On the Quads
By Lydialyle Gibson
In July the Princeton Review released its 2009 rankings for North America’s 368 best colleges, and the U of C’s quodlibetic standing remains strong. Reviewers judged the University ninth for best college library (up from 11th last year) and 14th for unpopular or nonexistent intercollegiate sports (up from 15th). Chicago ranked ninth—behind MIT, Caltech, Harvard, and Middlebury—for having the most studious undergraduates. For information on Chicago’s U.S. News rankings, see “For the Record,” page 19....
Lisandra Rickards, AB’06, a Jamaican native who was the first in her family to attend college, received a scholarship from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, offering as much as $300,000 for six years of graduate study. She was one of only 50 recipients from more than 1,000 nominees. Rickards studied economics in the College and worked as a research assistant to Chicago professor and Freakonomics author Steven Levitt after graduation, before returning home to take a job with Jamaica’s minister of finance. This fall Rickards enrolls in Harvard Business School’s MBA program.…
Following his senior season with Chicago’s track-and-field team, Zach Rodgers, SB’08, won an NCAA postgraduate scholarship, good for $7,500 toward a graduate or professional degree. A biology, chemistry, and physics triple-major, Rodgers graduated with a 3.96 grade point average and was named in June to ESPN the Magazine’s College Division Academic All-America Cross Country/Track & Field Team....
While some universities have been severely pinched by rising gasoline prices, the effect on Chicago has been relatively minimal so far. Chicago admissions staffers saw no summer drop in prospective-student visits, and University construction projects continue moving forward. But Director of Athletics Tom Weingartner predicted Chicago teams would be “significantly over budget” because of travel costs. “We will no doubt have to split teams up occasionally, have them stay overnight when flights are unavailable, and use buses more often than in the past.”