<p>I just had a quick question that my friend and I were talking about and I didn't know the answer...</p>
<p>Who is Northwestern's biggest rival? Be it in sports, or anything...preferrably, which school in the Big Ten is our rival?</p>
<p>THANKS!!! We've been dying to find out!!</p>
<p>in the big ten.. we dont have a classic rivalry like cal-stanford or UCLA-USC.. i guess the closest thing to an athletic rival is Illinois. </p>
<p>Non-athletically, there is somewhat of a rivalry with U. of Chicago.. although the schools dont really compete (hard to have a rivalry with no sports) and attract entirely different student bodies.</p>
<p>In "Joey" (episode 10) they said Purdue and Northwestern were rival schools. Not that I know what this means.</p>
<p>yep i know someone who's at purdue who told me abt nu-purdue rivalry.. im pretty sure its sports related (obviously) but other than that, i dont know much!!!</p>
<p>Purdue's rival is Indiana, definitely not NU. TV programs are often nonsense. If I were to pick a rival, it would probably be Michigan. Many top hs students in Michigan apply to both schools. Michigan is better in terms of having more top 10 departments while Northwestern is better in terms of overall undergrad ranking and selectivity.</p>
<p>Yeah. I'm from Indiana and I can positively say that NU's competition is NOT Purdue. People at my school would get in fights as to which is better and some people really would judge someone as to wheter they were going to IU or Purdue (the frequent joke is: What does everyone at Purdue have in common? A: They all got into IU) Sorry, I took that out of NU context, but I thought I would enlighten all of you non-Hoosiers!</p>
<p>I would say Michigan is the closest thing, in terms of admissions/academics.</p>
<p>yes, but michigan is not even close.. because so many NU students are from michigan.. and if you get into NU it probably means that getting into Umich in-state was really very easy. Out of state, the admissions standards might be more similar..but NU and Mich are not common cross-apps. </p>
<p>athletically, Illinois is the biggest rival. an athletic rivalry is nothing if the schools arent geographically near each other. And there is some competition academically, particularly the engineering depts.</p>
<p>Pretty much no athletic rivalry period. We kind of pretend that U of I is our rival.</p>
<p>Academically there is a NU/U of Chicago divide, but I think people from Chicago are more into than we are. Pretty much NU people think that Chicago people are even crazier academics than NU. I think UC is kind of into the South Side vs. North Shore thing. Apparently the engineering department is competative with U of I and pysics and astronomy are competative with U of C. </p>
<p>Perhaps this sums it up the best. On facebook most schools have a "Rival X sucks at life" group. NU doesn't have one. The closest thing we have is "University of Chicago people are weird" and there are only like 12 people in it.</p>