<p>I paused a bit at NU also. Nerd culture? I didn’t see it. But I’ll acknowledge that one visit gives me no right to judge. </p>
<p>However, if NU gets kinda-like-Chicago credit due to nerd-engineering culture, than WashU should get some nods too. In addition, there is such a low-key sports culture — Div III rah-rah is quite modest, as in, We beat Amherst! We’re No. 1! — there that it’s frankly more similar to the Harvard, Tufts, Brandeis vibe than NU in my opinion.</p>
<p>Haa. I say Swarthmore. I think the Swaathmore pronounciation is a Philly/Jersey variant. Reminds me of President Bloom’s comment:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>[Swarthmore</a> College | About | Welcome to Swarthmore: <br>A College Like No Other](<a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/presidentsoffice.xml]Swarthmore”>President’s Office :: Swarthmore College)</p>
<p>Tufts and Reed from the top of my head have the same type of student body.</p>
<p>Add Carleton to categories 4 and 5 in post 16. There are quite a few cross applicants between Chicago and Carleton.</p>
<p>Reed, St. John’s, Brown
Possibly Bard</p>
<p>firefly-- I tried to list only one school in each, even when it could be used again. Don’t know why, other than to make me think of more schools.</p>
<p>jazzymom-- perhaps we have different conceptions of what a nerd is, or perhaps I live under a rock and haven’t acquired a universal social typology. I consider a “nerd” to be a term one should aspire to, and its application has nothing do to with one’s social habits but rather one’s habits of mind.</p>
<p>The kids I know at NU (selection bias, but my sample size is large enough to be encouraging) are interested in learning and like school a lot. I would say that they are, as a whole, more toned down about their nerdiness than Chicago kids, which isn’t always a bad thing.</p>
<p>And yeah, Wash U should have joined that first category, as should Carnegie Mellon. Both seem to share a lot of applicants with Chicago as is. The problem in my not listing them has to do with how I think of schools geographically- I mentally skip over St. Louis and Pittburgh.</p>
<p>Bard would fit in under non-pre-professional. I like the school and I know a lot of top applicants who are now at Chicago who used Bard as a low match.</p>
<p>I added to this list to reflect all of the new submissions given by posters. As ffs and others point out, many schools fit into more than 1 category or might not even fit that well into the category assigned to it. However, I like this grid as is because it gives prospective students of Chicago and other schools a way to put their finger closer to what appeals to them and look for schools in that similar category.</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
Wash U
Carnegie Mellon
Penn</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” or “intellectualism” either through course options and offerings or by mandate.</li>
</ol>
<p>Whitman
St. John’s
Columbia
Reed
UT- Austin Plan II Honors
Brown</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
Carleton
Bard
Lawrence
(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
Grinnell
YPS</p>
<p>Cornell, JHU, Columbia, Barnard, and Rice have a lot in common with Chicago. Cornell is not urban, but is similar in academic intensity.</p>
<p>Chicago originally modeled itself after Johns Hopkins–and to this day they are similar institutions in many respects, particularly at the graduate level. At the undergraduate level–UC and JHU are similar in size, location, intensity and intellectual stimulation. They differ mainly in that Chicago subscribes to the strong core curriculum model–while Hopkins has no core curriculum and only basic university-wide writing and distribution requirements. At Hopkins, the requirements are largely set by the department or program you major (and/or minor) in.</p>
<p>Ahh…Bleck. This thread just totally screwed up my college list, and made it extremely long and reach-heavy. I had been doing so well with it…</p>
<p>LOL–</p>
<p>JBV, I encourage you to look at percentage of students who go on to pursue PhD’s to look for some solid match/safeties. Interesteddad posts this data quite a bit, and I’m not having much luck pulling it up on the internet right now.</p>
<p>This list is not complete and repeats many of the schools already mentioned, but it’s a good place to start:
[REED</a> COLLEGE PHD PRODUCTIVITY](<a href=“http://web.reed.edu/ir/phd.html]REED”>Doctoral Degree Productivity - Institutional Research - Reed College)</p>