Although lesser known than its peer institutions like Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, and Yale, the University of Chicago is a place so nerdy and intellectually stimulating that it leaves you feeling like you've been beaten over the head by Aristotle while the dead hands of Milton Friedman shove an economics textbook down your throat. First years walk in as brainy little dorks and graduate as big burly scholarly men. AT THIS SCHOOL, YOU WILL LEARN WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT.

When you eat dirt for the first time and leave your family to build a shack in the woods

Harvard's lesser-known, intellectually superior little brother.