The 12 Top Rivalries

The argument over which school is better thoroughly bores outsiders, but applicants have no such inhibitions, particularly when they have to choose between the two. Yale sophomore Abby West was turned off by Harvardian boasts that "the competition is incredibly intense" when she visited Cambridge, so she selected what she considers the more friendly Yale dynamic. Malcom Glenn, president of The Harvard Crimson, says he preferred Harvard because it is close to a big city, Boston, but "on the surface the two schools couldn't be more alike." He knows people at both campuses, and "many would have gone to the other if not for the fact they weren't accepted."

Bay Area Giants: UC Berkeley vs. Stanford
German Physicist Werner Heisenberg, famous for his Uncertainty Principle, was indeed uncertain when asked once about the location of Stanford University, but he knew of its rivalry with another northern California school. "They steal each other's axes," he said. That competition has escalated far beyond the annual football game that decides who gets the Stanford Axe. The two universities have become intellectual centers of the Internet boom, doing their best to attract the best science, math and engineering talent, and in the process attracting great wealth. In 2007, Cal (as UC Berkeley is often called) signed a $500 million contract with BP, the largest grant in the school's history, to develop alternative energy sources. Stanford is deep into the same explorations, and is nestled right in the heart of Silicon Valley, where corporate giants like Google, founded by two Stanford students, prosper.

Students seem happy to be at either Bay Area school, and the taunts between them are, according to Julie Yen, Stanford '07, "little more than lighthearted joking." She chose the smaller Stanford over Berkeley because she liked its quieter, grassier campus, a better place for a contemplative art-history major than the more raucous and urban Berkeley streets (just over the Bay Bridge from San Francisco). But if she had gone to Cal, she adds, she says she would've found the instruction "of the same high caliber—they have a very good museum." She is aware of the good jobs available for graduates of either university, no matter what their degrees. She's just started as an investment-firm analyst in Menlo Park, just a few miles from Stanford.

American Warriors: Annapolis vs. West Point
Craig Meekins attended Chaminade High School in Mineola, N.Y., a Roman Catholic school that churns out applicants to two of the nation's oldest military academies. Meekins, who graduated from Annapolis in 2008, laughs at the notion that the two schools aren't fervent competitors. "It's an intense rivalry," he says. When he ran the 800 meters for the U.S. Naval Academy track team, "if the coach saw you talking to a West Point guy before the meet, it was bad news." But amid the teasing, he says, "there is still a strong sense of camaraderie, because we all know we're facing the same challenges." Both have a much longer list of required courses than civilian institutions do. Both require students to participate in team sports. Each has 4,300 students, about 23 percent minorities and 20 percent women. Students at both want to serve their country, and acquire academic and technical skills with no bills for tuition, room or board.

Many applicants apply to both, and make their final decisions based on atmospherics, family traditions and career inclinations, just as students applying to less-regimented campuses do. Daniel Mills, who graduated from a public high school in northern Virginia in 2008, says he liked the idea of a military education "because I thought I really needed structure." He visited Annapolis and thought of taking that route to becoming a Marine Corps officer, but decided that if he was drawn to ground combat, he might as well go Army. His father was a West Point graduate, the Academy's wrestling coach liked him and his overnight at the campus introduced him to cadets he found smart and thoughtful. Meekins, on the other hand, picked Annapolis because it was in a city and seemed to offer more career choices. He plans to become a Navy SEAL, and is happy that he can get such an unusual college education without "spending a ridiculous amount of money."

For Women Only: Smith vs. Wellesley
As two of the few colleges that still bar male undergraduates, Smith and Wellesley have similarities that are deeper than their differences. And not just because the two small schools are in Massachusetts. Smith celebrates its big group of undergraduates from low- income families; 23 percent receive Pell grants, the leading federal aid program for disadvantaged students. (Wellesley has 13 percent.) Sidnie Davis, class of '08, says her high-school counselor called it "Wellesley for working girls."