<p>“Despite Cornell’s wide range of schools, I think of the students at these schools as very similar.”</p>
<p>I think that probably a significant subset of Cornell’s larger undergraduate population will be very similar to Chicago’s. But many other students at Cornell will probably be somewhat less similar, in various different respects: intellectual, personal, and extracurricular interests, capabilities and goals, even geographic origin. </p>
<p>Cornell probably has a student body with a more diverse pool of interests than most other universities comparable students might be entertaining- due in part to the different colleges, which do in fact make a difference in this regard.</p>
<p>By contrast, Chicago may well attract matriculants with, on the whole, a more homogeneous than average profile. That whole “self-selection” argument Chicago advocates frequently raise necessarily means there are particular non-universal aspects of the university that are the basis of this self-selection, and therefore have less than universal appeal.</p>
<p>Possibly as many students at Cornell would fit better with Northwestern than with Chicago. And many others would fit with neither, particularly closely.</p>