<p>Both are stellar schools. To me, personally, they have the same difficulty. One is not harder than the other, but considering they are not as selective as ivy league schools, if your stats are good, you’re most likely in!! (:</p>
<p>needstostudy said: Both are stellar schools. To me, personally, they have the same difficulty. One is not harder than the other, but considering they are not as selective as SOME ivy league schools, if your stats are good, you’re YOU MAY OR MAY NOT HAVE A BETTER CHANCE OF GETTING IN (: </p>
<p>FYP.</p>
<p>Yeah, by most likely in, I meant you have the POSSIBILITY of peing accepted–nothing definate.</p>
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<p>As someone who got accepted to multiple Ivy League schools, Northwestern, and Chicago - and chose Northwestern - your remark has to be the most condescending, haughty thing said yet. Northwestern and Chicago are just as hard to get into as a good portion of the Ivy Leagues - it won’t be long now when the acceptance rates plummet so precipitously that they become virtually identical. And then that piece of the argument becomes null.</p>
<p>Well Northwestern and UChicago accept more applicants than an ivy. For example, Yale accepted 1940, Northwestern accepted 6,379, and UChicago accepted 3,639. Therefore, ones chances are greater at Northwestern or UChicago.
Those schools are amazing, and they are some of my choices.
I am not degrading their selectivity whatsoever, I am just stating what their statistics show.
And tinfoyl, my intention was not to make a haughty remark, I apologize if it seemed that way.</p>
<p>You can argue SATs till the cows go home, but Northwestern attracts more well rounded students from elite prep schools. as opposed to ‘academic’ students from rural midwestern high schools. The students that U. of C. really wants -top tier minority students- will be accepted and go to Ivy League schools. Some will attend U. of C. for graduate or professional school. The undergraduates there are stigmatized as ‘nerds’.</p>
<p>Northwestern.</p>
<p>^^What made you revive this old thread?
There is no clear answer. Both are first tier universities.</p>
<p>Andresba said:</p>
<p>“Northwestern attracts more well rounded students from elite prep schools.”</p>
<p>I imagine that’s changing quickly now, with UChicago becoming a much more “normal” elite school (to use your vague terms). If you look at matriculant lists from a variety of prep schools, the numbers should be pretty comparable, with UChicago and NU performing similarly to the “lower” ivies.</p>
<p>Some examples:</p>
<p>[Phillips</a> Academy - College Matriculations & School Profile](<a href=“http://www.andover.edu/Academics/CollegeCounseling/Pages/SchoolProfileCollegeMatriculations.aspx]Phillips”>http://www.andover.edu/Academics/CollegeCounseling/Pages/SchoolProfileCollegeMatriculations.aspx)</p>
<p>[Choate</a> Rosemary Hall: Academics » College Counseling » Matriculations](<a href=“http://www.choate.edu/academics/academics_college_matriculations.aspx]Choate”>http://www.choate.edu/academics/academics_college_matriculations.aspx)</p>
<p>The numbers are extremely similar. It’s a needless slight to call UChicago the “nerd” school, and, actually, an insult to call NU the “wellrounded” school. Both have different vibes but have a large number of students who would be very happy at either institution. </p>
<p>In any case this thread is silly. Both are great schools and it’s hard to predict chances. Make the application as strong as possible and hope for the best.</p>
<p>Yeas, maybe U of C has a (very) slightly better academic reputation. but the issue of which school is harder to get into is gray at best. Each school looks at applicants differently. I know people who got into one and not the other and that goes both ways. For that matter, I know people who got into Dartmouth, Georgetown and Cornell but did not get into Wash U. or Tufts. What I am saying is there is no real black and white answer to this question. Each university has certain traits and aspects they look for. Try for the school you feel more comfortable with…</p>
<p>Maybe when this thread was first made, Northwestern was the more selective school. But now, I don’t even think it’s arguable; Chicago has higher SAT scores and a lower acceptance rate. There’s no data more objective than that.</p>
<p>Also, defending Northwestern as a more “well-rounded” school is laughable. That’s like a parent saying his kid is “street-smart” as opposed to “book-smart” - it’s just a euphemism for dumb. :P</p>
<p>@Fickle - either you aren’t aware of, or are purposely ignoring, the fact that Northwestern has among the strongest Journalism, Theatre and Music schools in the country, and I seriously doubt that many of those students ever even consider applying to UChicago. The presence of those talent-based programs, not to mention athletics, not only secure NUs reputation for having exceptionally well-rounded students but also makes comparing SAT scores trickier. </p>
<p>It’s great that you like UChicago, but your contention that it’s harder to get in to is flawed. Since NU could fill its incoming class with kids with perfect stats, they clearly look for more, and part of what they look for in certain schools is specific talent that never applies to UChicago. For example, I know of ~20% of last years’ national YoungArts finalists who applied to NU (nearly all of the finalists with high academic stats), yet don’t know of even one who applied to UChicago.</p>
<p>“Also, defending Northwestern as a more “well-rounded” school is laughable. That’s like a parent saying his kid is “street-smart” as opposed to “book-smart” - it’s just a euphemism for dumb. :P”</p>
<p>Lol. Nailed it.</p>
<p>Fickle,</p>
<p>If you go to different top management consulting firms’ recruiting websites, you’ll see NU is more of a target - more of them go to NU with more recruiting events. Also, NU has NEVER lost to UChicago in College Fed Challenge despite UChicago having a higher ranked econ dept. I suspect part of it has to do with the format that requires great communication skills instead of just technical skills.</p>
<p>There’s actually a YouTube video covering the Midwest regional of the College Fed Challenge. The ones from NU looked confident and yes, street-smart. The ones from UChicago looked nerdy and one of them was still looking at materials as if he’s either nervous or overprepared. </p>
<p>When I was at NU, there was a basketball friendly match between the Hong Kong student clubs at both schools. The players from NU all grew up in Hong Kong; the ones from UChicago? Mostly Chinese Americans cos they didn’t have enough Hong Kong students to fill a team that could compete. Still, the UChicago team lost! LOL! Hong Kong sucks in basketball and still our Hong Kong students beat the Americans from UChicago! We were simply more athletic. That’s what well-rounded means. Get it?</p>
<p>phuriku = Fickle</p>
<p>Anyone else see this?</p>
<p>Ha. I can see why you would like to think that, but despite phuriku’s often flame-baiting posts and blatant Chicago fanboyism, he almost always has a point. Unlike most people, he uses actual data to back his points up.</p>
<p>I realize my “well-rounded” remark might have been particularly inflammatory, but I’m not always this much of a ■■■■■, I promise! ;)</p>
<p>I also want to add that I think NU is a great school… it’s just not as selective as Chicago (anymore). That doesn’t mean it’s a worse school, necessarily.</p>
<p>I don’t really want to get into this debate, though upon seeing the title of this thread my initial thought was to say Chicago purely by acceptance rate and then I thought that perhaps that should not be the end of my consideration, but I want to say that I take issue with Fickle’s “well-rounded” metaphor. It definitely is not an adequate comparison. How can one possibly conclude that “well-rounded” and “dumb” are equivalent terms in that context?</p>
<p>A well-rounded person would not be street-smart rather than book-smart; rather, he would be (reasonably) both book-smart and street-smart. That’s simply what the term means. Calling Northwestern well-rounded would be saying exactly that, and I believe Chicago would be the book-smart rather than street-smart (like a 30-70 ratio or something rather than a well-rounded 50-50) one in this scenario. Neither one need necessarily be a better qualifier than the other. They’re just different. </p>
<p>(Incidentally, just because I think it’s interesting, I’d like to say that my parents would probably call me book-smart rather than street-smart, I chose not to apply to Chicago, and I will be attending Northwestern. Conversely, I know someone who would definitely be considered well-rounded, and he will be going to Chicago. I don’t think either of us is necessarily better than the other; also, I think we’ll both be fine. Why care which one is harder to get into? That just smacks of unnecessary elitism.)</p>
<p>Oh, I see you more or less agree with me, Fickle. For some reason your second comment didn’t show. Oh well.</p>
<p>Fickle,
On aggregate, I agree with what you said about selectivity (based on the small differences in acceptance rate and test scores). But the difference is so small that it’s easy to find UChicago admits being rejected by NU. If you just look at the decision threads, you’ll see it still looks very random as before - an acceptance/rejection by one says almost nothing about the outcome for the other. So even what you say is more or less correct, it’s really meaningless.</p>