<p>@Realeducation, I have no doubt that UChicago is on the same academic level with HPYSM. The only difference that separated them are the prestige. Prestige that comes from long history of universities and reputation that survived for long time. For lot of normal people who are not so knowledgable in top universities, all they think of top universities are HYPSM or Ivy plus. It’s just the public awareness. You can probably figure out that UChicago’s official acceptance rate is 16.3% whereas MIT’s and Columbia’s are 9.7 and 7.0%.</p>