<p>sorry. here is the real educational quality ranking for undergraduates by the same guy, Brian Leiter. it was just hard to find. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/bleiter/Undergra2001.html[/url]”>http://www.utexas.edu/law/faculty/bleiter/Undergra2001.html</a></p>
<p>in any case, the majors that you are looking for - ecology and organismal biology - are very specific and were not brought up in the original question. i am saying that in general, uchicago has no problems holding its own against any smaller liberal arts school. </p>
<p>"One of the U of C’s particular charms is that the sky’s the limit for undergraduate education because undergrads can enroll in nearly any graduate class, and with a little administrative paper-pushing can find themselves in classes from the Law School or Business School as well. Sure, Gary Becker doesn’t teach undergraduate economics, but one of our contributors took his price theory class as an undergraduate anyway (and did darn well). Others of our conspirators have worked for a number of Professors on the 6th floor of the Law School (where the Law and Econ folk hang out). The quality of the teaching wouldn’t be what it is if the grad environment weren’t drawing a lot of them there. Heck, the quality of the grad school means that we attract much better grad students, which means that the T.A.'s and Grad Student instructors are that much more special.</p>
<p>The undergrads at Chicago aren’t the ghost in the machine they were twenty years ago, but I’ll admit they still don’t run the show. And that’s the point. You can be guaranteed a number of people at Chicago who study your subject and know a heck of a lot more about it than you do, and by your third or fourth year, they’re often willing to rub elbows or trade arguments with you on a semi-regular basis. The undergrad education at Chicago isn’t designed to coddle or cuddle, but rather to awe.</p>
<p>Now, I won’t bother trying to convert this into an argument that Chicago should be at the top of all lists. Some of us simply know that the U of C is the best college in the states, and who wants to compete for a higher ranking so as “to increase the number of gullible, status-conscious drones present in next year’s incoming class”? All the same, I think it’s a mistake to put the U of C’s style of little-fish-big-pond education below that of Swarthmore’s, Amherst’s, or Williams’s. The graduate nature of the institution bestows innumerable benefits on the students who want them, as they can find many ways to be treated like graduate students. "</p>
<p>disclaimer: of course, i don’t think a couple places on rankings matter.
<a href=“http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0110/features/abuse.html[/url]”>http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0110/features/abuse.html</a></p>
<p>i bet i’d have been happy at swarthmore also. but i love my school. i love my school. i love my school.</p>