I find Yale is similar to UChicago than it appears. Columbia is the most similar to Chicago in terms of having a core curriculum, selectivity and being located in a major city.
Yale on the surface may seem to have some common attribute at Uchicago, but ultimately, I find then dissimilar. Big city v. small, residential college, etc. Further, Yale would be even more competitive to obtain admission than UChicago.
WUSTL
Please realize that applications are a function of branding which can be influenced by marketing. There are schools that place an emphasis to get their name out there and get more students to apply. If “selectivity” makes schools appear similar and it increases their standing in U.S. News then mission accomplished, right? Some schools can even waive the application fee to attract more applicants. Bottom line each applicant is judged individually based on the strength of what they bring to that school holistically. The students that are most likely to be admitted to “most selective” schools will get in on their merit regardless how many extra unqualified applicants the school works hard to apply. Think if a school drives in an extra X thousand international applicants but doesn’t increase spots for international students - they aren’t competing against the domestic student. It’s easy to invest in an outside marketing firm and task them with driving in XX applications. As you can see selectivity is not a great measure of how good or rigorous a school is…
I think WashU is different from UChicago in many ways, but there are some similarities and I think it’s a great education at both schools. Some of my friends at UChicago seemed like they would have had a good experience at WashU and vice versa. They both also do have intimate, Gothic campuses.
Also, WashU does have engineering. It doesn’t offer a required core curriculum, but there is a Freshman FOCUS class (year-round) called Text and Tradition that is designed for those students who want one.
There are plenty of schools listed already that are similar to U Chicago.
Coming at it from a different angle… these are, I believe, U Chicago’s close(st) peers in undergraduate education:
Columbia
U Penn
Historically, Tufts and U Chicago are pretty close in culture. Back before “quirky” became passe, they were the two universities most known for their unique application essays that tended to appeal to non-conformists. Both cultures tend toward the intellectual/cerebral side of things and stress interdisciplinary and multicultural perspectives. Both have strong D3 athletics. Both have an idealistic side and are among the top producers of Peace Corp volunteers. Both have about 5,000 undergrads, but U Chicago’s graduate/research population is about twice the size of Tufts.
Tufts is a little more pragmatic, with more of a focus on applied research/sciences (hence the Engineering School and and smaller pure math and theoretical science departments) and tends to send a higher percentage of grads into industry and a lower percentage into academia.
Tufts is little more laid back (less intense) and is a little more artsy (i.e. has a larger population of artists).
Interestingly, one of the original philosophy professors at U Chicago was James Tufts who eventually rose to become the first academic dean and vice president of U Chicago. One of the residential houses at U Chicago is named after him and seems to have a culture similar to Tufts.
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http://housing.uchicago.edu/houses_houses/new_graduate_residence_hall/tufts_house/
How is Penn similar to UChicago? The only similarity I see is that both schools are located in a city. The atmosphere at each school is entirely different with Penn being more party/greek heavy and UChicago being more quirky/intellectual.
^both my kids had this impression.
While I agree USC is nothing like U of Chicago, one of my best coworkers went to USC undergrad and U of Chicago for grad school and loved both experiences.
“If “selectivity” makes schools appear similar and it increases their standing in U.S. News then mission accomplished, right?”
Except that it doesn’t, because acceptance rate counts for less than 1.5% of the US News total. I don’t know why so many people on CC somehow think that acceptance rate plays a major role in where a college lands in the rankings, but there you have it – I guess you fell into that trap.
So acceptance rate doesn’t Impact any other of the categories? I have a bridge to sell to you…
Undergraduate academic reputation 22.5 percent
Retention — 22.5 percent
Faculty resources — 20 percent
Student selectivity — 12.5 percent
Financial resources — 10 percent
Graduation rate performance — 7.5 percent
Alumni giving rate — 5 percent
Sounds to me like the OP isn’t asking for schools that are similar to U of C in culture or quirkiness – just schools that are like U of C in having a core curriculum requirement and being in a big city, but different in being less competitive and having an engineering program.
I don’t know what other schools have a core curriculum requirement similar to U of C’s – of the schools my D looked at, only Reed had something that really seemed comparable (I’m a U of C grad). But if Reed doesn’t have engineering that knocks that out.
Regarding #32: In USNWR, acceptance rate accounts for only 10% of student selectivity. Therefore, acceptance rate, taken alone, accounts for exactly 1.25% of a school’s overall score.
I’m not sure what you mean by acceptance rate “impact[ing] any of the other categories.” It may indeed do so, but the figures you posted do not demonstrate this one way or the other.
It’s pretty simple - 22.5% of the rank is “peer review” by other colleges. So the beauty pageant is greatly influenced by prestige, which is undoubtedly influenced by selectivity aka admission rate.
That is without even taking into account how it impacts several other measures…
As much as US News denies it - admission rate is huge.
@ClarinetDad16 This debate is interesting and all, but it really has no pertinence to what OP is asking for. Perhaps this is an argument for another thread?
In researching a book, I have talked with many dozens of people that peer review other schools. I can count on one hand the number of them who had a clue what the acceptance rate of these other schools are, and more importantly were using that in any way as a basis for their impression of the school. They know all too well how, as you say, marketing campaigns and the like can artificially deflate that number. You really cannot argue it both ways. They have an impression of those schools based on who they know that teaches there, general overall reputation which has a lot of grad school reputation mixed in with it, and any other personal experience they have with the school. A few publicly admitted that they downgraded rival schools to gain an advantage. A Clemson person most famously did this some years ago, but it still goes on. In point, acceptance rate actually does have very little to do with ranking. You would have to make some kind of masterful argument to convince me as to how it affects retention rate, alumni giving, etc.
Also, you made a straw man argument to begin with.
No one ever said that quality of the school was related to acceptance rate. What the OP asked was for schools that are less selective than U Chicago. That generally means looking at acceptance rate, along with average stats. Unfortunately people continue to cite Columbia, Yale, and maybe a couple of others that are not easier to get into than U Chicago. They have very low acceptance rates and very high average stats for accepted students.
Now that we have cleared that up, let’s get back to suggestions for the OP. I agree that trying to name schools that are similar to Chicago in terms of atmosphere and are in urban areas is nearly impossible, especially any that are less selective. So the OP is going to have to compromise some. He might want to look at Case Western, and I agree that Rochester is a good choice to look into. Coincidentally they are both in the same athletic conference as Chicago. Georgia Tech is in a major city and obviously is well known for engineering. But it has decent offerings in traditional subjects like history and literature, and one can craft a core curriculum type of schedule to the extent an engineering major allows. I admit it isn’t the same as attending a school where all are required to take a certain stream of courses, but as I said there just are not many schools that meet your criteria. Depending on what field in engineering he has in mind, Tulane is very strong in the Liberal Arts. For engineering they are limited to Biomedical, Chemical, and Engineering Physics. If you are open to looking in that direction, then you can consider U Miami as well. Both are very good schools that are less selective than Chicago.
@Oberyn, I was talking about overall academic rep/ranking – peer academic quality. Not vibe/culture.
This was the statement:
Coming at it from a different angle… these are, I believe, U Chicago’s close(st) peers in undergraduate education:
Columbia
U Penn
In terms of student focus (intellectualism), Chicago is a somewhat less liberal version of Swat (the Freshwater School of Econ lives at U Chicago).
The discussion had digressed, but to that end, I think the most interesting posit to the following: So schools that reject more students are better? Why? Is the inverse of that questions, that is to say–
If we say no to that question, does that mean that schools that have an open general admission policy (e.g. they accept everybody) are just as good as the former?