Pros, cons for both
Have you read the descriptions in books like the Fiske Guide and the Insider’s Guide to the Colleges? That is the place to start, if you haven’t done so. CC is best for specific questions about colleges.
A lot depends on your interests and what you’re looking for in a college.
Both are rigorous, which I think is good: hard work is the best way to learn.
Both are world-class in Economics and are highly revered in many other programs. Digging deeper, Chicago is probably better at the STEM fields - though neither really features Engineering. Chicago is maybe marginally better in the social sciences, while Northwestern is probably better in the arts and in journalism.
Both are highly selective, though Chicago is somewhat more selective (9% vs. 12%) and the admits have slightly higher test scores.
Chicago is known to be more intellectual, though there are plenty of academics-focused students, and intellectualism, at NU also.
NU is located along the lake in a nice north-side suburb. Chicago is located inland a bit, in the city, on the South Side. It is a nice area but abuts questionable neighborhoods.
Chicago has the classic Gothic architecture, while NU’s architecture is varied. Both are pretty campuses, just different.
Both have good access to the thrills of downtown Chicago.
Both are great schools. I think Chicago is a lot like Columbia in many ways, while Northwestern is a lot like Dartmouth academically.
NU is significantly more “pre-professional” than UChi (to generalize. Reductive, I know, but by necessity). NU has tons of “certificate” options and pre-professional majors, whereas UChi has the general vibe that “education is its own reward.” If you want work/life balance, pick NU. If you want work/work balance, pick UChi.
(It may not sound like it, but I’m a huge UChi fan. It’s just not for everyone.)
I agree with both post 2 and 3 except I don’t find NU pretty. ( And I too love UC. )
@prezbucky, NU actually has one of the more highly-regarded engineering schools. More apt peers of NU are UPenn/Cornell/Duke.
BTW, in STEM and social science fields, NU is much closer to UChicago in rigor than it is to some other schools you may think of that play bigtime football.
Northwestern is reasonably strong in STEM, especially in chemistry and materials science:
http://www.shanghairanking.com/SubjectChemistry2014.html
http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-engineering-schools/material-engineering-rankings
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2015/08/bioelectronics-pioneer-to-join-northwestern.html
Very differrent schools.
Good call on the Engineering at NU - I knew I’d miss something going off the top of my head. (I was paging through the U.S. News grad school rankings in my mind…).
STEM overall - again, yes, I should have called it a draw, maybe a slight nod to NU due to Eng strength.
I guess that would leave them very tight in terms of academics. And before posting, I wrote Penn, Cornell and Duke as academic kin (and then deleted them… before settling on Dartmouth due to the Econ/finance vibe. I should have stuck with my gut.)
OP, they’re both great. If you are interested in them, visit both and spend some fun time in Chicago. If you like both campuses and the city to which they are attached, apply to both.
FWIW, US News ranks Northwestern 13th among universities for undergraduate engineering programs. It ranks in the top 10 for industrial/manufacturing and materials engineering. According to NU’s 2014-15 Common Data Set, 12% of recent graduates majored in engineering. UChicago on the other hand has had virtually no engineering or other pre-professional programs. Its undergraduate programs in the past have focused exclusively on the liberal arts (although recently it has added majors/minors in molecular engineering, social service administration, and education). Chicago (unlike NU and some other research universities) has only one undergraduate division/school (which it calls “the College”.)
At Northwestern, about 30% of undergrads join fraternities or sororities (according to its 2014-15 CDS.) It’s a B1G football school. Chicago dropped out of the Big 10 many decades ago. Greek life (like sports) is very understated at Chicago. Its center of student social life has been said to be Regenstein Library.
So although both are excellent academically, Northwestern offers a more balanced undergraduate experience in some respects. If Duke, Cornell and Penn are its “kin”, Chicago is a little more like an overgrown Swarthmore, Carleton, or Reed (although in recent years Chicago’s undergraduate enrollment has grown to ~5100 students, from large LAC to roughly Ivy League college enrollment levels.)
Here’s a pretty good description of undergraduate life and culture at UChicago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/College_of_the_University_of_Chicago
Both have significant core requirements. If you’re looking for an open curriculum look elsewhere.
@latichever, not many unis/colleges have completely open curriculums from what I’ve seen.
I think that only a certain kind of kid will really be happy at U of C for undergrad. It has to be a good fit or they will not enjoy it there. I think that the @prezbucky comparison with Swarthmore is an apt one. The both seem to attract intellectual students who tend to pride themselves on academic rigor and liberal arts. Many U of C students take pride in the slogan “U of C: where fun comes to die.”
Northwestern is also rigorous. but seems to be more balanced and provide a more traditional college experience. Typical students more of the “work hard, play hard” variety. Similar to Penn, Cornell and Duke as was mentioned upthread.
Both can be a great experience. After visiting both, I think most people will have a clear preference based on the vibe at each and what they are looking for in an undergrad experience.
Both great schools, both very different. Northwestern is more pre professional while U of C is more intellectual.
If we can generalize, a stereotypical student at Northwestern is a former high school class president, will major in career oriented fields like journalism, biology or engineering, and go for an MBA after graduation. A stereotypical student at U of C is a former high school quiz bowl captain, will major in economics, pure math or physics (no engineering), or ancient Middle Eastern archaeology, and will go for a PhD after graduation (U of C is second to CalTech in the percentage of students who go on to get PhDs).
Northwestern mixes its academics with Big Ten sports and frats. The U of C does not, and is still working on burying its past reputation for lack of fun. It focuses on nerdier pastimes like the worlds biggest scavenger hunt. The U of C historically is on the cutting edge of academia, which is why it has 89 Nobel Prizes (Northwestern has 9). That bleeds over into the attitudes and interests of the students who choose to go there.
In my view, Northwestern is very, very similar to Duke or Penn, while U of C is closest to Columbia or maybe Yale (academically that is - it doesn’t have the old-money social prestige of Yale).
Yes, per Washington Monthly, Chicago is currently 4th for PhD production – behind Caltech, MIT, and Princeton and just ahead of Stanford and Brown. Note that this is more recent than Reed’s PhD data, which is far older than people realize (it assesses undergraduates from ca. 1988 to 2000).
That said, the average Chicago student is not getting a PhD, particularly in a field like economics. A couple of years ago I calculated that somewhere between 1 in 75 and 1 in 100 Chicago econ majors gets a PhD, a virtually negligible percentage. If you expand to all disciplines, about 10% of Chicago graduates eventually earn a PhD. An impressive percentage relative to others, sure, but a very small percentage of graduates nonetheless.
As for the most popular majors, Chicago follows exactly the same trend as the Ivies and similar private universities. The majors that feed into the popular career routes – business, law, consulting, medicine, and the like – are the most popular, whereas humanities majors (except English), the more obscure social sciences (e.g. geography), and the arts are extremely unpopular.
835 Economics
414 Biology
334 Mathematics
307 Political Science
250 Public Policy
…
…
…
28 Theatre
26 Near Eastern Civilizations
25 Gender Studies
11 Religious Studies
4 Medieval Studies
The proliferation of programs like Careers in Business, Careers in Health, etc. indicates that Chicago students are not averse to a “pre-professional” bent to their studies.
I think this is true of many colleges, Chicago included. Here on CC we place a great deal of emphasis on fit.
That said, I think many of the traditional differences between Chicago and the other elite privates have greatly diminished. I’ve spent a fair amount of time at Chicago and Penn in the past year (feel free to PM for details), and the undergraduates I interacted with were really pretty darned similar. I suspect if you took a handful of Chicago students and a handful of undergraduates from peer universities, one would be hard pressed to match them with their respective universities.
UChicago:
Pros
-Student ID doubles as entrance ticket to the South Side’s most exclusive club, The Reg
-d(USNews Rank)/dt largest in the nation
-Have the unique opportunity to be surrounded by peers who are just as willing to argue with you as you are with them
-3 foot thick castle walls keep out the Chicago winter and any encroaching social life
-Located next to one of the largest wind tunnels in the world, the Midway Plaisance
-More Heisman Trophy Winners than Northwestern
-Located in one of the few neighborhoods across America a President abandoned to go on to greater things
-Chipotle being all the way away on 53rd helps students save money
Cons
-Highest concentration of That Guy in nation
-Smell from Northwestern occasionally penetrates all the way to Hyde Park
-Midway Airport not named after our Midway (very embarrassing)
-Hyde Park not actually a park
-The World’s Fair was only temporary, and it’s over now
Northwestern:
Pros
-Can live in the affluent city of Evanston for the low, low price of 60k a year
-Purple line extends within blocks of campus despite being located almost twice as far from the loop as the Chicago based institution actually in the city limits
-Abundance of Greek organizations to stagger drunkenly between
-North Campus/South Campus division ensures that Engineers are never distracted by Theater majors or downtown Evanston
-Name ensures that some geographically confused New Yorkers won’t assume you go to school in flyover country
-While Hyde Park may be the home of the World’s Fair, Evanston was the home of its architect!
-No serial killer has ever lived within a 10 block radius of campus
Cons
-Lakefront location effectively means that campus is the first line of defense against the Lake Michigan land-sharks
-Marching band’s very entertaining shows often rudely interrupted by football players
-Chicago skyline much less impressive from the north
-The aforementioned geographically confused New Yorkers will assume you go to school in Boston (or Seattle)
“U of C is second to Caltech in the percentage of students who go on to get PhDs” (#12)
By normalized data, I’ve most recently seen UC 9th by this measure, with schools such as Harvey Mudd, Reed, Swarthmore, Carleton, Grinnell and Bryn Mawr having greater productivity.
“Per Washington Monthly, Chicago is currently 4th for PhD production (behind Caltech, MIT, and Princeton and just ahead of Stanford and Brown).”
I used this list, which may or may not be reliable.
http://www.thecollegesolution.com/the-colleges-where-phds-get-their-start/
CalTech and Chicago were the only national universities in the top ten overall (the rest were all LACs) Chicago was in the top 10 in PhD production in history, life sciences, math and stats, physical sciences, anthropology, physics, and social sciences.
Northwestern was not in the top 10 in any category. This is not a knock on Northwestern. It simply reflects a more pre-professional focus. Neither Duke, Penn or Dartmouth were in the top 10 in any PhD category either, and they are all great schools.
Interestingly, the only national universities on ANY of the top ten lists were Chicago, Caltech, MIT, Yale, Princeton Harvard and Rice. No Stanford and no Brown. So there is some disconnnect here, I guess.
“By normalized data, I’ve most recently seen UC 9th by this measure, with schools such as Harvey Mudd, Reed, Swarthmore, Carleton, Grinnell and Bryn Mawr having greater productivity.”
That is true. The top ten list includes Caltech, Chicago and 8 liberal arts colleges, and in almost every academic category, liberal arts colleges dominate the top ten, with the occasional national university like Chicago, MIT, Harvard popping up. I guess that’s not surprising. When your school graduates very few people, it only takes a few PhD’s to get a large percentage.
Anyhow, the point is, Chicago is in all those lists because of its general focus on academics for academics sake. Northwestern has a different focus, more pre-professional. Like Duke, or Penn.
warblersrule makes a good point that, even at the colleges with the highest PhD production, relatively few graduates get them. Caltech may be an exception. However, even at Princeton or Chicago (and maybe Swarthmore, too), you’ll meet many more students bound for professional school programs.
Does it tell us very much about the quality of undergraduate instruction if a college generates 20 v. 10 v. 6 physics PhDs per thousand? Probably not (not by itself anyway). Does it change the tone of a 20-student discussion class to have 2 not 1 wonky future doctors of philosophy in the room? Maybe a little (if they both talk).