<p>As for Penn students being “more accomplished” than U of C undergrads in the past: Tosh! Poppycock! When I was at the U of C – close to its “nadir” in the late 1980s and early 1990s, most of the students I knew wouldn’t have dreamed of going to U Penn, which at the time – and for quite some time afterwards (fairly or not) – was considered a “doormat” ivy… basically an unserious place with undergrads who wanted to be able to say they went to an ivy, but who wouldn’t have been able to get in to any of the others. Yes, Penn probably had a lower admissions rate back then (who didn’t have a lower admissions rate than the U of C in the 1980s?), but I don’t recall their stats (SAT, GPA, % in class, etc.) being any better – in fact, I think that they were worse… </p>