I’m an incoming student who did the housing plan thing but am so confused that i apparently am assigned to vue53 😭 it’s an external apartment off campus? all I see are grad students talking about renting from there, does this mean I’ll be cut off from any house traditions or food or gym..I didn’t even get a home dining hall assigned
Ok so I did the trick to figure out my housing assignment early and I'm in I-house. I spoke to a current student who told me it's over if I am in I-house. Like to email housing to get a change if that ever happened to me. Is it over.
On a serious note, idrc about proximity to dining halls, but I do care about gym access and I guess being able to get to class on time.
Hi! I’m an incoming transfer student and just found out I’ve been assigned to Vue53 for housing. From what I understand, this is the first time in a while that UChicago has placed incoming students there.
How easy is it to stay connected to campus life and meet other students while living 15-20 minutes off campus? Also, what is the commute like during the winter?
Would appreciate any and all experiences or advice!
Hi all, I’m an incoming first year. Through a little fun hack on myUChicago, I got assigned to Snell-Hitchcock. I ranked suite, double then single in the housing application. What are the chances I get a roommate? I really want a roommate so bad I don’t want a single. Isn’t Snell-Hitchcock mostly singles?
Edit: if you wanna check your housing assignment early just go to myuchicago and then go to finances scroll down until you see change meal plan and there it should be
Just got my housing assignment
I am placed into Fren201 based on the language placement test. My current french level is roughly A2 i think? I still struggle to fully articulate my opinions both in speaking and writing, and I still have gaps in core grammar and vocabulary, but the course description seems to focus a lot on the expressing opinions and real application.
Could anyone share what the actual difficulty of French 201 is like? Does the class still go over basic grammar and stuff? or does it jump straight into more advanced work?
Thanks a lot!!
Hi! I’m an incoming freshman, and with housing assignments coming out soon, I was wondering if any current students could share their opinions on the different dorms. What are the pros and cons of each one in terms of location, room size, bathrooms, cleanliness, social life, and overall experience? Are there certain dorms that are generally considered better than others? And are there any that you really don’t want to get assigned to? 😭
Comparing https://resume.zoevera.com against https://chatgpt.com
And what a purpose-built ATS checker caught that GPT-4 didn’t.
Let me be upfront: I use ChatGPT for everything. Code reviews, draft emails, explaining stack traces at 2am. It’s genuinely useful. So when I needed to tailor my resume for a senior backend role, my first instinct was to open a chat window.
That was three weeks ago. Here’s what I learned.
What ChatGPT actually does well
Ask ChatGPT to “improve my resume” and it will:
For general writing quality, it’s genuinely good. If your resume reads like it was written by someone who hasn’t slept in 48 hours, ChatGPT will fix that.
What ChatGPT fundamentally cannot do
Here’s the problem: ChatGPT doesn’t know what job you’re applying for.
You can paste the job description into the prompt, sure. But there’s no mechanism for it to:
ATS filters work on keyword frequency and placement. A resume that reads beautifully to a human can score 40% on an ATS if the right terms aren’t in the right sections. ChatGPT optimizes for human readers. ATS systems are not human readers.
I ran a test. Same resume, same job description (Backend Engineer, Node.js/AWS stack). I gave ChatGPT the full JD and asked it to optimize my resume for ATS.
The output was well-written. It added “microservices” and “REST APIs” in a few places. But it missed:
When I ran the same resume through resume.zoevera.com, it flagged all three gaps explicitly, with section-level attribution. The ATS match score went from 54% to 81% after applying the suggested changes.
The core difference: diagnostic vs. generative
ChatGPT is a generative tool. It produces new text. It’s very good at that.
An ATS checker is a diagnostic tool first. It measures the gap between your resume and a specific job description, then tells you exactly what’s missing. The rewrite comes second — and it’s grounded in what was actually identified as absent, not what the model thinks sounds better.
This distinction matters because:
ChatGPT hallucinates improvements. It will add metrics you never achieved (“improved system performance by 35%”), use terminology that
sounds right but wasn’t in the JD, and rewrite bullets that didn’t need rewriting while leaving critical gaps untouched. Every line needsfact-checking.
A purpose-built tool works from the actual gap. The keywords it adds are the ones the JD asked for. The sections it flags are the ones the ATS will score. The output is closer to submission-ready.
A practical workflow
These tools aren’t mutually exclusive. The best result I got came from using both in sequence:
The ATS checker handles precision. ChatGPT handles prose quality. Neither does both well alone.
The cost argument
ChatGPT Plus is $20/month. If you’re actively job searching, that’s a fixed overhead whether you use it or not.
Most people search for jobs in windows — a few weeks of active applications, then nothing for months. A per-session model makes more
sense: pay when you need it, nothing when you don’t. ZoeVera’s pricing works that way — free analysis, one-time payment for the full
rewrite, no subscription.
For a developer audience specifically: if you’re applying to 10–15 roles over two weeks, you’re not optimizing resumes 365 days a year. The math on a monthly subscription doesn’t work.
What I’d actually recommend
The ATS doesn’t know what you meant. It only knows what you wrote.
Tested against a real Backend Engineer job description. Tools used: ChatGPT GPT-4o, https://resume.zoevera.com. June 2026.
Hi! I’m an incoming UChicago freshman and I wanted to ask current students about the LGBTQ+ scene, especially for lesbians. What is the dating life actually like? Is it relatively easy to meet other lesbians/queer women on campus?
I know the whole “will I find other gay people in college?” question is kind of cliché lol, but I’m genuinely curious about how easy it is to find other LGBTQ+ people and make queer friends at UChicago. I’d also love to hear what the overall environment is like—do you generally feel comfortable being openly LGBTQ+ on campus and in the surrounding community?
:)
Hello, I'm currently looking for off-campus housing options, and I've found myself in a situation (I assume others have as well) where the options closer to campus are decent, but sometimes the reviews online and comments about the neighbors aren't that great.
On the other hand, some options farther away (around 54th–56th and Lakeshore) seem to offer really nice apartments for the same price range.
My questions are:
Context: I'm looking for a 1 bed / 1 bath apartment, with a budget of $1,300–$1,800/month.
Any advice or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated!
To preface, I understand that this is a free service. I don't rely on this as my main mode of transport. The CTA works fine. But come on, if the university is going to provide a service in the first place, at least attempt to make it somewhat reliable?
There is no rhyme or reason for when buses leave gleacher. I have seen 2 buses depart gleacher within a minute of each other. This leads to clustering. It seems like every other time I check passio go, there are four buses clustered on the north side and none in hyde park. They could at least attempt to space out when the buses depart.
Buses unpredictability stop at Rockefeller or 59th and Ellis and stop running entirely. This occurs every other time I am waiting for the bus using passio go. Could it be possibly communicated beforehand, which buses are going to stop running? Otherwise, tracking an oncoming bus headed North is useless.
Drivers will skip you entirely. I have waited at the bus station, waving down the bus, just to get blown off.
I understand the university is undergoing budget cuts. I am fine if there are fewer buses. But please, at least make the remaining buses reliable. These do not seem like difficult problems to solve.
Does anyone know when tuition is due for incoming graduate students. I’m in the PME MEng program and I haven’t seen anything yet about where/when to pay. I’m worried I’m missing something since school starts in just over a month. Thx for the help :))
I am a commited athlete at UChicago and as I am writing my application for the school I am now realizing that the cost of tuition is around 100k. I tried the net price calculator and it said 20$ per year however 100k per year is insane and I am not able to afford that. Does anyone know of any athletes and how much that paid for their tuition and if the merit aid they recieved was more because they are an athlete? I know since it is d3 there aren’t any athletic scholarships but I was thinking that maybe they would bend the rule and just label the athletic money as scholarship/merit based aid.
Incoming freshman here, I’ve been getting a lot of fomo seeing my friends go to their colleges and experience fun o-week activities. I think it’s in part due to how late we start (no one seems to really talk about that on here?) and how little information there is on what it’s like.
The title is pretty much what I’ve been wanting to ask. Is it kind of lame? Is it a full packed schedule all week or does it have more downtime? Do we really have good traditions like other colleges that are more known for their o-week? Is it easy to make friends?
The posts I’ve seen about o-week are kind of as expected, UChicago students seem to be very self deprecating and I was hoping to get more insight into it.
I wanted to take that as my PHSC requirement because of my interest in astro, but the few discussions about that course here indicate that it's quite difficult. I do well in math but am not exceptional in physics. I'm also taking honors calc and computer science this quarter, so if this course is for really passionate astronomers, I'll switch to physics for future presidents. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Incoming freshmen here
Are e scooters or bikes allowed on campus, because I think it said you can’t charge them in your dorm.
If they are allowed, is there a regular population at the school that actually uses them, or is the campus not big enough for that to be necessary.
Is there usually like a lot of time in between classes where you can easily get to your next one without hurrying?
Today, Monday, August 17, 2:00 pm I found an Oppo phone on the quad - most likely European. Text me and describe it and we can connect so I can return it to you 734-972-6964.
Later today I will turn it in to Reynolds Club lost and found if there is one. If not I will update this.
Where can I drop a USPS package with a paid shipping label now that the post office in the 55th plaza is temporarily closed?
Ideally would love to avoid going to the post office on cottage grove since it’s pretty far.
Incoming graduate student here, moving to Hyde Park soon and hoping to adopt some cats this Fall! I won't have a car, so I'm wondering what pet shelters are nearby that I could go to and see some kitties. Also, if anyone in my situation has done this before without a car, what method of transportation did you use to bring the cats home with you? This is my first time living without a car so I have a lot to get used to!