The University of Chicago

Date: May 17 2007
Major: English (This Major's Salary over time)
The University of Chicago is so often characterized as a social and academic wasteland, filled with students who weren't bright enough and didn't have the graces to get into an Ivy League school, and as a result are tortured day and night by the Core Curriculum.

Oh, and they're not supposed to ever have fun.

People who think that way about the school have their reasons—sure, the school has a high acceptance rate compared to the Ivy League, making it look like an easier school, and of course not everybody thinks that reading Aristotle and Kant is a good time. But for the students who want it, there's nothing better, and students left and right are turning down top schools like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford for the Chicago experience.

What makes Chicago unique—aside from its great resources, the attention that profs turn towards students, and the self-motivated student body—is that students feel free to talk about academics day and night. That's not saying that they ALWAYS have intellectual conversations, or that they don't like talking about hot girls and playing beer pong, it's just saying that they ALWAYS CAN. Similarly, the school is terrific for those who want to pursue graduate school, but one is hard-pressed to find students who only care about grades and their career and not about the learning at hand.