<p>Firstly, how does Chicago relate to John Hokins? </p>
<p>Secondly, which universities are similar to Chicago?</p>
<p>How does it relate to JHU in what ways? Socially? Academically (what's your intended major?)? Ranking-wise?</p>
<p>Swarthmore and Columbia are often compared to Chicago, though for different reasons. Columbia for the core and urban location, Swarthmore for the more intense intellectual vibe.</p>
<p>I admire Chicago's academics and social scene. I don't want to go to a college with a large sports scene. I want to major in psychology.</p>
<p>Chicago and JHU are both self-consciously modeled after the German research institution-- small undergraduate population, large graduate population, so they are quite similar in that way. I liked Hopkins quite a bit when I visited (I'm a Chicago student).</p>
<p>I've always thought that Columbia is similar to Chicago on paper, but I've never thought that liking one school meant liking another. Then again, Columbia had the home field anti-bias for me. I couldn't imagine myself going to school anywhere near where I grew up.</p>
<p>The other schools in the UAA (Chicago's athletic conference) which I think fit the bill as "comfortable, somewhat nerdy, academic schools where sports is not a big deal, nor is not partying": Rochester (another small LAC/ large U), Emory (ditto), NYU, Case Western, Carnegie Mellon, Wash U, Brandeis. I've visited all of these schools, save for Emory and Case, and I've liked all of them.</p>
<p>Other schools I really like that are somewhat similar to Chicago: Barnard, Bryn Mawr, Oberlin, Reed, Tufts, Bard.</p>
<p>unalove has it down. I might add Cornell.</p>
<p>Reed? Rice?</p>
<p>"Chicago and JHU are both self-consciously modeled after the German research institution-- small undergraduate population, large graduate population, so they are quite similar in that way. I liked Hopkins quite a bit when I visited (I'm a Chicago student)."</p>
<p>At JHU's Homewood campus is very much a LAC-like university environment: 4500 UG, 1500 grad. All other Hopkins grad students are on different campuses, eg. med, public health, SAIS, etc. At the same time UG's can readily access all university / research resources if they want to, but they are still center stage at Homewood as undergrads. How does this compare to Chicago?</p>
<p>unalove has it down. I would strongly emphasize Reed College and Oberlin. UC is very intellectual, nerdy, but happy folks. No interests in sports or "campus" type stuff. Admissions rate is high for the type of school because applicants self select</p>
<p>Rice and MIT are the universities that I thought of (besides JHU and Columbia). Carleton, Kenyon, and Grinnell also come to mind, although none of them has the advantage of a nice large city like Chicago, Reed, or Swat.</p>
<p>
More than 70% of Chicago students participate in at least one sport.</p>
<p>The admit rate is high because the yield is low.</p>
<p>Tufts, Brown, JHU, Rice, WUSTL</p>
<p>Swarthmore I think is the most similar.</p>
<p>Fiske Guide mentions William & Mary along with Haverford as simliar to Chicago</p>
<p>Hopkins does have the strong focus on academics, and is urban. It has a good engineering program, unlike Chicago, so could be better for some folks. Cornell has the great academics, but not the urban location. Rice, Barnard, and Columbia also strike me as good choices for those who like Chicago. I agree with a lot of the liberal arts colleges mentioned, too, but if an applicant is really looking for an urban school, and/or a university, they will not work.</p>
<p>And, by the same token, if an applicant is really looking for a school that has a major, specified core curriculum along the lines of U Chicago, then most of these schools won't work. I've got daughters at two of the schools mentioned above, Oberlin and Barnard, and neither of them would apply to U Chicago, and the degree to which they felt their curriculum would be pre-specified was among the reasons.</p>
<p>So I guess the thing is, when one says "similar" it is important to say "similar how?" which I guess OP addessed in post #3 above. </p>
<p>Post #3 did not reference core curriculum (directly, though curriculum factors into "academics"). But also did not reference "urban school", or "college/university".</p>
<p>In the "urban environment, nerdy students, lots of work, suprisingly little name recognition, few parties" sense, Case Western is quite a bit like Chicago.</p>
<p>We came up with a list on the Chicago forums of Chicago-esque schools... the connection between some schools and Chicago may not be clear, but they are all schools worth researching nonetheless:</p>
<p>Bard
Barnard
Beloit C
Boston U
Brandeis
Bryn Mawr
Carleton
Carnegie Mellon
Case Western
Colorado C
Denison
Emory
Grinnell
Johns Hopkins
Kenyon
Lewis and Clark
Macalester
McGill
Michigan
Mount Holyoke
New College of Florida
NYU
Oberlin
Reed
Rice
Rochester
Skidmore
Smith
St. John’s College
University of Pittsburgh
University of Toronto
Vassar
Wash U
Wellesley
Wesleyan
Whitman C</p>
<p>I can understand most of the schools on the list, unalove.
But if I were pick the schools the most like the U of C I would pick Columbia and Cornell.</p>
<p>Yeah, that list attempted to focus on less-selective/less obviously similar schools. Columbia and Cornell are indeed similar to the U of C in some ways, but I considered them "obvious" by virtue of their being in the Ivy League.</p>
<p>How about Tufts, Unalove?</p>
<p>lolabelle:</p>
<p>Tufts is your answer for everything. How to fix global warming. How to bring about world peace. It all resides in Tufts.</p>