since there seem to be some current Chicago med students lurking on this thread, would you mind answering a few general questions..I'm trying to decide if I should apply:
1) Does it hold true with the med school as in other departments that "UChicago is where fun goes to die"?
Absolutely not. I sing with a campus-wide a cappella group, so I interact with and perform for a lot of undergrads, and I cannot begin to describe how different the med students are from the rest of the campus. I know a good percentage of the 1st years partied and went out to bars downtown several times per week, and unlike many of the undergrads, the med students are almost all very socially functional and fun to be around.
2) What is the general vibe of the class/school...I know the university is known to be very academic in nature. Are the students cutthroat? Is the emphasis only on research, or do people pursue other things (say, global health or whatever).
The students are not cutthroat at all. Pritzker has true Pass/Fail for the first 2 years, meaning that so long as you pass, your specific grades are irrelevant (with the one exception of the profs using grades from the previous years to pick TAs). Before every exam this past year, multiple people in the class would send out their own condensed review notes to help others study, because everybody wants to make sure everybody else succeeds (we like to think of it as an elevator, everyone that gets on at the bottom gets off at the top). I've been told by someone who went through some personal problems that even if you happen to fail a class, your transcript shows "conditional pass" until you make up/redo what you need to, and then the conditional pass is changed to pass (with no record of the conditional pass ever being present). This really means that at least for the pre-clinicals, there is no reason whatsoever to be a gunner, and the very few gunners I am aware of end up being not well liked at all by the rest of the class.
For both (1) and (2), I think a lot of this has to do with the school's emphasis on class camaraderie. Every interview has a student interviewer, and there are students on the admissions committee. What they tell us (student interviewers) is that effectively we can't necessarily get anyone in we really like that would otherwise be rejected, but we can probably keep anyone out that we don't like that would otherwise be accepted (assuming we have legitimate reasons for not wanting him or her as a classmate).
To answer the rest of your question, and also to give you a bit of insight into what I (and a lot of other) student interviewers look for, we like to see people who are intelligent (but not cocky about it), seem committed to medicine, are socially adept, but also have other interests. I, for one, don't particularly want a classmate that I worry will go home and study all night long every night, because I want to bring in someone interesting who will contribute to the class community in some way.
I'm also sort of turned off by pre-meds who do absolutely nothing but tons of the typical pre-med ECs. Whether it's music, athletics, art, theater, social justice activism, a commitment to research, or what have you, we really like people who are not just one-dimensional cookie-cutter pre-meds with good stats.
For the majority of the people I know at Pritzker, I can tell you something about them that would make you say "oh wow, that's really cool". This runs the gambit from former NCAA Division I basketball players, to Hollywood actresses. People who lead these more balanced lives I feel bring a broader perspective to medicine, and also for the sake of a class with only 88 people, if it wasn't for basically everyone having their own hobbies and interests, we wouldn't have nearly as interesting of a class as we do. I'd recommend you take a look at the somewhat-buried list of student organizations here:
http://pritzker.bsd.uchicago.edu/current/students/organizations/orgs.shtml
Almost all of these organizations are run by a single class (the MS2s run them and transition the leadership to the MS1s mid-year). This list still isn't even complete, missing things like our dominatingly awesome intermural teams, movie nights, etc. Without making sure each student is interesting in his or her own way, maintaining such a diverse array of interests with a class of only 88 people would be nearly impossible.
That said, we are very research heavy. Nearly everyone except the MSTPs participates in the summer research program after their first year. While for a lot of people, I'm sure they do it because they are legitimately interested in research, I'm sure there are plenty who just like the idea of hanging out with the rest of the class and getting paid $5000 for the summer. So, I guess the best way to think of it is, even if you aren't committed to finding the key to eternal life through years of basic science lab work, you can still be a great fit here.
3) Does anybody have the avg MCAT/GPA of the starting class handy?
No idea, but I can probably dig that up for you if no-one else has it handy. I can tell you the class before was 36/3.8, but you probably already knew that from the MSAR.
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