Another UChicago alum. FWIW, my experience as an undergrad was that there wasn't all that much social mixing between the undergrads and the graduate students. I'm sure it occurred some, but the difference in life stage between those two populations was sufficiently large that mixing did not occur naturally. My impression was the grad students were aloof from the undergrads, not that the undergrads were hostile to grad students (undergrad hostility would surprise me, since many undergrads at UChicago thought they would be graduate students some time in the future).
Most student groups I participated in were overwhelmingly undergrad, such that a graduate student would stand out. But I mostly participated in academic competition groups (Mock Trial, Parliamentary Debate) that wouldn't have allowed graduate students to participate in the actual competitions.
Yeah, the biggest interactions between grad and undergrad students occur in the various clubs on campus. I know about 6 grad students so far, all from clubs. If I hadn't participated in clubs, or just ones that are undergrad only, I wouldn't know any.
So I'm applying for grad schools right now, and am visiting Yale, Brown, and UChicago this month (I already got accepted into UChicago, and also got invited to expenses-paid visits to both Yale and Brown). I'm visiting Yale in just 2 days.
So what are some cool things a LWer can do at those places? And which professors do research that a LWer could potentially find very interesting? Which universities would a LWer find himself/herself most at home at?
Also, is there anything else I need to know about those places?
I'm still waiting for decisions from Columbia and MIT (and got rejected by Caltech).