@hebegebe MIT is of course more selective than Penn. Chicago is not in any meaningful way. It is like saying Yale is meaningfully more selective than Princeton because its acceptance rate is a bit lower and the SAT averages are a bit higher.( All of these schools could have near perfect SAT scores if they wanted to). The perceptions of desirability, selectivity of the two schools in the general consciousness are pretty equivalent, i.e. they are considered the tier below HYPSM, along with Columbia and also maybe Duke. In the case of MIT there aren’t probably too many people who get deferred from Penn but get into MIT, but for Chicago I don’t see why there wouldn’t be a good number of such cases.
I do agree that this whole thing looks a bit petty for sure.