The City

Chicago is a wonderful place to live, with anything you might ask for in a large city.

From Wiki-Travel: Chicago is a huge vibrant city and sprawling metropolitan area. It is the home of the blues and the truth of jazz, the heart of comedy and the first builder of the skyscraper. Here, the age of railroads found its center, and airplanes followed. It is one of the world’s great cities, and yet the metropolitan luxuries of theater, shopping, and fine dining have barely put a dent in real Midwestern friendliness. It’s a city with a swagger, but without the surliness or even the fake smiles that can be found in other cities.

UIC is a truly exciting place to work and do research, in the hub of downtown Chicago, which is a wonderful city to live in. It is a vibrant megapolis, famous for its architectural attractions, great jazz scene, symphony, opera, art museums, variety of theaters, ethnic restaurants; it has hundreds of miles of bike paths, a beautiful lake shore, great sports teams and music festivals. The cost of living in Chicago is far more reasonable than in places like Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York. Home to two other major universities,  University of Chicago and Northwestern University, several other strong math departments are also within driving distance, including University of Wisconsin at Madison, Purdue University, Notre Dame, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

As a graduate student at UIC, your fees cover a U-Pass every semester. This gives you unlimited rides on Chicago’s public transit system, the CTA, which means you can get just about anywhere in and around the city.

The most popular tourist attractions in Chicago are:

The Shedd Aquarium has been the crown jewel of Chicago’s Museum Campus for years. The aquarium, which is home to over 32,000 aquatic species, is a one-of-a-kind, top-notch marine biology institution.

Founded in 1893, the Field Museum is Chicago’s premier natural history museum and one of the largest of its kind in the world.

Panoramic windows on all sides of the SkyDeck Chicago observatory give outstanding views of the city, lakefront and beyond.

Navy Pier, once known as Municipal Pier before World War II, later became the home of UIC’s original campus. The pier, on Lake Michigan, meets at the delta of the Chicago River.

The Art Institute of Chicago is near Grant Park and Millenium Park, just south of Michigan Avenue’s Magnificent Mile. Built both for the 1893 World’s Columbian Expedition and the future Art Institute, it was also recently named one of the Top 10 Museums in the United States by TripAdvisor.

360 Chicago offers 360-degree views of the city from above.

The Adler Planetarium is an observatory,  museum, theater and research center, located right near the Shedd Aquarium on the Chicago Museum Campus on the lakefront.

The museum is the largest science museum in the Western Hemisphere, bringing science to life for people of all ages, promoting science education and lifelong learning.