<p>Actually, that sounds like it might be up my alley. I was considering going Greek because there are some things that sound appealing (a huge but close network of friends, business connections, et cetera), but I really am the antithesis of a drunken party-goer. But you’re saying that–even if one goes Greek at NU–there isn’t pressure to go party all the time or drink? Are there chapters that actually rarely party and instead do other activities?</p>
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<p>What makes Northwestern great is that it offers excellent non-traditional preprofessional (Music, Journalism, Education, Engineering, Communications) besides law, business, and medicine. It is also easy to double major and minor in interdisciplinary fields. That’s what I call a “well-rounded undergraduate experience.”</p>
<p>NU students are very intellectual. They are less pretentious about it.</p>
<p>Sororities, definitely. Fraternities, all of them are social organizations, but most if not all have members who choose not to drink. Realize that you are probably going to live with those people for a year and spend a decent amount of time in your other years with them. There are a lot more hours in the week than Friday and Saturday 9pm-2am (and Thursdays and Mondays, but we’ll skip those for now). </p>
<p>The majority of Northwestern greeks didn’t plan on going Greek when they first got to Northwestern.</p>
<p>Also, while I have tremendous respect for the Booth School (formerly GSB), U Chicago Medicine, and U Chicago Law (which I’d like to attend), they’re not all that much better than NU’s equivalents (or worse, in the case of the GSB). NU and U Chicago are both T14 law schools and hugely prestigious medical schools.</p>
<p>And your rejects comment is simply flatly false. I no longer have access to the statistics, but from my HS (top 25 nationally), the “accepted” range for NU was entirely inside at the upper end of the U Chicago range on Naviance, without exception.</p>
<p>With the ■■■■■ slaying done:</p>
<p>NU is, as other have said, an excellent blend of all aspects of the prototypical collegiate experience, and then some.</p>
<p>I’m also interested in the take you guys have on Greeks/ partying. I have to admit it’s the one thing at NU that has been a slight turnoff for me… I applied ED for class of 2014, by the way.</p>
<p>I’d heard before that the Greek system was prominent but not dominant or inescapable, but it’s news to me that Greeks =/= partying. (My parents went to Ole Miss and have pretty much convinced me that fraternities and sororities are the devil. Lol.)</p>
<p>(Also, hurray for Apples to Apples…!)</p>
<p>The Greek scene is not like your typical large state university. I never declared Greek, but I had plenty of things to do on the campus when I was a student.</p>
<p>Northern Greek Systems !== (=/=) Southern Greek Systems. Southern greeks (ala Ole Miss) are highly exclusive (low percentage participation), HUGE partiers, and generally the embodiment of all the stereotypes you know about. Northern Greek Systems, such as NU’s have high participation (33~40%), tend to be more relaxed, and are less “fratty”. NU’s system even more so, since ultimately its still a bunch of nerds since its all NU students.</p>
<p>You can definitely be in a greek organization without being a heavy partier- a few of my best friends in my house abstain by choice from alcohol, and a girl I know tangentially in a “top” sorority known for partying is medically unable to drink.</p>
<p>I’d also like to re-iterate that much of the Greek Scene had NO intention of rushing prior to coming. I too had listed the large greek scene as a negative when searching for colleges (along with the big time sports). Both are now two of my favorite things at the school. My best friend I basically had to DRAG to my fraternity for spring recruitment because he was from the south and dead set against it. When I finally got him to take a look, he loved it and joined.</p>
<p>Northwestern is nothing more than a glorified vocational school while Chicago is a bastion of intellectualism. Over the last couple of years, the student body of UChi has gotten a lot stronger and now even the students are superior to NU students besides the obviously stronger faculty.</p>
<p>The Chicago name is respected a lot more internationally than the Northwestern name.</p>
<p>“Northwestern is nothing more than a glorified vocational school while Chicago is a bastion of intellectualism.”</p>
<p>You’re trying way too hard. Obvious ■■■■■ is obvious.</p>
<p>You’re also sort of proving our point for us. And I’m glad to see you’re a Duke fan too- having one’s worldview confirmed so neatly is refreshing.</p>
<p>Ummm, NU is first and foremost a liberal arts institution. Everybody is required to take liberal arts regardless of their major. We don’t have pre-law, pre-med, or pre-business. Journalism requirements are mostly liberal arts courses. Theater and engineering are solidly grounded in the liberal arts. I think you should think for yourself next time and not adhere to perceived truisms that may or may not be right.</p>
<p>When you create a school solely for developing the intellect (and where everything else is a distant priority), of course you will get a school like UChicago that attracts people who consider that the most, if not the only, important thing about going to college. On the other hand, if you create a school that values not only intellect but also other things equally and promotes a laidback approach to academics, then of course, you will see a difference in established success. UChicago people will have spent much more time working on their research and getting published and stuff like that. When you’re comparing schools at this level, this difference is much more about students’ level of dedication and hard work more than intelligence. Of course, UChicago people would say it’s definitely worth foregoing other aspects of life for academic success, but NU students would beg to differ. We think there’s so much more to life than academics, and we don’t want to wait until after college to experience that.</p>
<p>UChicago and NU simply have two very different approaches to what the college experience should be. Both value intellect first and foremost. However, one values it to the point of letting go of other aspects of life; the other prefers a more balanced approach. The funny thing though is that despite our laidbackness, our undergraduate college has historically been stronger anyway. Your supposed intellectualness has been largely pretense and fluff.</p>
<p>FYI, I’ve had mostly good experiences with UChicago students. The exceptions though are typically those who still haven’t gotten over the NU waitlist/rejection and/or are simply jealous of NU students for being smart(er) and better-looking. I’m guess you belong to either or both. I mean, let’s be real here. If you truly felt secure and confident about UChicago’s supposed superiority, you would not be spending this time going to the NU board and seeking out threads where you could start your bitter rants and bring up UChicago out-of-context. I don’t get why you’re STILL obsessing about this discussion. That’s just sad and reinforces the annoying U of C student stereotype.</p>
<p>I’ll also add to brebuff’s excellent post a quote from my mother (A UChicago alum undergrad and graduate and Chicago native):</p>
<p>“Northwestern was the school I wanted to go to but wasn’t cool enough to apply.”</p>
<p>Yeah, I definitely got the “cool” vibe, more than most other schools I visited :)</p>
<p>Not to stamp out the glee of ■■■■■-hunting here, but there is no evidence that ldb is a UChicago student, not based on post history or anything specific he or she has said.</p>
<p>Now that that’s out of the way, I just wanted to chime in on something:</p>
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<p>That’s not really how I view the University of Chicago-- at all-- really. I have NOOOO interest in pursuing academia (I think it’s silly and frivolous to an absurd degree) and I prioritize many things over academics… like posting here… har har har. But no, really, if you were to ask me why I wake up in the morning, it’s not because I absolutely ADORE my classes to the exclusion of other things. And academics are definitely not my favorite thing about Chicago, either.</p>
<p>What I really enjoy out of being at the U of C is being in an environment that’s totally unlike the two I grew up in. I grew up and went to public schools in a place where people didn’t give a blank about reading, writing, math, and other assorted cool stuff. I was then on scholarship to a superelite school, where (almost) everybody cared about learning, but cared about grades more. I sought out Chicago as a refuge from what I saw around me in high school, and I’ve been extraordinarily pleased with that decision. I am a dork; I am a big-picture person; I like to talk in class and occasionally gesture wildly and get flush with excitement. I pursue my intellectual pursuits outside of class and subject my friends to many philosophical/academic ramblings and rants. I get excited about very small things. I like all the things that stereotypically dorky and nerdy people are supposed to like. However, academics is only part of who I consider myself to be, and it’s a small part. And some of the people I’m closest to don’t see this side of me. </p>
<p>While I can’t speak on behalf of my peers directly, I think that many posters on the forums/my friends have interests and passions that extend well beyond the classroom, and they pursue those interests aggressively. My friends are dancers, musicians, teachers, thinkers, daydreamers, actors, etc. I would say that our academic experience helps us inform who we are rather than the other way around.</p>
<p>I like Northwestern a lot. So much so, in fact, that I encouraged a good family friend to turn down a number of Ivies this past year for it. (Not an easy task, but I worked my magic, and family friend is as happy as can be at NU, which I knew since, oh, the first time I visited NU’s campus.) My general feeling on Northwestern is, “Nice school, but not for me.” It sounds like Northwesterners’ feelings on Chicago is similar.</p>
<p>What’s my dog in this fight? People who set up Chicago and NU as mutually exclusive and suggest that it’s an either/or. This is not “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.” Let’s face it: there’s a LOT of overlap in applicants and in institutional personality. We’re setting up a false dichotomy and using a LOT of overgeneralizations if we say otherwise.</p>
<p>I wasn’t really talking about the views of the students themselves but more the vision of the administrators (reflected in how they market the universities to the public). UChicago is undoubtedly much more about the “life of the mind” than anything else, whereas NU is also big on sports, theater, partying, and other things. Of course there will be exceptions, but you yourself admit you’re an example of a student for whom NU would not be a good fit. We cannot pretend there’s more than just a small overlap between the two schools, if that.</p>
<p>^^ I didn’t mean to suggest that all academia is silly and frivolous, but there’s a ginormous glut in my two fields, and I don’t think my two cents would mean much, anyway.</p>
<p>(I’m a Comparative Human Development/Gender Studies double major, which means I study gender theory, gender acquisition, development of sexuality/sexual orientation, etc.)</p>
<p>And… interesting. I think I’m on the edge of “UChicago student who would not make a good Wildcat.” However, I think maybe 50-75% of Chicago would fit at NU.</p>
<p>I also don’t think marketing angle should be the be-all and end-all of an analysis. I’m thinking of a board room of marketers (who might not be University of Chicago people, in the first place) saying, “Hmmmm… elite school with 5,000 students… what makes this one different? People won’t believe us if we say work hard/party hard because we’re already ‘where fun comes to die,’ but maybe they WILL believe us if we say ‘Life of the Mind!’”</p>
<p>(FWIW I think Life of the Mind is a horrendously pretentious slogan. I’d rather people know us by one of many other unofficial slogans than that one…)</p>
<p>Good post UNAlove- I definitely fit in the “would be very very happy at both schools”. For me, I feel like I’m a better person as a result of having attended NU, but that’s just about me. There’s definitely a LOT of overlap in types.</p>
<p>so if there is so much overlap, would the main differences be that nu has a bigger sports and greek/partying scene? and that’s it?</p>
<p>No. The overlap basically is NU and UChicago kids are both, on average, very smart and engaged and into being smart. The main difference is pretty much everything else. The two schools are HUGELY different as institutions. It’s the student bodies (not their cultures) that are similar.</p>
<p>so can you elaborate at all? cuz i’m not sure if i should apply to both or just the one that fits me more. :-/</p>
<p>^^ If you like both, apply to both!</p>