<p>I applied to Brown and UChicago econ this year, which college would you go to if you were accepted to both?</p>
<p>if you are positive you want to get a PhD in economics, there is a good argument for chicago.</p>
<p>if you have career interests outside the social sciences academy, or more generally open to other career options there is a better argument for brown.</p>
<p>i'd go to brown just because it's the ****</p>
<p>Brown & Chicago are opposites in the respect that Chicago has substantial core course requirements whereas Brown has few or no core course requirements. If you visit each campus, you will probably know which feels right for you. With respect to the study of economics, Chicago is the superior school.</p>
<p>U CHicago is where fun goes to die and where the squirrels are cuter than the girls and more aggressive than the guys. With that in mind U Chicago's econ dept is also incredibly conservative pro free market i.e Milton Friedman and that right now isnt the smartest, essentially U Chicago is very extreme</p>
<p>"If you visit each campus, you will probably know which feels right for you."</p>
<p>I'd disagree. I visited both, and I liked both. It helped that I only got into one, but there's a lot of similarities between the two schools, especially if you're going to take a broad range of courses regardless of requirements. The focus on undergrads, on learning over grades, etc. is something you'll find at both schools.</p>
<p>I think that both schools look to produce similar results but the means by which they bring you there are totally different which results in a completely different environment.</p>
<p>Those are both great schools and were my daughter's top choices because of the intellectual focus of those schools. She chose Brown. I was more impressed with Chicago's core and I think that would have been really good for an all-around strong student with no weak areas. At Brown, I think she skewed too much toward the Science/Math side. However, she is also an 'overloader' type and Brown is likely more forgiving of the student who takes on huge impossible loads of work. She has had incrediblely good opportunities at Brown. And she really loves the collegiate and cooperative culture.</p>
<p>She is now convinced that she would not have liked Chicago, that it is too conservative and too much of a grind. I'm not so sure, but she has a friend there and gets her perspective.</p>
<p>UChicago is more intellectual, it has a heavier courseload, and is much more conservative (fiscally, not politically). Brown has more prestige, no curriculum restrictions, and is very liberal (almost to the point of excessive political correctness).</p>
<p>The stereotypes about UChicago ("where fun goes to die" and the 'squirrels' simile) are only partially true. UChicago students are bogged down by the work, but they love their classes and are truly interested in their studies; they may not have traditional fun (i.e. constant partying), but they do enjoy themselves. I can't refute the squirrels simile with any solid evidence, but just by making an educated guess, I can say that the simile is more hyperbole than truth (hopefully).</p>
<p>Haha, I hope all are aware that the "Where fun comes to die" and "Where the squirrels are cuter than the girls/more aggressive than the guys" are t-shirt slogans, and ones that pretty perfectly exemplify Chicagohumor. Mix three parts self-deprecating, four parts geeky-and-proud, and one part defense-mechanism cynical and there you have it.</p>
<p>(The squirrels slogan is actually two separate slogans, for his-and-her t-shirts, so the pendulum swing both ways).</p>
<p>I'm really not qualified to compare Brown to Chicago, particularly because I've never been on College Hill and I'm biased against Brown, because it's the school my mom wanted me to go to :-)</p>
<p>Anyway, I'm still convinced that the schools are more alike than different, and I encourage the OP to think of the schools as package deals rather than for isolated programs.</p>
<p>It's amazing that UChicago students always assume that not requiring classes results in a less heavy course load. For as many people as that's true for, there are students who are taking on way more than any other institution would make possible. That's part of Brown though-- everyone has a drastically different educational experience. Any comment that sums up what occurs at Brown completely misses the reality of Brown.</p>
<p>FWIW, UChicago in the 90s had a major crisis of identity when in order to continue to attract top students they completely changed their advertising (before geek became chic again). During that time, UChicago's paper wrote with quite a bit of disdain that the UChicago prospective student viewbook made, "more references to frat parties than Brown's!" </p>
<p>There has always been a bit of competition between these school's student bodies because each school has the same goal but goes about achieving that goal in drastically different ways. UChicago feels the need to justify its methods against ours. Brown really does the same thing, but you hear about it less because Brown students are less competitive about what it is they do in general and just don't vocalize what they're thinking-- UChicago is ****ing nuts for doing what it does how it does it and that atmosphere is atrocious! Of course, UChicago thinks we're just a bunch of PC hippies who take Native American Underwater Basketweaving in Translation as our concentration.</p>
<p>It's a fun, healthy rivalry, but truthfully, though the students who leave both institutions have a strong liberal arts background, the environment you'll be in is so different I can't help but to think that students that flourish at Chicago would sink at Brown, and vice versa.</p>
<p>I'd go to Brown personally, its a better school, less stress especially considering Chicago's deflationary grading and the location is way better than Chicago which is basically in a ghetto.</p>