<p>I would disagree with Northwestern as a major rival. At least among current students, it’s not even really compared. It’s such a different place. Chicago situates itself oddly in terms of peers. For admissions, it’s peer group seems to be most closely aligned with WashU/Northwestern/Duke (the stats are deceiving since at least one of those manipulates admissions to inflate “selectivity”). But on academics and prestige (among the academic community) it seems pretty firmly in the Ivy/Stanford/MIT peer group as an institution. It’s an odd situation.</p>