition platform.

3.In terms of application materials, applicants will follow the materials required for undergraduate freshman applications. However, considering that the SSEN is scheduled earlier, if applicants have not yet prepared a letter of recommendation from their high school counselor, the University of Chicago will still review their application materials as usual.

The teacher recommendation letter submitted by the student when applying for the University of Chicago Summer School will be automatically added to the applicant's freshman application.

4.For students who have just attended the University of Chicago Summer School in the summer between 11th and 12th grade in high school, the requirement to submit an additional letter of recommendation will be waived; for students who have attended the University of Chicago Summer School in the previous summer, they will need to add another teacher recommendation letter. Specific information can be viewed here.

2024-2025 University of Chicago Application Essay Topics

Different from the one required supplementary essay and one choice of seven supplementary essays in the 2023-2024 application season, the University of Chicago has changed to one required supplementary essay and one required choice of six supplementary essays in the 2024-2025 application season. The specific topics are as follows:

1.Essay 1 (Required)

How does the University of Chicago meet your desire for specific learning, community, and future? Please specify your wishes and how they relate to the University of Chicago.

2.Essay 2 (Required, Choose One of Six)

Option 1: We are all familiar with using "green eyes" to express "jealousy" or "blue" to express "low mood", but have you heard of "being caught with purple hands" or "being amused to the point of turning orange"? Please give a new color connotation to an old-fashioned expression with color elements and tell us what it means.

Option 2: "Ah, I was old then, and I'm much younger now." - Bob Dylan. In what ways do we become younger as we age?

Option 3: Pluto, the demoted planet. Ophiuchus, the 13th zodiac sign. Andy Murray is the fourth person to win a Grand Slam in tennis. In each of these groups (collections), there is always a "not quite right" place. Discuss a group (collection) and its unofficial members, and give your reasons why (or why not) it should be excluded.

Option 4: "Daddy-o", "Far Out", "Gnarly", there are too many slangs to mention. Unfortunately, most of them are no longer popular - choose an outdated slang from any era or language, and explain why you prefer it.

Option 5: How many piano tuners are there in Chicago? How much length of chalk do professors at the University of Chicago use in a year? How many pages are there in the books in the Reichenstein Library? These problems are all estimation puzzles named after Enrico Fermi, a physicist at the University of Chicago. Create your own Fermi estimation puzzle, give your best answer, and explain how you came to it.

Option 6: With the spirit of exploration, choose any of our past topics (or come up with your topic). Be original, creative, and thought-provoking. Fully demonstrate your excellent qualities as a writer, thinker, dreamer, social critic, wise man, world citizen, or future student of the University of Chicago. Take a little risk and have fun!

The University of Chicago has listed some classic questions from previous years. You can check the official website.

As an American university with a rich background, the difficulty of admission to the University of Chicago has gradually increased in recent years. Students who want to apply to the University of Chicago must pay attention to writing their characteristics in the essays, showing their personal style and academic potential! You can consult Embark when necessary!

As we all know, the University of Chicago’s essay questions and requirements are notoriously tricky. For many students applying to the University of Chicago, writing the University of Chicago essay is a brain-racking and headache-inducing task.

Today, I have prepared some excellent writing examples from University of Chicago admissions documents over the years for your reference. In each of the essays, the applicant conveys to the admissions officer through his or her narrative how his or her character, values, and life are consistent with the University of Chicago.

The content is quite long, so please read it patiently. Next, let’s take a look at the “3 Excellent Sample Essays from the University of Chicago” that will make admissions officers excited.

3 University of Chicago application essay examples

01. University of Chicago Freshman Essay

Did I mention I’m a cultural philosopher interested in starting a Neo-Confucian reformation through literature and music? Well, I am. And there’s no better place for me than UChicago. Here’s why:

When I visited the Leo Strauss Centre at UChicago in June 2018, its managing editor Prof. Gayle McKeen led me to the top floor of Regenstein, where Strauss’ notes and manuscripts are stored.

While teaching at UChicago, Strauss dug into ancient philosophers’ esoteric scripts and did a very good job deciphering them -- and the trick lies in those notes. After I realized this, my summer camp roommate never saw me before 10 pm for two weeks. For my own little reformation, a lot of deciphering and arrangement need to be done, for which Strauss’ method will provide an ideal guide.

UChicago is the only institution that grants access to those notes, and I wonder when my roommate will see me since there is no curfew for undergraduates. (Answer: still 10 pm, since that’s when Regenstein closes.)

Strauss was pretty smart, but he would’ve been more efficient if he had something called “Digital Humanities,” an area in which UChicago is now the undisputed leader.

I am excited to benefit from and contribute to this promising enterprise, as I personally experienced its convenience when I pulled statistics of the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d'Alembert from Prof. Robert Morrissey’s digitized French literature project, which was an immense help to my research on the Enlightenment.

I can see myself compiling and digitizing the “Classic of Documents” with Prof. Edward L. Shaughnessy from East Asian Language and Civilizations department, comparing the respective frequency of Confucius’ use of “Ren” and “Yi” in this work, and investigate the subtleties of Neo- Confucian thoughts.

UChicago is the only school I am applying to that opens to undergraduates the course “Adaptation & Translation in Theater-Making.” The intercultural and interdisciplinary approach of this course makes it a perfect resource for me to refine my “Wen Tianxiang” and begin creating other works.

The music course “Social and Cultural Studies of Music” will deepen my understanding of the connection between music and the philosophy behind it, and the Composition Seminar will vastly improve my skills as I can receive criticisms from world-renowned composers. While technically the seminar is for graduate students, Prof. Augusta Thomas. Thomas assured me that distinguished undergraduates can participate as well.

Most excitingly, the “Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities” major allows me to fit all of the above into my four-year-journey. My final BA project, as I envision now, will be a full opera that embodies Neo-Confucian philosophy in a modern story, performed in English and accompanied by a Western-style orchestra.

I also look forward to pursuing a multitude of activities at UChicago’s UROCK Climbing Club (I am actually quite a climber -- didn’t see that coming, did you?), its Symphony Orchestra, its University Theatre, and of course its Philosophy Club -- while I certainly hope to stage my reformation, sometimes it’s ok to just be a casual intellectual who sits around and talks, or to just have fun.

02、University of Chicago Freshman Essay

As I watch children at the Chicago Heights Early Childhood Centre, I scribble notes on how they share the limited snacks I’ve given them and what stages they go through as they discuss who gets what. After watching a few groups distribute their scarce resources, I give each child a lollipop before I leave the centre with a full notebook.

A few hours later, I’m walking up 59th Street to the Becker Friedman Institute. As I drop off my observations for “The Environment Project,” I’m excited that I’m contributing to experimental economics under economists like Professor John List through the Chicago Experiments Initiative.

Well, I guess I might not get this position of student volunteer at the Becker Friedman Institute immediately. But for me, this small fantasy is symbolic of all the things I want to experience at UChicago as a prospective energy economist. Studying at Chicago would be a dream come true for me: bringing economics into everyday life and applying it to environmental problems, while roaming Chicago and having fun.

At Chicago, in terms of economics, I’m looking forward to diving deeper into my major by taking unique courses like Experimental Economics and Creativity, where I’ll further my understanding of economics beyond core micro/macroeconomics.

Creative and experimental thinking is, I believe, what is needed in my career as an energy economist and these two courses will prepare me well to step up to my challenge. Similarly, I’d also be excited to take Theory of Auctions, a course that will equip me with necessary knowledge for further studies into carbon cap-and-trade markets, a field that I’ve gained particular interest in after my summer assisting Professor Hojung Park with his research.

As for my interest in the environment, I’m hoping to explore this field through the Environmental Economics and Policy track inside the Environmental and Urban Studies minor, a choice that fits me well.

Starting with the required courses focused on policy-making, I also hope to journey through courses like Energy: Science, Technology, and Human Usage and Introductory Glaciology to strengthen my foundations in environmental science, a subject I’ll need more expertise on for my career.

I also plan to take Climate Change in Literature, Art, and Film (ENST 12520) to study how popular media characterizes environmental problems and what climate change looks like from the perspective of humanities.

I’m so excited about all the opportunities to combine these two fields of interest at Chicago. From mentoring high school students’ research at the Centre for Robust Decision Making on Climate and Energy Policy to discussing UChicago’s sustainability plan with the Green Economics Group and conducting my own studies through the EPIC Undergraduate Summer Research Fellowship, I’ll have plenty of places to apply economics to environmental problems.

These opportunities will hopefully also give me the chance to give back to the UChicago community and I’ll try to share my high school experiences of teaching children as a Climate Reality Leader and leading the school energy club’s various experiments and research.

But outside my focus in economics and environmental studies, I hope to take courses like Contemporary French Cinema to deepen my understanding about French culture, as well as Dinosaur Science, a course I’ve been interested ever since I received a UChicago email two years ago.

Though all of this will occupy most of my time, I’m going to try to squeeze in time to play pétanque with the Lawn Sport Enthusiasts as well as visiting the museums around Chicago. With some luck, I’ll find other art history freaks for whom “museum-going” is an exciting weekend plan and together, we’ll become well-acquainted with Mary Cassatt and Robert Delaunay paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago by the end of our four years, not to mention Opo Ogaga.

I’m sure that Chicago will be the best place for me to start my career as an energy economist and researcher. But speaking of research, there’s one thing I was troubled about in my Becker Friedman fantasy. Will Chicago kids settle for Chupa Chups? Or is there some Midwest treat I’ll have to discover?

03、University of Chicago Freshman Essay

The human mind tends to dislike inconsistencies. Possibly for this reason, philosophers created (or discovered?) the “law of non-contradiction”: for example, something can’t be limited and unlimited at the same time. So if there’s a limited amount of matter in the universe (clearly an assumption, but let’s grant it and see where it takes us), how can Olive Garden serve an infinite amount of food (not that I’d complain about more breadsticks)?

Both Eastern and Western philosophy have, perhaps without realizing it, struggled with the Olive Garden dilemma for centuries. One possible answer lies in the condition “at the same time.”

True, matter in the universe might be limited at any single point in time, and so is the amount of food Olive Garden can produce, but Olive Garden is making food ALL THE TIME! Chemistry, biology, and environmental science all teach us that matter and energy recycle, something mirrored in Neo-Confucian cosmology.

In the li- qi (principle-matters) system, the li of the universe is fixed, and the qi at any time is limited, but as time goes on, the qi breaks and reorganizes itself according to the li, destroying and creating matter endlessly.

The Hegelian dialectic, while working a little differently, shows the same thing. The Thesis and the Anti-Thesis are limited at a given point in time, but as their conflicts grow and materialize over time, a Synthesis is formed -- creating stuff endlessly! (Well, maybe until the “end of history.”) The Daoist dichotomy of Yin and Yang goes a step further: “The Supreme Void divides to The Two; the Two give birth to The Four; The Four create The Eight....”

As the two essential elements group and regroup themselves, myriad creatures are being created, disintegrated, and recreated.

The spirit of this self-generative binary paradigm is continued in modern Computer Science, where groupings of 0’s and 1’s generate infinite possibilities. Although the computer has only limited storage, variations with time create limitless images on the screen. Similarly, although the universe has only a limited amount of matter, over an infinitely long period of time Olive Garden can surely serve limitless amounts of food.

Even if the amount of matter in this universe is finite, we have no way of knowing it -- the universe could be bound, but its terminus is beyond our perception. Similarly, the food at Olive Garden could in fact be limited, and the customers might simply perceive it to be limitless because they can’t see its limit. In other words, the food of Olive Garden is made infinite by the customers!

As German philosopher Immanuel Kant formulated in his Critique of Pure Reason, the unperceivable world -- the thing-in-itself, aka the secrets in the kitchen -- is unknowable and could be finite or infinite.

But what makes it seem infinite is our limited capacity to know, or in this case, to eat. I’m sure many creatures of enormous appetite (myself included) have tried to eat an Olive Garden empty, just as those of outstanding intellect have tried to explore the metaphysical reality of the world, but as far as I know, none have succeeded. This makes the food at Olive Garden effectively infinite.

Political theories offer tantalizing possibilities for explanation, until each is devoured in time. The combination of the self-generating matter of the universe and the limited capacity of mind -- parallel to the continuously refilling Olive Garden salad bar and the limited appetite of each of us -- can lead to a feeling of frustration. I remember a time when I almost finished off the salad bar, but seconds later they refilled it.

Nothing could encompass how I felt at that moment besides the word “frustration.” Francis Fukuyama, one of my favourite contemporary political philosophers, likely had the same frustration when he concluded in 1989 that “history has ended with the globalization of liberal democracy,” only to be proven wrong as cultural and ethnic conflicts arose in the 1990s.

Fukuyama’s teacher, Samuel Hungtington, then tried to capture this new political zeitgeist in his “Clash of Civilizations,” only to be proven in-comprehensive when ideological conflicts took place again in the Middle East in the 2000s. Numerous other theories arose to make sense of our geopolitics, and some did a good job -- for a period of time.

As the situation itself keeps changing, those theories inevitably become less accurate and less relevant. Political phenomena in the world, like the food at Olive Garden, just keep presenting themselves ceaselessly, and neither our minds nor our appetites seem capable of fully handling them.

Hence, we start to question the question. Things -- food and the world -- seem so limitless and overwhelming that we start to doubt whether there’s only a limited amount of matter after all. Maybe the initial proposition itself is wrong!

As I wrote this previous line, I finally realized how infinity is truly possible: it is our very ability to doubt, to think outside the box, to question fixed propositions, that is truly infinite. My favourite philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn, acknowledges as much: true, no single account of the world is fully accurate, but in attempting to formulate those accounts, we create many different ways of looking at the world -- many mini-worlds to ourselves. Each “paradigm shift” is a complete revolution of thought, a collective “thinking outside the box,” a fruit of human creativity, which is limitless and leads us closer and closer to the ultimate reality.I guess that’s why Olive Garden is so popular.

Writing essays is not simply applying templates. Experienced admissions officers can tell at a glance whether an applicant has used "routines". Perhaps each university has different focuses on judging essays, but essays written with personal experience and personal feelings must be more soulful than template-based essays.

Mastering essay writing skills and the preferences of dream schools is one aspect, but being able to say something meaningful in the essay is the key! If you want to write an essay that has both personal characteristics and can impress admissions officers, participating in high-quality scientific research competitions is a good choice!

Speaking of high-quality scientific research competitions, participating in the world-renowned ISEF International Science and Engineering Fair is a good choice! ISEF sends 40+ contestants to MIT in a year, which is a good help for top American college applications.

Embark was founded in 2016. It is an educational institution focusing on customized scientific research training for teenagers. The core team members are all master's and doctoral graduates from prestigious American universities. Since its establishment, it has exclusively signed more than 3,000 mentors from the Ivy League, MIT, California Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins JHU, Carnegie Mellon CMU, Top 30 U.S. Universities, National Key Laboratories, UK G5, Max Planck Institute, ETH Zurich, National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, and other world-renowned universities. It has guided students to win nearly a thousand awards in major global scientific research competitions through customized scientific research training and helped them successfully enter world-renowned universities such as Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Oxford, and Cambridge.

You can check out Prestigious STEM Competitions for more one-on-one online competition coaching.

University of Chicago Recommended 2024 Summer Reading List

What books are students at the University of Chicago reading during the summer?

Below, the 2024 winners of UChicago’s annual Quantrell and PhD Teaching awards share books that left an impression on them.

1.The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher-By Lewis Thomas

2.Disability Worlds-By Faye Ginsburg and Rayna Rapp

3.Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert-By Sunaura Taylor

4.Independent People-By Halldor Laxness

5.The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biographyof Cancer-By Siddhartha Mukherjee

6.Thirty Million Words-By Dana Suskind

7.The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir-By Kao Kalia Yang

8.The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry-By Wendell Berry & Paul Kingsnorth