<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>