UPenn vs. UChicago

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
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<p>Muerte - ugh, seriously, are you doing this? Are you gonna support Penn’s supposed superiority based primarily on cross-admit data and selectivity?</p>

<p>Didn’t we have a long (and I thought, productive) discussion on how, when looking at very similarly situated schools, cross-admit data is not a good way of showing how one school is “better” than another? It’s useless to use cross-admit data between very similar schools. If you did this, you’d have to explain why Brown is “better” than Penn, or Yale is “better” than Princeton, or Duke and Georgetown are absolutely equivalent, etc. etc. </p>

<p>Fact of the matter is, when deciding between Penn and Chicago, it absolutely should come down to fit, because there really isn’t a difference in terms of prestige, resources available at the school, overall strength of departments, etc. Muerte, I completely agree with you, the lionshare of cross-admits choose Penn over Chicago, but I don’t think this has as much to do with supposed differences in prestige, but rather that a lot of students see Penn as the better fit. Indeed, when Chicago still has the reputation for having an intense, grueling academic experience, and Penn is known as the “social ivy” what do you think most 18 year olds would pick? </p>

<p>Muerte, are there quantitative factors besides unreliable info like cross-admit data or selectivity that demonstrate how Penn is superior as a college to Chicago? Taking another example, I believe Brown takes the lionshare of cross-admits from Penn, and is more selective, but I definitely don’t see it as better than Penn’s College, and I think you would agree. Similarly, Penn is more selective and wins the cross-admits from Chicago, but I certainly don’t see Penn’s College as anything but equivalent to Chicago’s. Given what I assume is your opinion on the Penn vs. Brown debate, wouldn’t the same rationale apply for the Penn vs. Chicago situation? If anything, I think Penn is in some ways leaps and bounds ahead of Brown because Penn boasts so many stronger academic departments and more varied course offerings, whereas Brown is still coming into its own as a research university. On the other hand, I think, by that same rationale, Chicago and Penn should be virtually indistinguishable in terms of quantitative factors, because the stuff that really matters (strength of academic departments, wealth of school and resources offered to the undergrads etc.) are so close between these two schools.</p>

<p>On the prestige/recognition front, I did my undergrad at Chicago and grad work at Penn, and I’m often struck by how similar the general “recognition” for these schools are. As discussed in other threads, these schools lack the broad-based recognition that schools such as Duke or Stanford might have, but then these schools are also highly, highly respected in certain circles (Chicago in academic circles, Penn in business circles and in the north east). (One other note, when I was making my final college decision years back, my final decision came down to Chicago and Penn, and I chose Chicago because Chicago was the better fit for me.)</p>

<p>Fact of the matter is, in terms of resources, wealth, and after this year with increased apps at U of C, selectivity (with Chicago probably going to have around a 19-20% accept rate), these schools are pretty much equivalent. I think they vary the most, however, in their CULTURE and vibe. In that regard, the schools are very, very different.</p>

<p>Making a definitive statement like “Penn’s College is better than Chicago’s” is a little nuts. I’ve said this before, but I think of schools such as Penn, Chicago, Columbia, and Duke as all being roughly peers right behind HYPS. Any student deciding between any of these schools should go for fit. There’s no real difference in exit options or resources offered or prestige or anything like that. Muerte, I’m just now quite sure how you can make such misleading statements that aren’t supported by enough RELIABLE facts (as we’ve both discussed before, looking at cross-admit data and selectivity can be quite unreliable. Moreover, the rankings can’t really be used as a definitive sign of one school’s superiority over another. Otherwise, by now, you’d see people saying Penn is “clearly” better than Columbia, or that Wash U is “clearly” better than Northwestern or whatever, but I don’t think most people would agree with such statements.)</p>

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<p>This thread was almost a year old when wahoomb revived it. Maybe we should whine about Quakers vs. Maroons – whose team-name is stupider? – on one of the more recent threads addressing this perennial issue.</p>

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<p>Nice post, Cue7. But how does a kid like me know which school is the best fit? What I know about Penn and Chicago I learned from the internet. Even though I had never been to either school, I applied to both. I think I’m in the majority when I tell you I chose a to apply ED to Penn and EA to Chicago based on the hope that one or both would be a fit, not because I already knew my fit.</p>

<p>Perhaps you can educate me, since you’ve attended both. How do they differ? What type of personality thrives at Penn? Chicago?</p>

<p>Thanks!!</p>

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<p>Hope Full: Please note the assertions I’m about to make are broad generalizations (and of course there will be exceptions and outliers found at either school). That being said, here are my observations: </p>

<p>I think Chicago and Penn are very different academic environments. To start, Chicago has only around 1300 per class, and Penn has around 2500 a class. When I was at Chicago, it was even smaller (maybe around 900 a class) so it was a really intimate learning environment. I think the College at U of C is still pretty tight-knit and intimate, and Penn, just given its sheer size (both on the undergrad and grad level), probably wouldn’t be characterized as an “intimate” environment. Of course, this can cut both ways, Penn just has a wider range of schools that Chicago just doesn’t have (an undergrad business school, a communications schools, engineering, etc.). </p>

<p>In terms of the larger ethos of the two schools, I think Chicago’s generally more ivory-tower, academically-geared at the undergrad level, whereas Penn, given its roots perhaps, can generally be seen as a more practical undergrad environment. Of course, you can find exceptions at both schools, but generally, Penn overall has a more pre-professional, practical feel, whereas at Chicago, there are a lot of students who want to spend considerable time to academia (i.e. get a PhD). </p>

<p>Penn still possesses a pretty strong “work hard, party hard” culture, whereas Chicago still focuses more on the “life of the mind” culture (where academics are generally at the forefront of a student’s mind, whereas Penn students can often be juggling various obligations and academic pursuits). This isn’t to say Chicago students lack balance or that Penn students are detached from their academic pursuits, its just the slants of the two schools are different. </p>

<p>A good example of this arises at the various alum events I attend for both schools. At the Chicago events, alums invariably strike up conversations by talking about their majors, professors they had in the past, and various classes they took. After that, the alums sometimes mentions various social aspects of the school (frat parties they attended, sports teams they played on, etc.), but academics are usually the first part of the discussion. At Penn events, the conversation almost always goes in the other direction - alums talk about their social experiences, frats joined, clubs participated in, and sometimes discuss academics after if there was some overlap in their coursework. I got the sense that certain big undergrad traditions (hey day, feb club, etc.) tend to bond Penn students in a way that you don’t really get at Chicago. Chicago has a bit more of an individualistic social culture, where students just sorta do whatever they’re into, and there’s no connecting social fabric or traditions in the way that ALL penn juniors participate in Hey Day. </p>

<p>Again, this example illustrates how the academic environment becomes a common thread for Chicago students/alums, whereas Penn, given its size, doesn’t have the same connecting thread. I think Penn is just a more disparate environment, with students taking courses and pursuing a really wide range of endeavors. At Chicago, the Core Curriculum does indeed connect students, and the smaller size makes for a different feel on campus. </p>

<p>In terms of other observations, I found the Penn undergrads to be a bit more materialistic (I don’t mean this in a derogatory sense - they just seemed to have more of a sense of fashion and upkeep overall), and savvier in terms of using their education to meet a certain goal. The Penn kids tended to be a bit more outwardly wealthy, probably because the schools cater to different type of family. A larger percentage of Chicago students tend to be the sons and daughters of professors and teachers and public policy wonks, while Penn very much seems to serve the offspring of business men, lawyers, doctors, hedge fund managers, etc. I think the specter of Wharton kind of looms here over Penn - it gives the school a bit more of a career-oriented feel, both in the familial backgrounds of its students and these students’ ambitions. Penn also had a very distinctly east coast feel - and this probably altered the flavor of the school a bit. There were more prep school types walking around, and more students who already had their hearts set on some sort of job in NYC. Chicago does have more of a midwestern flavor - there are just more born-and-bred midwesterners from iowa or indiana walking around in Hyde Park. </p>

<p>More Chicago students seemed to be of the head-in-the-clouds type, and there tended to be more of a hipster community when I attended Chicago than anything I ever saw at Penn (from what I know, students don’t exactly form Marx/Plato reading clubs at Penn with the same regularity that these groups sprout up at U of C). </p>

<p>Location is another big difference. Penn is much closer to the heart of downtown Philly, but Philly as a city tends to have a “grittier” feel than the more skyscraper-filled, somewhat awe-inspiring classic big midwestern city of Chicago. West Philly also tends to have more commercial offerings than Hyde Park (think lots of fast food restaurants, a Gap, an Ann Taylor, bars, etc.), whereas Hyde Park has more of a “scholarly” residential feel, with lots of used bookstores and coffee shops all over the place. </p>

<p>One other note, I think Chicago does provide a more distinct sort of environment. I don’t say this as a way to deride Penn, but what I mean is this: there are very, very few other schools that couple such a relatively small college with such a wide array of absolutely world-class academic departments. Penn has lots of great departments as well, but it also has double the number of students, so it changes the feel of the place. Out of the top schools, I’ve heard Chicago and Yale are somewhat similar in terms of vibe, as are Chicago and Swarthmore (if you shrink Chicago down to a LAC size), but that’s about it as far as comparisons go. Penn, on the other hand, I think shares a lot of similarities with Duke and Northwestern and Emory and Georgetown and Wash U etc etc. It’s just more of a typical college experience, and one that you could probably have at another half-dozen very good schools. It always strikes me as funny when I hear Northwestern grads talk or Penn grads talk - the experiences are so analogous. </p>

<p>Of course, a large segment of the Penn undergrad community would be perfectly happy at Chicago and vice versa, but the schools do generally have very different vibes. What I’ve described, of course, are broad generalizations, but they’re just my observations after spending time at these two institutions. Finally, I’ve tried to be as objective as possible here, but you should know that I have tremendous allegiance to Chicago - I’m still very grateful for the education I received there, and the school really built up my analytical and writing abilities. Nevertheless, take from this what you will.</p>

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<p>UChicago is definitely considered prestigious in China, because every single asian friend I have who is first generation in the US (born here), well their parents all went to UChicago. that’s my 2 cents</p>

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<p>Cue7, that post was a year old. I’m sorry if I offended you - I have great respect for the University of Chicago and its unique place in the academic pantheon. Nevertheless, I still think that Penn’s undergraduate college has been slightly more selective for the last decade or so, although Chicago’s College is rapidly narrowing the gap and should reach Penn soon, perhaps even this year.</p>

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<p>cue7 - very good perspective</p>

<p>assuming you are interested in broad based learning at undergraduate level/ with slight leaning towards life sciences eventually and not worried about a profession atleast for next 2-3 years, what school would you prefer?. Let us assume you have admissions from u chicago and HYPS,Duke,Rice,JHU. (Not interested in MIT and Caltech as they are predominantly science focussed)</p>

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<p>Muerte - thanks for the sincerity in your post, and my mistake, I didn’t even notice the original posts were a year old. I definitely agree that Penn has been more selective for the past decade or so, and in fact, I’d go even farther than that - I’d say Penn has been more selective for easily the past 3 decades or so. When I applied to Chicago in the mid-90s, Chicago had an accept rate of 65%+. I can’t imagine Penn was that high in 1995 or 1996. </p>

<p>Either way, I just think it’s important, when comparing colleges, to not immediately jump to selectivity or cross-admit factors as indicators of a college’s strength. All sorts of colleges have all sorts of factors working in their favor, from Brown’s open curriculum to Columbia’s location to Vandy’s social life. I just think it’s important to look past the misleading statistics to see how else college’s can establish their reputation and standing.</p>

<p>(Haha and generally, of late, I’m much more interested in establishing colleges as peers, rather than constantly nitpicking over whether one is “better” than the other. Columbia, Penn, Chicago, Duke etc - its really not worth nitpicking and trying to thrust the title of “best” on schools that are so closely situated. Even more broadly speaking, I think when deciding between these schools and places like Brown, Northwestern, Dartmouth, Cornell, etc., it really should just come down to FIT.)</p>

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<p>Wow. Thanks so much for the post, cue7. Now I feel better about being deferred from Chicago and accepted to Penn, because I feel (from your descriptions) that Penn would be a better fit for me. :):)</p>

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<p>sinboliz - good to hear! Again, these observations are just my perspective, so maybe some folks who have experience with either penn or chicago would like to chime in? I think, though, that if you leaned more toward Penn after hearing my description of the two schools, that’s a very good sign. Congrats on the acceptance and good luck in the fall!</p>

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<p>Kudos to Cue7 from my perspective – that’s a good, pretty accurate description of the differences.</p>

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<p>Just curious, why are Chicago and Yale somewhat similar in terms of vibe? I know their undergraduate class sizes are similar (~1300), and both of them are in a city (of a different size though.) I also know that Yale requires all students to take 4 more classes before graduation, and it has a quite rigorous distribution (core education) requirement – many students may receive an academic warning (more like a reminder than a harsh warning) from their dean if they do not take a balanced load of classes (which includes math and writing skills, foreign language, social science, humanity and science) in their first two years. I know very little about Chicago.</p>

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<p>mcat2 - I think if JHS has a moment, he can best answer your question. He went to Yale and I believe his kids are now at Chicago. Also, if you search the Chicago forums, I think some comparisons (primarily made by JHS) may come up.</p>

<p>I think the big similarity is that both schools have a similar size, a similar array of world-class departments where there’s an emphasis on creating a kind of close-knit learning community, a slant toward taking certain core courses or subjects and an emphasis on learning at the ug level, and also an emphasis on using housing system (or at Yale, College system) to serve as the backbone of student life. </p>

<p>In terms of qualitative factors, Yale also has a bit of that “quirky academic artsy vibe” that Chicago has and that a school like Penn really doesn’t have much of at all. There are significant differences between Yale and Chicago of course - with the former school generally being better connected to avenues of power, and the latter probably having even more of an emphasis on PhD placement for its undergrads. </p>

<p>Again though, I’d defer to JHS on this topic - he’s written about it quite a bit, and many of his observations are quite insightful.</p>

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<ol>
<li><p>Before I get to Chicago vs. Yale, I want to make one more comment on Chicago vs. Penn, thanks to this week’s Penn alumni magazine. It has a lovely, informative article on Elizabeth Banks (most memorably, for me, Miri in Zack & Miri Make A Porno), who it turns out went to Penn (and it also turns out went to the same awful high school my wife did). Along the way, it mentions some of her sorority sisters/friends, one of whom is a TV news anchor, and another of whom was a model for awhile and then got into talent management. Anyway, I was reminded that centuries ago Candace Bergen also went to Penn. Guess what? At Chicago, you are not going to run into a future Elizabeth Banks (that’s not her real name) or a Candace Bergen, or very likely any local news anchors or models-who-turn-managers. Maybe someday, but not in this generation. So score one for Penn. Chicago is great on the life of the mind, but there is something to say for the life of the flesh, too. (Banks, by the way, is married to her Penn boyfriend.)</p></li>
<li><p>What binds Chicago and Yale in my mind is that both are full of people who are really turned on by what they are learning. When I was at Yale, people were always on fire with ideas. They talked about their classes a lot, they visited each other’s classes, they read each other’s papers, they formed little study groups to do supplementary reading on topics that were outside the curriculum. For all its worldliness and pre-professionalism, it was a very intellectual environment. Chicago is exactly like that.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>There are ways in which they are different, of course. On paper, Chicago’s house system is a lot like Yale’s residential college system, but in practice it’s a very pale imitation (even though Chicago had it first). But mainly Yale is very plugged in to the Establishment, and Chicago more ivory towerish. Students at Yale feel entitled to take their place among the country’s movers and shakers; those at Chicago feel somewhat isolated from the levers of power.</p>

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<p>Cue7 and JHS, Thanks for the interesting and insightful posts. I am just curious about it. Even though my DS has almost finished the college that you have described, I am still curious about what his day-to-day life is like.</p>

<p>His roommate did form some study group to do supplementary reading on topics that has nothing to do with any class. In the middle of a semester, his roommate needed to take over the only bigger desk (with a large built-in bookshelf on top of that built-in desk) from DS because he has so many books for the club he started. I heard that the college paid for the books. His roommate is very knowledgeable. DS said when his roommate talks while he is thinking, he always walks back and forth in deep thinking. During one of master’s teas when a professor was invited to give a talk (about ethics or something like that), it is almost like he and that professor talked to each other most of the time and most audiences were just listening. </p>

<p>On the other hand, I suspect that DS’s experience might not be as good as it could be just because he has been on the premed track. He is not unhappy about the science classes per se; rather, his complaints are mostly related to the grade-centric aspect of the premed life. For 1.5 years, he took classes as if he were not a premed. (What did he say at that time? “If I only take these classes, I will explode.” Fortunately, he was able to take many classes he liked on the side. Also, he somehow likes his sophomore year very much as there are much more interactions among suitmates during that year. No suitmate was studying abroad that year and nobody seems to be worried too much about, and was working on, the future career yet.</p>

<p>Thanks again for your posts.</p>

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<p>To add to what JHS was saying, here are some Penn alums who would never in a million years have thought about or attended Chicago: Elizabeth Banks, (as JHS mentioned), Willow Bay (of NBC news anchor fame, voted a beautiful person in People or something like that), John Legend (the quickly-rising R&B artist), Andrea Mitchell (another NBC news anchor), Ivanka Trump (fashion model, her daddy’s famous), Malcolm Washington (Denzel Washington’s kid), also, um, numerous members of the Continental Congress held in the late 18th Century (hehe).</p>

<p>Fact of the matter is, while I wouldn’t necessarily call Penn a “glamorous” place in the way that USC probably has a lionshare of Hollywood kids or Brown maybe has a lot of star power, what’s interesting is Chicago really has NONE of this at all. You’re just not going to get future models and tv news anchors and the local weatherwoman studying classics at Chicago. It doesn’t have that sort of cache.</p>

<p>Also, for those glamorous types looking to the midwest for college, I couldn’t imagine any of them turning down Northwestern for Chicago. Northwestern’s the land of Cindy Crawford and Ann Margaret and Stephen Colbert and Zach Braff and Josua Radin and the list goes on and on and on… (My personal favorite celeb grad from Northwestern is Kimberley Williams, who I thought was great in Father of the Bride.) </p>

<p>Chicago on this front has, um… allan bloom? Does he count? Or Roger Ebert (never finished) and Mike Nichols, but this should tell you something about the differences between Chicago and other schools. Penn produced a ravishing blonde American filmstar (Banks) and Chicago helped produce a guy who spends his time writing and thinking about films.</p>

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<p>Penn produces Chicago types as well: Noam Chomsky, Hilary Putnam, Laurence Lessig, Robert Solomon (all of whom did their undergrad at Penn CAS) and so on. Conversely, presumably Chicago has SOME star power.</p>

<p>Interestingly, John Legend worked for Boston Consulting Group for a few years following Penn graduation, which means he must have been an exceptional student. And Elizabeth Banks graduated Magna Cum Laude. These people were sexy AND smart. Interesting.</p>

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<p>Muerte - thats true, I’m sure there are some celebs coming from Chicago, I just can’t think of any. Historically, Chicago just had a narrower mission than Northwestern or UPenn, so its produced less of the celebs. I loved my time at Chicago, but I was always a little envious of our peers to the north on the glamour front, which always seemed to have veritable waves of stars passing through (from Cindy Crawford to Zooey Deschanel to influence from Jeremy Piven, etc.).</p>

<p>To Chicago’s credit, my in-a-movie crush, Sally from When Harry met Sally, is a U of C grad (as is Billy Crystal’s character, Harry). </p>

<p>Anyways, at Penn, there are not insignificant numbers of students who have interest in the entertainment industry, the fashion industry, etc. That might be creeping into Chicago a bit more now, but not by much. Generally, stars don’t go to places like Chicago or MIT. </p>

<p>Interestingly, Will Smith is a Philadelphia product who supposedly was accepted to MIT, but, probably early on, he realized that a degree in engineering might not coincide with his future plans.</p>

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<p>He’s addressed those rumors: he wasn’t accepted to MIT, but rather had “high” SAT scores and his mom knew a member of the admissions committee. Thus, he reasoned that he had an excellent chance of acceptance.</p>

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<p>Chicago has Anna Chlumsky, who played opposite Macaulay Culkin in “My Girl”. That’s about the biggest brag I’ve heard on the starlet front. Not that Chicago is devoid of star-power among its alumni – how about Philip Glass, Phillip Roth, Kurt Vonnegut, Sy Hersh, Susan Sontag, etc.? The founders of Second City. And, um, Tucker Max. But it’s not the same, obviously.</p>

<p>It’s a little unfair to compare Chicago to Northwestern in this regard, since Northwestern has a specific professionally-oriented theater program, so it really ought to attract more actors who achieve professional success. I would be surprised if Northwestern didn’t beat out any of the Ivies on the actress/anchorwoman front, given its theater and journalism programs. The Ivies get their share of those types, but it’s a steady stream at Northwestern.</p>