<p>I realize that no school is proably very similar to Chicago but what other school should I look at/apply to if I am interested?</p>
<p>Brown, top LACs, except for the fact that the LACs are typically more rural...</p>
<p>Columbia has a core requirement like UChicago.</p>
<p>Anyone know of colleges that also place similar magnitude on essays? or schools that don't put heavy weight on grades?</p>
<p>Tufts has crazy essay topics, but I'm not sure if they place the same emphasis on them as UChicago</p>
<p>Reed and Mudd were good correlates to UChicago for my S.
Assume essays are very important for ANY school.</p>
<p>"Anyone know of colleges that also place similar magnitude on essays? or schools that don't put heavy weight on grades?"</p>
<p>For admissions, Uchicago and Carnegie Mellon are both very alike in that they use a very holistic approach and don't just focus on stats/scores.</p>
<p>Consider also Carleton, Grinnell, Oberlin, Swarthmore.</p>
<p>Reed, St. John's, Swarthmore, Columbia.</p>
<p>Stanford puts a heavy emphasis on essays, and although not very similar to UChicago there are special programs of study at Stanford that cater to people who would like UChicago like SLE.</p>
<p>Can anyone list out the best B Schools in LACs ?</p>
<p>Okay, I'm going to hijack this thread, but just a little.</p>
<p>I'd also like to find schools similar to Chicago, but mainly just in the way of the intellectual atmosphere. I don't really care about the core curriculum or the admissions process. But the catch is that I'm looking at colleges east of the Mississippi. Reed, Whitman, and Grinnell are all great schools, but they're just too far away.</p>
<p>Fiske Guide described Swarthmore as being "pound for pound, the most intellectual school in America". In terms of an academic experience, it's a course for golfers who want to play a championship course from the back tees.</p>
<p>1500 students. Beautiful campus 10 miles from downtown Philadelphia. Train station on campus.</p>
<p>The school's philosophy is to provide students the most rigorous intellectual experience, develop the ability to make complex ethical judgements, and leave the school with a lifelong community to bettering the world.</p>
<p>I-dad, would you put Haverford on the same list as Swarthmore? Why or why not?</p>
<p>Yes. Haverford is a very good college. Doesn't have the breadth of offerings Swarthmore does, but makes up for that by "divvying up" some departments with Bryn Mawr. The biggest difference is that Swarthmore has three times the per student endowment. There's money for anything and everything.</p>
<p>Swarthmore is somewhat unique in that the students are there because they want to "play a hard golf course". They are very demanding of professors, the professors appreciate the students' engagment and push hard. It's a very distinctive culture.</p>
<p>The other difference is that Swarthmore has an extremely strong commitment to diversity. I would say that the diversity is the single most striking thing about the college and student body.</p>
<p>Some other schools and kinds of schools that share similarities...</p>
<ol>
<li>Urban or quasi-urban midsize schools that have a twinge (or, in some cases, more than a twinge) of nerd culture. In this particular case, "nerd" is defined pretty broadly and definitely correlates with the presence of engineering students. </li>
</ol>
<p>University of Rochester
Tufts
Brandeis
JHU
Northwestern
Rice
Harvard</p>
<ol>
<li> Women's Colleges: another great place to find a group of students who are sacrificing some aspects of traditional college social life in order to enrich their intellectual lives and identities.</li>
</ol>
<p>Wellesley
Bryn Mawr
Barnard
Smith
Simmons
Agnes Scott
Scripps</p>
<ol>
<li> Colleges that emphasize "great books," either through course options and offerings or by mandate.</li>
</ol>
<p>Whitman
St. John's
Columbia
Reed
UT- Austin Plan II Honors</p>
<ol>
<li>Any school with developed programs in classics, ancient studies, renaissance studies... or even colleges where a lot of the most popular majors are not pre-professional ones.</li>
</ol>
<p>Williams
Vassar
Wesleyan
(and I'm sure others-- this data is accessible via collegeboard.com and probably through the college's own web site, too)</p>
<ol>
<li> Any school that produces a relatively high percentage of PhD candidates (I'll let interesteddad post that data with his fancy formatting). That list includes a lot of schools that have already made this list, but also:</li>
</ol>
<p>Oberlin
Swarthmore
MIT
Mudd
Cal Tech
Haverford
Pomona
YPS</p>
<p>So... there you have it... 5 ways of slicing down Chicago. Unfortunately, this list includes a lot of common reach schools, and might not be as illuminating for some. For every school you end up considering, look at the percentage of students who are not majoring in Econ/Business and Bio and are instead majoring in history, math, physics, philosophy... that's not a scientific way of drawing down comparisons, but I think if you see that one school has a lot of philosophy majors, it's reasonable to expect that you'll find a lot of kids who want to talk about big ideas.</p>
<p>
[quote]
1. Urban or quasi-urban midsize schools that have a twinge (or, in some cases, more than a twinge) of nerd culture. In this particular case, "nerd" is defined pretty broadly and definitely correlates with the presence of engineering students. </p>
<p>University of Rochester
Tufts
Brandeis
JHU
Northwestern
Rice
Harvard
[/quote]
</p>
<p>YK, Unalove, I'm kind of glad to hear you say Northwestern on this list, because from what I read on here, NU has somehow morphed into this rah-rah sports culture that is below only that of Duke and Stanford, and it mystifies the hell out of me :-)</p>
<p>Thanks, i-dad. Here's the real question, though. Do you say it Swarthmore or Swaathmore? Having grown up in Philly, even though a Philly accent doesn't drop the r's like NY, I still read it as Swaathmore and always will :-)</p>
<p>I've been in NU and environs a number of times, and every time I step foot on campus, I say to myself, "Hm, a lot of these kids look like could just as easily go to Chicago." Sure, the general campus "feel" is a lot different, but I think the schools could be considered quite similar to some.</p>
<p>NU has a big advantage in nerdiness that Chicago doesn't have: ENGINEERING NERDS!!!! <em>squeals</em></p>
<p>Swarthmore and UChicago seem to be similar in the sense that both schools attract highly qualified students who are very interested in learning just because they enjoy it and can't get enough of it. </p>
<p>By the way, unalove, you'll see that I finally decided to choose Swarthmore over UChicago. UChicago was my first choice for the longest time, but Swarthmore's financial aid package was a big factor in my decision. From what I've researched, I think I'll love Swarthmore, and maybe I'll go to Chicago for grad school!</p>