<p>Thinking of going either of the 3 for economics. but heard abt the competitiveness at uchic and wharton. Also a bit wowed by the academic rigour of uchicago 
Any recommendations of similar schools? Thanks!</p>
<p>if you’re not looking for academic rigor consider looking at schools notches below berk chicago and penn. those three schools are all academic rigorous schools.</p>
<p>Claremont McKenna isn’t as rigorous as chicago but extremely well known for econ. they study hard and play hard.</p>
<p>You go to Wharton for business, not economics/social sciences. Penn’s renowned economics department is located in the School of Arts & Sciences (Penn SAS). Collaboration with Wharton is extensive (naturally) but the department is SAS and undergrad and grad admission are the domain of SAS.</p>
<p>i’m fine with academic rigour, but its more of the competitiveness that’s quite daunting. My tch who was an alum of u michigan, actl advised me to consider moving 3 hours up to michigan instead of chicago becoz of the better “atmosphere” there. </p>
<p>ohh i was under the impression tt undergrads at wharton take up some econs courses too…</p>
<p>[This</a> thread](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/746961-competition-collaboration.html"]This”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/746961-competition-collaboration.html) on the Chicago forum directly addresses difficulty and competetion. You may want to read bits of the two threads “Featured” at the top of the UChicago forum [url="<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/“]itself[/url”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/"]itself[/url</a>], between the class-specific forums and the main thread with all the stickies. They should assuage some of your fears, and will hopefully present a fuller and more direct picture of the U of C.</p>
<p>Just because wharton students take a few economics classes doesn’t mean they get a social science education there. Engineering students are not natural science students just because they happen to take Physics.</p>
<p>In Wharton you take a one semester course combining intro micro and macro, and an intermediate micro and intermediate macro course (but those two aren’t very math based). The rest you take is business (marketing, management, accounting, finance, etc.) Compared to a SAS Econ major where you take an intro course for micro and another for macro, calc based intermediate micro and macro economics, and another 6 economics courses on top of that.</p>