<p>They are far more similar than they are different. That’s true of all of the elite private research universities. In the case of Penn and Chicago, there are some very close similarities, and a few especially sharp differences. It’s all a matter of degree – there are plenty of students at Penn whose college experience is very Chicago-like, and plenty at Chicago whose experience is not very different from the Penn norm, but each of those groups is a (sizable) minority on its own campus.</p>
<p>Similarities: High quality faculty and students, full-scale university, urban neighborhood bordering “ghetto” areas, big cities (but not NYC), most upperclassmen live off campus but in the immediate neighborhood, until recently professional schools and graduate programs were stronger than undergrad.</p>
<p>Differences:</p>
<p>– Most importantly, Chicago air of academic intellectualism, vs. practical, pre-professional orientation at Penn. There are many intellectual students at Penn, and pre-professional students at Chicago, but they each learn to keep their heads down and to shut up about it, to some extent, at least in public. Penn has lots of undergraduates in non-liberal-arts programs: engineering, business, nursing. Chicago barely even lets undergraduates think about those fields. The quarter of Penn undergraduates who are in Wharton have a big impact on the atmosphere.</p>
<p>– Penn is not the school with less of a party atmosphere. Penn prides itself on its party atmosphere. Chicago prides itself on its non-party atmosphere. They’re each lying a little, since there are lots of parties at Chicago and Penn students do plenty of work. But Penn has a much stronger, more vibrant Greek system, much more of a sports culture (especially around football and basketball), and more ostentatious partying.</p>
<p>– East Coast vs. Central Coast (Midwest). Penn attracts students from all over the world, but the strongest identity comes from smart kids from wealthy NYC and Philadelphia suburbs. Chicago attracts students from all over the world, but the strongest identity comes from smart, less-wealthy kids from Chicago and Midwestern college towns. There’s a lot more conspicuous consumption at Penn; the women wear more high-end brand-name clothes and make-up. (Not all of them, of course, but the difference walking around the two campuses is very noticeable.)</p>
<p>– Chicago is a much larger, glitzier, more expensive city than Philadelphia. Philadelphia is far more student-oriented; its college-student population means a lot more to the city and gets catered to far more than in Chicago. (Compare, e.g., choices and prices for indie rock shows open to 18 year-olds in both cities.) Penn itself is somewhat bigger than the University of Chicago, but Penn is cheek-by-jowl with Drexel and University of the Sciences, walking distance from Curtis and University of the Arts. That’s a lot of 18-24 year-olds.</p>
<p>– Penn is close to Philadelphia’s downtown – a brisk walk, or five minutes on public transportation. Chicago is in a more isolated neighborhood about 7 miles from the (much larger) downtown area. Also, the area immediately around Penn has way more amenities – a variety of restaurants and retail shops. Hyde Park has great bookstores and coffee shops, but hardly anywhere to buy clothes, see a movie, eat a fancy meal.</p>
<p>– Chicago core curriculum creates a strong shared base of reference among all undergraduates. Penn’s loose distributional system and multiple schools doesn’t even attempt that. But Penn students spend a lot less time taking mandatory courses.</p>
<p>– Penn: Founded by Benjamin Franklin around 1740. Chicago: Founded by John D. Rockefeller around 1890.</p>
<p>– Penn has a really strong medical school, an on-campus biotech/pharma business incubator, and a ton of pharma and chemical engineering research in the area. Chicago has life-science research, too, just somewhat less of it. Chicago has Argonne and Fermi nuclear labs, and a huge physics research community. Chicago’s Economics Department is stuffed with Nobelists. (Be careful of overestimating differences in departments, however. Very few, if any, undergraduates can really tell the difference between a top-5 department and a top-20 department, and that’s what we’re talking about here. Both universities are very strong in almost everything meaningful they choose to offer.)</p>