<p>Just a note – I think Dartmouth is actually meaningfully smaller than Chicago at the undergraduate level, which of course concentrates the athletes a little more.</p>
<p>I do believe that there is a huge overlap between the students Chicago is looking for and those sought by the Ivies, Stanford, Duke. Most of the students at those colleges would fit in fine at Chicago, and most of the students at Chicago would fit in fine there. The special character of Chicago is really more a matter of nuance and marginal differences than absolute differences. Chicago admits plenty of leader-types with ambition, but probably fewer of them than Yale. The athletes who come to Chicago are generally athletes who really appreciate the intellectual aspects of Chicago; the same is true for lots of the athletes at Yale, but not all of them.</p>
<p>Remember, also, that whom Chicago admits isn’t necessarily who enrolls. For all we know, Chicago’s admissions look exactly like Yale’s, but the admitted students who wind up enrolling are not a pure representative sample of those admitted.</p>