That's true for pretty much everyone's college experience no matter where they go to school, so I'll try to answer this question on a couple of levels that I hope will illustrate aspects of UChicago undergraduate life.
First, I'll talk about the curriculum.
Supposing you are entering Chicago fall quarter of your first year as an undergraduate and you somehow failed to either read the curriculum or discuss matters with your academic adviser, you'll notice that every other first year around you will begin reading Smith, Marx, Durkheim, or some combination of the like.
Rest assured, you are not going insane - You are witnessing Chicago's Core Curriculum in action, a process through which every single undergraduate goes that will ensure that the entire student body, regardless of major, will have the opportunity to discuss philosophy and sociology in a small and intimate setting (this is great - If you try it, it's likely that you will think that more people should have access to education of this nature but also realize why it is unlikely to be practical to be implemented in a lot of other schools).
The core includes sciences, history, mathematics, and art as well, so pretty much every undergraduate has to take some combination of courses that will fulfill the core, which will make up approximately a third of most undergraduates' courses.
Beyond the core, we offer majors in pretty much every field of instruction (not just Economics, for which we continue to hold a claim on the largest number of Nobel Laureates of any university on the planet as of 2019), and many people go on to take advanced study in a lot of different (non engineering) fields like Physics and Chemistry, mathematics, computer science CAVEAT except engineering, although we have a molecular engineering department that the school has been trying to tout in recent years.
Some lesser publicized facts about the university's academic offerings include the fact that it is the birthplace of International Relations, one of the most prestigious Egyptology departments on this planet, and teaches over 50 different languages.
Secondly, I'll talk about the types of people that you may see at UChicago. (Though of course, the student body differs from year to year).
From the very minute you submit your course registrations, you will begin to see some people become familiar faces in the library. As far as I understand, it is likely that minimally 25% of these people will have scored perfect scores for SAT verbal and many of whom are on a quest for something from the university and or from life in general, whether it is the possibility of a job, further study, or (shock!) the pure joy of learning something for the sake of personal edification.
As time goes by, you may think it is interesting that some of these guys go to the library every single day, but you realize pretty quickly that the only reason you know that they show up every day is that you yourself have become one of those faces.
Partly, I am sure, you have chosen to do so because you love learning so much that you chose to enroll in a school that jokingly advertises itself as the school “Where Fun came to Die”.
Meanwhile, it is also important to realize that this culture of library-going is prevalent because it is the culture of this school to constantly engage in learning, and a significant part of this culture is the people who make it up.
It is important to realize that the people around you at are all people who have strongly developed or will commit toward developing a highly individualistic perspective and are used either to taking the steps necessary for success or have the will to take those steps - It is very rare to find a complacent UChicago student.
Chances are, these people have worked HARD all their lives and have either developed:
A) The ability to work so quickly, consistently, and efficiently that working is the equivalent of breathing for them
B) The motivation to affirmatively assure that something like leisure time will not get in their way, which typically results in the development of A).
Thirdly, I'll talk about how all of this academics stuff works in practice throughout the course of a quarter.
First you choose your classes before the quarter starts, typically 3 or 4. First week is usually somewhat chill, and there are parties going on.
As the weeks go by, however, exams and problem sets begin coming in.
The familiar faces that you see in the library will likely end up becoming even more familiar once you begin working together on problem sets and on work. Some amongst them will end up extremely prepared to discuss books during class, others will be straining through problem set after problem set, but almost every single person will be powering through day after day whether individually (not everyone goes to the library, many people choose to study in cubicles, and searching for jobs or submitting applications is a significant part of the experience) or collectively.
Perhaps that isn't so much of a surprise when you realize that you have to work through the equivalent of a semester's worth of academic material in the course of 10 weeks because of Chicago's Quarter system, which translates to an exam almost every single week in practice, two to three problem sets (or essays, depending on the classes you take) and do the reading as intensely and in the most structured way that you can to ensure that you can compete with the people around you, all of whom will be doing the same thing and some of whom, no doubt, will be the most motivated in the entirety of the general population.
If you've been thinking about applying to UChicago and have heard that academic life is a MASSIVE part of it, let me go ahead and confirm that suspicion for you: You are correct, academics at UChicago are very intense.
However, they are manageable if you work consistently (consistently is key), and focus on developing your mind and capacity for critical thinking in a self-directed way.
Let me be the first to say that this is not for everyone, and that UChicago is not exactly a conventional college experience.
Fourthly and lastly, I'll talk about Hyde Park and non-academic life in general.
Hyde Park is located on the South Side of Chicago. Pretty neighbourhood and all, some good restaurants. Relatively safe neighborhood with, as far as I recall, the largest private police force in the world.
You may have heard people describe Hyde Park as a bubble, and from my experience, this is true to an extent. Firstly, the campus is very beautiful and therefore nice to spend time in, and secondly, even if you disagree with me, just know that there is a long running joke about how the weather is perfectly designed to ensure that students dedicate their time maximally toward work because it is so cold all the time, and I'll leave it to you to exercise your judgment about whether that is true or not.
In Hyde Park, there may not much to do in the sense of paying money in exchange for entertainment if you define things “to do” as say, going to a club or a concert or a show, for which you will have to instead visit downtown Chicago - a beast of its own with far more than I can describe in this post - and this is not always convenient, especially considering the intense workload that you will inevitably face at this school.
However, there is a vast array of free (and extremely valuable) lectures and events (and even a free food list host) organized by student organizations and by the university which you can participate in to network, learn, advance your career (career advancement is a thing, but I will not focus on that in this post), and generally make good use of college life in: At UChicago, events are regularly organized at the Institute of Politics, International House, and other places around campus and have included (this is NOT an exhaustive list - my experience with events at Chicago is relatively limited) sharing sessions by Bernie Sanders, ex-president Obama, and of course, many of the faculty and visiting professors that regularly waltz in and out of the university.
You would be surprised at the people you can meet and the perspectives you can learn, although this is probably not UChicago-specific.
If you make the effort to make friends and socialize with people (which the University gets you to through the House system - Think Ravenclaw, Slytherin, etc), you will probably start having get togethers and meet ups and go to parties once in a while, which will pretty much handle the whole finding stuff to do apart from studying part… Again, not UChicago-specific.