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This is actually shockingly true - when I told a junior at MIT (who is a Chicago native) that I was considering U Chicago, he asked why I would go to a state school over MIT. I expected such obliviousness in my little suburban hometown, but not at a top school!</p>
<p>Secondly, a current undergrad I know at U of C (ohio_mom’s S actually) is adamant that the typical chicago student has little enough respect for the Ivies essentially for reasons of academic impurity - biased admissions, grade inflation, etc. (the Tech schools, he concedes, are comparable in academic rigor but of course very different in focus) </p>
<p>The bottom line is that Chicago’s name fails as a universal trump card, but for pure academic quality in all its lovably eccentric glory, there are few other places to be.</p>