<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>What does this actually prove? Ask the man on the street which is better, Krug champagne or Dom P…in fact with most true high end products, the less the man on the street knows about it, the more high end things often are.</p>
<p>The names connected to Chicago are very often names considered at the upper reaches of academics, politics and social, economic and cultural theory. Names that even the man on the street has probably heard of…or if not their name, things they’ve invented, discovered, argued or built. From it’s beginning, to right now…Chicago impacts the man on the street as often as Harvard does…and besides, the man on the street should never be the person you most want to impress.</p>
<p>Re why Chicago used to be more "self selective’
Until this year, Chicago did not accept the Common application. Their own application, which was called the Uncommon Application[ just to poke fun at the CO and to show the Admission’s offices appreciation of irreverent students] and the now famous prompts for required essays [ which were suggested by incoming students each year] were unlike any other colleges’ application questions and did a great job of “weeding out” students who hated or did not “get” the quirky type of questions asked, and who would probably not appreciate the kind of intellectual students or atmosphere found everywhere at Chicago. Hence, those who actually went to the trouble filling out an application and submitting it has already passed one hurdle that kept out many students, and made the students who actually applied to Chicago more self selecting. Since the CO is now accepted there, it is now somewhat easier to apply to Chicago, and the number of applicants has risen sharply, making Chicago seem more selective, and less "easy’ to get into.</p>
<p>For undergrad I’d rather be at any of those other schools over UChicago. Nothing against it academically, but after visiting it, attending one of the other schools mentioned, and visiting many of the other schools mentioned, I can say I liked Chicago the least. It seemed like it had the worst atmosphere for an undergrad. Academically, it might arguably be the best school there for pure academics. For those quirky students Chicago might be a great place, but for 90% of the top students out there I doubt they would enjoy Chicago socially compared to its peers. As a major research university overall, I’d say it’s pretty tough to decide which is better between Penn, Chicago, and Columbia. All are about equal in terms of professional schools, and all have top flight PhD programs.</p>
<p>So then perhaps you can explain the power of the Harvard brand name. Is Harvard being dumb in cultivating such a well-known brand name? {And even if you do contend that Harvard is being dumb, then that only begs the question of why the best students seem to prefer Harvard to Chicago. See below.}</p>
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<p>Then why is it that Harvard beats Chicago when it comes to cross-admits? Note, I don’t find that to be a especial knock on Chicago, because Harvard beats every school when it comes to cross-admits. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, I think we can all agree that there are far more students at Chicago who would frankly rather be going to Harvard, but just didn’t get in, yet there are relatively few students at Harvard who would rather be going to Chicago but didn’t get in. </p>
<p>As a case in point, consider the 2008 finalists of the Intel Science Talent Search (formerly known as the Westinghouse STS). Of the 10 finalists, a whopping 5 of them mentioned Harvard as a school in which they would like to study, yet not a single one mentioned Chicago. Why? These are hardly uninformed kids by a long shot - these are among the most academically accomplished kids in the entire country. </p>
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<p>Uh, sure it is. After all, everybody throughout their lifetime has to deal with regular people. It is better to be associated with a brand that is respected by regular people than not to be associated with such a brand. </p>
<p>Furthermore, you can often times parley such a brand name as a marketing tool aimed at regular people. For example, here’s Chicago-based plastic surgeon Dr. Carolyn Jacob who prominently mentions her “Harvard-trained” status on her website. </p>
<p>LOL sakky:“So then perhaps you can explain the power of the Harvard brand name. Is Harvard being dumb in cultivating such a well-known brand name? {And even if you do contend that Harvard is being dumb, then that only begs the question of why the best students seem to prefer Harvard to Chicago. See below.}”</p>
<p>First off, the ‘best’ students can be found at plenty of places besides Harvard. For instance, take a look at some of Chicago’s alumni. I dare you to say they aren’t as good as Harvard’s. I dare you to say they would have done better if they had only had the ‘fortune’ to get into Harvard. And noooooo, these people aren’t crying as they get their Nobels and other awards that ‘if only’ they had gone to Harvard, their life would be better’. Yikes, Sakky,get a grip. I have two kids at Chicago, they know no one crying because they didn’t get into/go to Harvard. Further more, they know kids who didn’t get into Chicago and guess what…those kids are happy as clams to be where they are. You are pushing a very idiotic myth. It would be a very stunted person indeed to spend their college years wishing, ‘only if’. These stunted people are the last anyone should consider when deciding their future.</p>
<p>I can explain the power of brand names. Easy. You make something seem really special to really gullible people. It doesn’t really need to be really ‘special’. Maybe it just needs to be first, or older, or really, really marketed. Again, Dom Perigon has the better brand name by far…it doesn’t mean it’s better than Krug. And people that care know that…they don’t fall for marketing. Marketing is for people that don’t really count…the pawns in life if you will. The people who are happy that other people will think for them.(This really becomes ironic when you think about universities) </p>
<p>Sure, people that never think of college, know Harvard. People that want to get ahead dream of Harvard. People that are only about social station think of Harvard. Sure every average kid will shoot an application to Harvard. It’s a dream.</p>
<p>Again, so what? Do they want to attend because of the profs? Doubt it. Do they want to attend because of the other great minds that they’ll find there? Doubt it. More than likely, they envision a golden dream for themselves that has no bearing on what ‘school’ actually is. That average man on the street doesn’t and cannot explain why one would actually want to seek out the best in education.</p>
<p>Take a moment and wiki Chicago alums, I dare you not to come away without the realization that while maybe Chicago didn’t get all the Intel award winners, they certainly end up with alumni who dream of stars and reach them. Chicago turns out people who look at the world and push and prod it. They don’t tend to define themselves by the school they went to…they tend to make their own definition. And in the end…isn’t THAT what education really is about?</p>
<p>By the way Sakky, I’m not disparaging Harvard by any means. I just think when you get past the ‘man on the street’ and get to the meat of why schools achieve greatness you’ll find Harvard and Chicago have more things in common than not.</p>
<p>Anyway, the topic problem was not to compare Chicago to Harvard, but to compare Chicago to Penn etc. </p>
<p>But since we’ve opened this up … sure, using objective metrics (not just CC posters’ unsubstantiated opinions), it’s not too hard to make the case that Harvard is the best college in America, or one of the 3 - 4 best. And it’s not hard to understand why the average person on the street would be more impressed by the Harvard brand than the Chicago brand. Harvard not only is objectively number 1 (or close to it), it also is a larger, older, and richer university than Chicago.</p>
<p>On the other hand, by several measures of academic quality such as faculty distinctions, average class size, or graduation outcomes such as Ph.D. production (the number of undergrads who go on to earn the Ph.D.), Chicago is comparable in quality to Harvard. Graduate and professional schools know and respect the Chicago brand. Major employers in many high-income fields know and respect the Chicago brand. </p>
<p>If you asked the average millionaire who (s)he’d rather marry his/her son or daughter, a Harvard grad or a Chicago grad, well then maybe he’d pick the Harvard grad (all else being equal), if he were dumb enough to try to choose. If you asked the President of the United States who he’d pick to run his election campaign, a Harvard grad or a Chicago grad, well then the answer is not even speculative. Obama picked a Chicago grad. Among leading decision-makers, Chicago is a respected brand.</p>
<p>Chicago is Harvard’s peer at the grad level, and it’s better than probably all but Columbia at the grad level. Chicago is on the same level as Penn, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Cornell at the undergrad level. It can be argued that Penn Wharton, Dartmouth, Columbia, and Brown are better at the undergraduate level with regards to placing grads into top professional schools. In fact, Chicago is the 27th preferred school for undergrad. Due to the rigor of its Core, only students interested in pure academics go there.
So to sum up, Chicago is better than most at the grad level. Chicago is not better in general at the undergrad level.</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 is true. In addition, unlike all Ivy League schools that are in NCAA Division 1, the University of Chicago doesn’t specifically recruit athlete to play in NCAA Division 3, resulting in the lack of athletes on campus. Ivy League schools simply have better access to smart, well-rounded applicants due to their large application pools. Even with tons of recruited athletes with relatively lower SAT scores, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Columbia still have higher average SAT scores than average SAT score Chicago has. Although the differences aren’t big, they suggest Chicago is at most (and at least) on par with the other schools.</p>
<p>“If you asked the President of the United States who he’d pick to run his election campaign, a Harvard grad or a Chicago grad, well then the answer is not even speculative. Obama picked a Chicago grad. Among leading decision-makers, Chicago is a respected brand.”</p>
<p>Maybe that’s just cronyism? Chicago is in Illinois, after all.</p>
<p>The OP’s question is well-intentioned, but (very understandably) misguided. It’s a personal peeve of mine that high school students on CC ask about the “best” food, girls, college towns, education, and so on, but it peeves me even more that people who should know better attempt to answer these questions.</p>
<p>What defines a good education, anyway? Is it the number of assigned pages of reading per night? Average class size? Average number of words it takes the professor to say something profound? Number of times the typical student raises his or her hand subtracted by the number of times the typical student reaches for his or her iPhone? To be fair, there are a few ways of answering this question, to the extent that Chicago and Columbia have different educational philosophies from Brown and different educational philosophies from Cornell. Some of the schools have unique programs of study that would make them stand out for some students-- AEM, Huntsman, Wharton, etc. etc. etc.</p>
<p>I chose to attend Chicago and did not apply to Harvard or the other schools the OP mentioned. I felt Chicago’s institutional values matched up best with my personal values, and I still feel that way. I’ve been happy with the quality of my academic education here-- but I imagine that would have been true had I attended any of the other schools mentioned on this thread.</p>
<p>johntonishi, I’m really not sure if what you say about Chicago vs the other schools stats is really true but I would also argue that they might not really matter. In the end, Chicago produces (even with such ‘flawed’ students) an alumni list that even Harvard would envy. And that list does in fact count it’s undergraduates. The school’s undergrads in fact do some pretty decent booty kicking in regards to academic awards like Rhodes, Marshall and the rest. Genius, whether it be in academics, business, or creating tends to need a certain quirk that one could argue Chicago looks for and nurtures. It’s not a school for everyone, but the same could be argued for every one of the schools the OP mentions…and yes, Harvard.</p>
<p>johntonishi, I’m really not sure if what you say about Chicago vs the other schools stats is really true but I would also argue that they might not really matter. In the end, Chicago produces (even with such ‘flawed’ students) an alumni list that even Harvard would envy. And that list does in fact count it’s undergraduates. The school’s undergrads in fact do some pretty decent booty kicking in regards to academic awards like Rhodes, Marshall and the rest. Genius, whether it be in academics, business, or creating tends to need a certain quirk that one could argue Chicago looks for and nurtures. It’s not a school for everyone, but the same could be argued for every one of the schools the OP mentions…and yes, Harvard.</p>
<p>Yeah, I think you should look more into University of Pennslyvania. I wouldn’t attend the school over Columbia ( and probably a few others on your list), though I think it’s a Ivy League that ranks well in top three.</p>
<p>NO. If anything, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Brown are better than Penn which is better than UChicago and Cornell. At the Ivies, UChicago is commonly believed to be the place where people who failed to get into any Ivy go, held no where near HYPSM, Columbia, Dartmouth, and Brown at the undergrad level. Of course there are people (mostly ones interested in academia) who would choose UChicago over an Ivy.</p>
<p>It’s a big mistake for you to choose UChicago over any Ivy. All the people I know who attends UChicago got rejected by all the Ivy with exception of Cornell an Penn. Yes, attending UChicago will get you to places where an Ivy can get you. But you will have to work you ass off at UChicago and will likely be always ****ed at the fact undergrads at Ivies can get there without doing as much work.</p>
<p>Since an individual’s performance within a school at this level matters infinitely more than which school that individual attends. The OP and a lot of posters on this thread don’t seem to understand or acknowledge that. Besides, the title of the thread itself suggest that the OP is an individual who doesn’t have faith in the strength of UChicago and need something like this and a group of UChicago supporter to disparage other schools to boost the illusion that UChicago is on par with HYPSM. Considering this, it’s very possible that OP didn’t even get into Columbia, Dartmouth, or any other Ivy.</p>