<p>Of the places I've been accepted, the ones I'm seriously considering right now are Yale, Chicago, and Penn. I'm not entirely sure what I want to major in, but I'm probably going to end up doing math or a "hard" science (physics or chemistry or something). </p>
<p>Is there a significant difference in quality in undergraduate education in math/hard science between these three institutions? As I understand it, between schools of this caliber, there isn't really much of a difference in most areas of study.</p>
<p>Also, what salient qualities of these three institutions might I have overlooked? There's obviously the matter of location; Chicago's more liberal arts approach with the Core vs. Penn's pre-professional approach (and I don't know how Yale fits into this spectrum); prestige (which isn't something I'm terribly concerned with, given that all three of these institutions are quite well-reputed); housing is apparently awesome at Yale, but only just good at Penn/Chicago (so I've heard, anyway). Will the resources available to me be significantly different at each of these three institutions?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>EDIT: Is this a good place to post this question? Or would I get better results in the Penn/Chicago forums or in another forum altogether?</p>
<p>At Penn we have the “One-University” concept. That means that you can take classes at any of our 12 graduate schools. Penn Med is the oldest med school in the country and is far superior to Yale Med (my dad went to Harvard med and told me that). Penn Med also takes most of its kids from Penn, so you will have an advantage if medicine is your thing. Penn also recently built a new $80 million nano-technology center, if that is your thing Penn is the place to be. As an undergraduate at Penn, you can take classes at Penn Med now that will help you enormously. Penn generally also has stronger science departments, particularly if biology is your thing. You can also branch out and take classes at Wharton (perhaps you would like to learn about healthcare management, or know how to run the finances of your own practice), or classes at the law school to learn about bio-ethics. The opportunities are endless.</p>
<p>I, for instance, will be majoring in finance, but I will also minor in philosophy at the college just because it interests me.</p>
<p>You can post this in other sections to get other opinions as well. In my view, people who are undecided will have a great time at Yale no matter what. You can take courses at the grad schools here as well. All three universities have a great liberal arts curriculum so you can’t go wrong there. </p>
<p>Your understanding is correct that there isn’t any significant difference in the undergrad level between these schools in terms of academics. Go visit the schools and pick the campus where you feel the best. It’s “fit” that matters once you’ve gotten into elite schools. Good luck!</p>
<p>Math and physics are very, very mainstream at Chicago. It is one of the handful of colleges (which do not include Yale or Penn) that attract really advanced math students, and there are 90-100 math majors per class. (I don’t know the numbers for Yale or Penn, but I’m pretty confident they aren’t close to that.) Physics is also strong and popular because of the association with Argonne and Fermi laboratories; not so much at Yale or Penn. Chemistry may be more of a toss-up among the three.</p>
<p>That doesn’t mean you should go to Chicago. Yale and Penn have excellent math faculties that are not ranked far below Chicago’s. The opportunity to be one of a few math students there may be more attractive than being one of 100 at Chicago, especially when some of the others are true prodigies. Basically, you would have to be a prodigy yourself to be able to notice the difference among the faculties before you graduate. Same for physics. What Chicago offers isn’t so much better instruction as more company.</p>
<p>Other stuff is equally or more important. At Chicago, you have the Core, which some people like and some don’t, and you have Hyde Park, ditto. Chicago is a richer and more vibrant city than Philadelphia, but Philadelphia is probably more student-friendly, and warmer, and Penn is much better situated relative to what’s fun here than Chicago is in Chicago. Chicago students tend to be more intellectual AND more pretentious about it, which depending on how things strike you may be an OK tradeoff or insufferable. Yale is something of a happy medium between Penn and Chicago on that score.</p>
<p>No college has a better residential set-up and extra-curricular life than Yale; students tend to love Yale in a way that isn’t a sure bet at Penn or Chicago.</p>
<p>And of course you are likely to change your mind about what interests you in college. So the fact that you happened to pick two areas where Chicago is clearly a little stronger than the others really isn’t determinative of anything.</p>
<p>I’ve visited Yale and Penn, and in terms of “fit”, Penn strikes me as more suitable for me. I’m headed out to Chicago for their pre-admit event thing, so I guess that I should just go with my gut feel about it and make a decision based on that?</p>
<p>Anarch, go to Bulldog Days if you can. I’m not saying that it is not possible for a student to end up liking Penn more than Yale; I’m sure there are a few who choose Penn over Yale every year, especially for Wharton. However, I don’t think you have any idea what you’d be giving up at Yale – there’s no place like it!</p>
<p>Also, re: med school, it will NOT matter whether you go to Yale or Penn. I just looked at the med school stats, and Yale med vs. Penn med are hardly different in the rankings.</p>
<p>If anything, the numbers indicate that Yale will make it easier to get into top med schools than Penn. I have heard in the past that Yale pre-med is the best if not near-the best in terms of placement at top med schools. </p>
<p>Getting into Harvard Med required a 3.9 gpa at Penn but only a 3.8 gpa at Yale. Getting into Penn Med required a 3.8 gpa at Penn and a 3.78 at Yale. Getting into Yale med required a 3.9 gpa at Penn but only a 3.74 at Yale. I don’t think the statistics show Penn is any better; in fact, they seem to show the opposite!</p>
<p>kafkareborn, I saw that stat too. The difference b/w 75/100 and 79/100 is absolutely irrelevant at the undergrad level! Absolutely irrelevant. Anyway. Focus on what the op needs.</p>
<p>I went to Yale for undergrad and Penn for grad school and I honestly can’t imagine passing up Yale for Penn undergrad (except maybe for Wharton if you absolutely know you want to go to Wall Street). </p>
<p>As JHS said, unless you are a true prodigy, you won’t find all that much difference in the quality of math/science instruction at these 3 top schools. All will suit you well for a job search or further study in a top grad school</p>
<p>The differences are in other areas. I have less exposure to UChicago, so I will limit my comments to Yale v. UPenn:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Though I do like Philly as a city, I never really liked the campus at UPenn very much. A few nice buildings, but basically kind of depressing. I personally always found myself quite in love with Yale’s campus and architecture and libraries, even inspired by it, but I suppose that’s just personal taste.</p></li>
<li><p>On a day-to-day basis, the area around Yale just had much more in the way of accessible, casual, student oriented places to eat, grab coffee, or drinks if you’re old enough. I found the area around Penn’s Campus just absolutely devoid of good places to hang. Maybe things have gotten better in the last few years.</p></li>
<li><p>The housing system at Yale, and the physical plant now that renovations are nearing completion, are vastly better than Penn’s from what I saw. I would never trade Yale’s fabulous college system for Penn’s frat oriented culture.</p></li>
<li><p>Student’s at Penn are smart, obviously, but extremely career focused and on the competitive side. The culture at Yale is more laid back and intellectual – knowledge for knowledge’s sake to a much greater degree. The students seem much more diverse in terms of interests.</p></li>
<li><p>Except for sports, there is a vastly greater array of high quality extra-curriculars at Yale, and students really go all out for them, much more so than at Penn.</p></li>
<li><p>Yale’s got a $17billion endowment to serve 11,000 students; Penn’s got a $6 billion endowment to serve 20,000 students. There’s just more money around to fund special programs, summer projects, research ideas, etc. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>Just my thoughts. Visit Yale and Penn again and take a look at Chicago and go with your gut. At the end of the day, there is no bad outcome here.</p>
<p>@mancune: I’ll agree that Penn is more pre-prof while Yale is more laid-back but I hardly consider Yale to be an ‘intellectual’ place. Ivies in general place too much emphasis on reputation and not nearly enough on academic rigor. Of the three, Chicago is the most intellectual by far whereas Yale and Penn are roughly the same in this respect (Penn’s supposed ‘lack of intellectualism’ results from the pre-professionalism of Wharton overshadowing other parts of the university). Also, I’m not sure where you get all of this stuff about extracurriculars and culture at Penn from. How are you defining quality? iirc, many clubs rank top 5 (and many first place) both nationally and internationally (MUN, mock trial, etc). To be honest, I doubt you’re getting the ‘full college experience’ as a grad student. It’s also worthy of note that Penn tops the ivy league in spending. I don’t see how a large endowment is supposed to help if you don’t plan on spending on it. </p>
<p>With all of that said, I’d still recommend the OP go to Chicago. Ivies just aren’t as academic when compared to other peer institutions and given that the OP wants to do hard sciences, it’s worth it to get a rigorous education.</p>
<p>You can’t compare med school stats from penn’s site vs yale given by booyaksha. The penn site gives averages from all applicants, not just from penn, while yale’s reflect only yale applicants. To view penn-specific stats, you have to go to their career office.</p>