Which should I pick. I love UChicago reputation, I worked super hard in high school so feel like it befits my effort in high schoolk, and love what the city has to offer. I am paranoid of the motto the fun goes to die here because I am really social and want to go out at night and attend parties. Im also not that intro the core curricukum. I like WasHU’s campus and dorms and also their academic programs because they hve a business school and engineering school. I am unsure of its reputation and importabntly cannot assess of the social life is better than UChicago or is another place where fun does not happen.
OK - thank you for adding more info.
You should choose WUSTL.
Why - you love Chicago’s reputation. Well then you should love WUSTL’s reputation. You love the campus (it’s gorgeous) and dorms and that it’s got a b school and engineering school although I’m not sure your major.
You’re unsure of its reputation - but you shouldn’t be - it’s a top college, along the lines of Vanderbilt, Rice, etc. and in some quarters Chicago.
All schools have parties - I wouldn’t worry about that - but yes, Chicago is known to be more studious - not sure if it’s true - that’ll be student dependent. And you never know who you’ll connect with socially.
But it’s clear based on your writings that WUSTL should be your choice.
Good luck.
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Are you the student or, as represented in another topic, a parent of the student?
These are both exceptional universities. Both have very strong and well deserved reputations. Forget about “prestige” or “reputation”, because prestige does not matter and also because both are excellent.
Either of these schools is going to require that you work hard and keep up with demanding classes that are full of very strong students. You might get to party occasionally, but expect to be working hard a lot more often than you are partying. You do not want to waste your time at either of these schools.
Assuming that the cost is similar, you should try to figure out which of these two excellent universities is a better fit for you. Part of that will depend upon your major, but part will just depend upon where you are the most comfortable.
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Then I would not encourage you to attend U Chicago.
As for rigor and social life I would say these schools are more alike than different. Many students will spend most of their time studying. You will find some students to party with on weekends, but do not expect parties/students hitting the bars on weeknights.
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I mean, if you like WUSTL’s flexible curriculum and are potentially interested in doing something in Business or Engineering, to me that is your answer right there.
I could be wrong, but I am feeling like you are maybe just hung up on Chicago having a higher ranking in US News and such. If it helps, I note my S24 applied to and is now enrolling at WUSTL in part because of that curriculum structure, and did not apply to Chicago at all. This is pretty common in his feederish HS, that only certain sorts of kids even apply to Chicago, because it is not at all the right choice for everyone.
And in fact, WUSTL is kinda famous/notorious for particularly favoring the high numbers kids. Indeed, back before test optional kinda rendered this data moot, WUSTL had one of the highest average SAT scores–in this version, it tied for #4 with Penn and Stanford, and was actually ahead of Princeton, Yale, Harvard, and others :
Now Chicago has the exact same reputation for favoring high numbers, and in fact Chicago was #1 in that study. But my point is BOTH of these colleges really like the academic high-flyers.
So I don’t think your hard work will somehow be wasted if you choose WUSTL, that is presumably a large part of why you got into both of these college! So, thanks to your hard work you have benefited so far from having the option to choose which college like this is actually best for you.
And then you will very likely further benefit from being well-prepared for college. Which is no joke at either of these colleges, they are full of very smart, hard-working kids, and you want to be well-prepared to keep up. And that will leave room for some fun too.
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Temporarily closing. The student needs to create their own account as sharing accounts is against ToS. Thanks for your understanding.
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