<p>I went to college at the U of C in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Although I wanted to go to Yale, I didn’t get in and chose between Chicago and Columbia.</p>
<p>After I graduated, I went to Harvard for a masters and then to law school at Yale, and after about 10 years practicing law, I decided to go back to my first love: Academe. So I am now doing a PhD at Princeton. I think I have some first-hand experience with some of the schools that are being discussed in this thread. </p>
<p>My experience was that the U of C was the most rigorous and the most intellectually open of the schools I have attended. It was also tremendous fun for me. I spent a lot of time in student politics and at the Maroon and was fanatical about going to the different film societies on campus. I also really enjoyed exploring the city. Chicago had (and has) a tremendous small theater and arts scene, and had really great alternative music. As a native New Yorker, I was surprised to enjoy it as much as I did. </p>
<p>The only other school that I enjoyed nearly as much was Yale. Yale undergrads, in my experience, are generally very polished and confident, and they are intellectually interesting and interested, if slightly less passionate about what they do. I found Harvard too caught up in being self-satisfied and inward-looking. Because I spent some time in Oxbridge, I was not that impressed by its traditions. And Boston is not Chicago (or NY). It is a lot smaller, more expensive, just as cold in the winter, and with much less going on. I like Princeton tremendously, and am grateful to the university for having given me, as a somewhat unconventional student, the chance to do a PhD. For studying the things in which I am interested, it is an amazing place. But the undergraduates are very coddled, and don’t have to stretch themselves or be as creative as much as at other schools. There is something to not having everything presented to you on a platter that is good for the mind, I think. </p>
<p>To be clear: when I chose to go to the U of C, I was nervous and insecure about the decision. I had a lot of doubts. But after going there I was pretty sure I had made a good decision, and now with the experience of hindsight, I am very glad of my choice. </p>
<p>The biggest problem I thought the U of C had was its own tendency to self-lacerate and wear its insecurities on its sleeve. The university was not good at stressing its strengths. It did things that needlessly made it seem off-putting, such as printing admissions materials in black and white (which made it seem bleak); paying undergraduate student life comparatively little attention (dorms that lagged behind other schools, etc.); making the application process harder than it needed to be, and offering less student aid. All these things have improved tremendously. And the place feels more self-confident and less insecure. Chicagoans still seem – on the whole – less polished than Yalies, but less so. And less worried about it. </p>
<p>As for the question of comparative faculty strengths: The best professors are not always at the “best” school. For instance, in my field (which for the sake of anonymity I am not going to mention), Harvard is less strong than Princeton, I think. Yale has no one. Stanford has no one. And Chicago has someone very junior, who just graduated from Harvard and may (or may not) get tenure. Because there really is no “market” in many disciplines, especially in the humanities and social sciences – and because other things than the prestige of a school can dictate where a professor goes (such as whether her spouse can get a job nearby, whether uprooting her children at a particular age makes sense, whether the department has someone (even someone weaker) in the field already, etc.) the best (or most interesting) people in any given discipline may be at schools you don’t expect: At CUNY or the University of Indiana, Bloomington, for instance. Nonetheless, almost all the top schools have strong people in almost all the fields in which they offer instruction. And that is important. I found Chicago faculty members to be generally open and supportive of what I wanted to do, even if some of them seemed more interested in teaching graduate students. But that varies from person to person, and is true at almost all universities. </p>
<p>And finally a word about prestige: Prestige is not just a function of what university you attend, but also what field you study, with whom you develop close intellectual relationships and whether the networks you cultivate serve you well as you move on. Harvard is a great school, but it lags behind Yale in prestige in law. By a lot. And at the moment, I would hazard the thought that developing a close relationship with David Axelrod will serve you better if you want to go into politics or study political science, than majoring in Government at Harvard. Chicago is stronger than Princeton in some fields and not in others. And so on. </p>
<p>So my advice would be to go to the place where you think you will be most comfortable. Because if you dont feel good in your environment, you wont do your best work. Develop relationships with professors. Stretch yourself, and explore. Be passionate about what you do, and work hard at it. And you will do well.</p>