<p>Anon - yah, perhaps. I’m thinking (or hoping) that whatever ranking the OP saw on student review just REINFORCED (rather than created) this feeling the OP had about Columbia. judging from OP’s other posts - I strongly think this is the case. He/she isn’t making this decision based entirely on some international school ranking and studentreview.com .</p>
<p>yeah, i can see that. i’ll admit i’m biased as a recent columbia admit…</p>
<p>Anon - sorry if I offended at all. Columbia as of course you know is an outstanding school. I think I should have qualified my previous posts more. I think Columbia students are a bit aloof or distant because, well, at Columbia, you have the entire island of manhattan at your fingertips. So students are quick to live their own lives and do their own exploring, rather than investing themselves in more traditional college life. At Chicago, yes, you have all of the city close by, but the campus has a bit more of an “island” feel, so this necessarily leads to students becoming sort of more engaged in campus life.</p>
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<p>Well I won’t disagree with the first part of that at least ;)</p>
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<p>Now I agree with that in its entirety. Hopefully Penn Admissions’ marketing department will exploit this excellence/awareness arbitrage opportunity ;)</p>
<p>UChicago is self-selective. Posters talking about acceptance rates and “quirky-” or “nerdy-types” are missing the point. UChicago’s application is prohibitive because it is literally unique and requires substantial effort to complete. You can’t submit the Common Application, and you can’t just fill-out the application and send your general essays you sent to every other school. So unless you know about UChicago and are seriously considering it, you don’t bother applying “just for the heck of it” like you might with some schools. Couple that with a reputation for being the place “where fun comes to die,” and the relatively low number of applications comes into perspective. A much better indicator of selectivity and incoming student quality is the average SAT scores for matriculated (not admitted) students. In this respect, UChicago generally has an SAT average in line with the other schools you mentioned.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, why do you care what school is “better?” You need to ask yourself what you’re really asking here. Do you want the most prestigious school? In most circles and in your everyday life, unless you went to Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, or Oxford (and, yes, I purposely left off Princeton and Cambridge), no one really cares that much. And those that do care, you probably don’t want to be friends with. Just kidding. But the average person doesn’t even know what schools comprise the Ivies. </p>
<p>Is “better” the ability to get a job? Well, what job do you want? I bet you’ll change your mind before you get there. Nevertheless, in the vast majority of careers, the school you attend will have little effect on your ability to get a job (although, in my opinion, it greatly affects your chance of succeeding once you get there). Your experience and academic achievement (i.e., grades and awards) will likely be more probative for most employers. For certain jobs, like investment banking and management consulting, prestige matters. But going to any of the schools mentioned above will be sufficient. So this isn’t very helpful to your decision.</p>
<p>At the end of the day, your decision to attend one of the above-mentioned schools will likely not be the determinative factor in your professional life. Sure, if, for example, you wanted to be an archaeology professor, UChicago might give you an edge over Brown. But it’s not like you can’t be an archaeologist from Brown. Do you really want to make this decision based on a slight change in possibilities associated with a career that, most likely, you’ll change your mind and not enter anyway?</p>
<p>In my opinion, choosing a college is critical because it contributes to the person you will become. But not because of prestige or your resume or the impressions it leaves on your neighbors, rather because those four years will be some of the most transformative in your life. Although there are definitely exceptions, universities do, in general, have certain characteristics and attract certain types of people. </p>
<p>Yes, Penn attracts pre-professionals. Yes, Columbia grads tend to be more cosmopolitan. And, yes, UChicago does disproportionately attract what most people would consider “nerds.” Relatedly, Brown gives students the opportunity to decide what they want to learn, while UChicago and Columbia give students a broad foundation in order to teach them how to think critically about the field they eventually focus on.</p>
<p>Spending four years living in a major city and attending a highly rigorous liberal arts school that embraces nerdiness (i.e., Chicago) will be very different than spending four years in rural areas/suburbia attending a pre-professional school that encourages students to focus on one area and where the students tend to have more traditional notions of college “fun” like fraternities/sororities. How do you want to spend your four years? These different experiences will affect you for the rest of your life.</p>
<p>@maverick1978</p>
<p>i’m not discounting any of the schools. i hope you realize i would have done everything and more to go to brown. i love that school. but things didn’t work out for me. i’m just trying to listen to my parent’s advice a little, and see some value in chicago. i do like chicago alot, but i guess i think i still fit slightly better with brown’s student body. i am a nerd at heart, but i like socializing, i like having a good time, goofing off, and for lack of a better phrase “just enjoying life.” i know chicago student’s do this, but i hate the idea of working to a point you stress yourself out. i just don’t believe in that. that’s why i’m hoping this is only a myth about chicago students.</p>
<p>at this point i’m seriously considering chicago. my parents want me to give it a try. they’ve told me they have no problem with me transferring to brown or the like after a year, if i really feel i want to change. </p>
<p>i’m hoping i can go to chicago for four years, and never have to think of what brown would have been like.</p>
<p>
By far the top three most popular majors at Chicago are economics, biology, and political science. I can guarantee you that the vast majority of those students are heading for professional school.</p>
<p>Chicago students are actively engaged in learning, to be sure – but most of them are not future philosophers. Chicago has its fair share of pre-med, pre-law, and pre-business students.</p>
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- The self-selective argument is a poor one. Self-selection is no excuse for a high acceptance rate and low yield. Look at Caltech, which is certainly a great deal more self-selective than Chicago.</p>
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<li>Chicago does accept the Common App, and you can recycle essays (Chicago essay prompt #5 allows you to pick your own topic).</li>
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<p>Now to get to the crux of the issue…
Chicago is on par with Penn, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Brown. Not better and not worse. </p>
<p>I agree that Chicago is quirky, but Chicago and Brown have very different vibes to me.</p>
<p>In a word, no.</p>
<p>none of these schools are better than one another. They are ALL peers.</p>
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<p>Actually, I don’t know about that. Social networks are arguably the single most important determinant of whether you will get a job. Surely we all know the saying: “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”</p>
<p>As a case in point, Steve Ballmer is CEO of Microsoft for one simple reason: he was Bill Gates’s old poker-playing pal at Currier House at Harvard. </p>
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<p>I don’t know about that. Not that Brown isn’t obscure - I can agree with that. But let’s face it, UChicago is pretty obscure too. Frankly, I would argue that UC has the worst brand name of any of the top-ranked schools. I agree that many people think UPenn is a state school, but many people also think UChicago is just a nondescript city school on the likes of the University of Houston or the University of San Francisco. </p>
<p>So as to whether more people outside the Northeast have heard of Brown or UChicago, I would argue that you could either way. Certainly, I can remember lots of Californians never having heard of either.</p>
<p>Internationally, people have been raving to me about Chicago in ways that are surpassed only by MIT and Harvard. Its sheer number of noble prize winning alumni/faculty makes it incredibly famous in the academic world.</p>
<p>It’s hardly obscure.</p>
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<p>Chicago has had this “self selective” reputation for years. I think there is something to it.
One way to observe it in action is to compare SATs (75%ile M+CR) and admit rates for some peer schools:</p>
<p>SAT: School (admit rate)
1550: Stanford (10%)
1530: Brown (14%), Amherst (18%), Chicago(38%)
1520: Penn(15%), Williams (19%)
1500: Northwestern (30%)
1490: Georgetown (21%)<br>
1480: Middlebury (22%)<br>
(Source: [Top</a> 500 Ranked Universities for Highest SAT 75th Percentile Scores](<a href=“USA University College Directory - U.S. University Directory - State Universities and College Rankings”>Top 500 Ranked Colleges - Highest SAT 75th Percentile Scores))</p>
<p>I think there are 2 primary factors behind Chicago’s higher admit rate. First, for reasons already cited, they simply get fewer applications per spot. Second, they tend not to apply the same “holistic” selection criteria. They seem to care much less about “extracurriculars” than many peer schools do (or at least, not about the same popular ones).</p>
<p>This year, the Middlebury college web site boasted about how many “team captaincies” were among the admitted students. As I recall there was more than one “captaincy” for every 2 admits. The admits even included 3 former circus performers. Yes indeed, kids are literally doing back-flips to get into some of those schools.</p>
<p>Chicago students seem to fit a different profile. Just in my dorm complex there, my classmates included one of the youngest chess masters in the world, a 17 year old rabbi proficient in Aramaic and biblical Hebrew, a guy who was getting his Ph.D. in Econ at 19 and who had nailed the 2nd highest AMC (math) score in the country, and a young Trotskyist whose idea of community service had been to spend a summer cutting sugar cane in Cuba. These are unusual people, probably not the kind of kids who are driving up the application numbers at Georgetown or Middlebury College.</p>
<p>S’s enthusiastic uncommon application essays and HS record got him accepted EA to Chicago. Half-hearted application (filed last day, last minute at our urgency and after he was accepted at Chicago) and HS record got him waitlisted and then accepted to Princeton. Guess where he went and feels like he’s in Seventh Heaven. Talk about self-selective.</p>
<p>Well then I hope you’re pleased, J’adoube.</p>
<p>By the way, how many more of these posts pimping the University of Chicago do I have to crank out before they let me be a Senior Member like you? My children no longer respect me, I need something to show.</p>
<p>Senior membership is based on the number of posts submitted. Keep posting!</p>
<p>tk21769, those are 2 years old. [::</a> College Planning Made Easy | Inside Source for College Admissions Requirements](<a href=“http://www.collegeboard.com%5D::”>http://www.collegeboard.com) has the most current data:</p>
<p>SAT: School (admit rate)
1540: Stanford (9%)
1540: Brown (14%)
1530: Amherst (15%), Northwestern (26%), Chicago(28%)
1520: Penn(17%), Williams (17%)
1490: Georgetown (19%)
1480: Middlebury (17%) </p>
<p>25%ile M+CR
1360 Northwestern
1330 Amherst, Penn, Stanford
1320 Brown, Williams
1310 Georgetown, Chicago
1270 Middlebury</p>
<p>Thanks, Sam.<br>
The change in numbers could mean a couple different things.
One, maybe this is just an unusual year (38% being more typical than 28%)
Two, maybe there is a trend toward Chicago becoming less self-selecting (it had the largest drop in admit rate among these schools).</p>
<p>On the other hand, if its wide 25/75 spread is typical across time, maybe it is not so self-selecting at all. It may be more accurate to say it is absolutely less selective than the others, but its merit scholarship policies boost its ability to attract applicants among the highest scorers.</p>
<p>Those merit aid policies may also account for this year’s relatively big drop in admit rate. Most of these other schools do not offer it. Though I’m not sure it affects enough students to account for 10 points.</p>
<p>^their admit rate is going to be about 27%.</p>
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<p>Ask the man on the street have they ever heard of UChicago. Then ask them have they heard of Harvard. What do you think you will find?</p>
<p>Coming from Texas, which is nowhere near the Northeast or Illinois, I wouldn’t have ever heard of UChicago had I not joined these forums. On the other hand, a large percentage of my school would be able to identify most of the Ivies, including Brown and Columbia (except for probably UPenn).</p>
<p>Take that with a grain of salt, but I figured an unbiased opinion was warranted.</p>