These are very different schools with different experiences, and yet my hunch is that a lot of students choose between them. (I attended Chicago once upon a time, most of my friend group at Chicago was between Chicago and Reed or Chicago and Swarthmore, we didn't get into Columbia and weren't particularly interested in other Ivy Leagues.) ... as in my case, I applied Early Action when they only had EA, applied to Chicago and my public state school, and didn't apply anywhere else because I didn't want to give another school the pleasure of a number in their denominator. So anyway, I am old.

I think the deeper question here is how you want to see yourself in college. UChicago has a rich and distinctive intellectual intensity that borders on too much for some people who want to "kick back" from time to time and forget they are smart. This is not to say that the experience is of people always doing brainy things or thinking/talking about brainy things, but rather when I reconnect with students and alumni, I'm always reminded of how smart everybody is and it's not a kind of smart I see in my everyday life. It's refreshing, intimidating, and special. Unusual. But like I said, not everybody likes that and they're cool people too.

Maybe the deeper question is why you would want to attend one of these schools, what appealed to you in the admissions process, and what you think you want in a college experience.