The 12 Top Rivalries

Catholic Powers: Boston College vs. Notre Dame
Few college rivals are as similar to each other—or as competitive—as the Eagles of Boston College and the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame. Both are large schools with rich traditions, shared faith and splendid professors. In football, where there were once several Division I Roman Catholic schools, there are now just these two. In 17 football clashes, the South Bend school has a 9-to-8 edge. When they played each other for the 2008 NCAA national ice-hockey championship, Boston won 4-1, further intensifying the rivalry.

The schools are so well matched that a bit of gridiron magic can make a difference. Chris Hine, Notre Dame '09, applied to both BC and Notre Dame, and saw much to love. They both had outstanding academic reputations grounded in Catholic theology, which was important to him. They both had committed alumni and attractive campuses. But Hine went with the South Bend, Ind., school because of his memories of watching football with his grandfather, a huge fan of the Irish. "He passed away just weeks before I got my acceptance letter to Notre Dame, but I knew he'd be proud if I went to school there," says Hine, now editor in chief of the campus newspaper, The Observer.

One of every seven students accepted to BC also applies to Notre Dame. Their shared traditions can create tension when someone is thinking of trying the option that kinfolk have rejected. An article in the Boston College newspaper, the Chronicle, told the story of the Camacho family of Lenexa, Kans., with four children enrolled as undergraduates at BC at the same time. The third to enroll, Michael, insisted on also looking at Notre Dame. "That almost tore our family apart," says his older brother Paul, seemingly joking—but maybe not.

Consortium Jewels: Amherst vs. Pomona
The tree-filled campuses, 2,884 miles apart, sit at or near the top of nearly everyone's list of liberal-arts gems. They attract the smartest students, the best teaching professors and the envy of the vast majority of their applicants who didn't get in. But what puts them in a different category from other small schools are the unusual partnerships they have forged with their closest neighbors. Allied with Amherst in its woody section of western Massachusetts are Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, Smith and University of Massachusetts Amherst—the Five Colleges group. Tied firmly to Pomona, at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains east of Los Angeles, are the other Claremont Colleges: Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer and Scripps.

At each school, students may take courses at any of the other nearby four colleges. Students regularly eat at each other's dining halls and attend their social events. The Claremont Colleges are right next door to each other, while Smith and Mount Holyoke are a bike or shuttle-bus ride from the others in the Massachusetts cluster. The combination of small-college atmosphere and big-college choices has been a winning strategy for both schools.

The two biggest differences between them are that more people have heard of Amherst, and that Pomona has more sunshine. "There are moments when I really lose out on the ability to sound all obnoxious and snooty about my education," says David Lydon, who chose Pomona despite being accepted by Amherst, which was better known to his friends and family in Connecticut. Now studying law at Stanford, Lydon says the crucial moment was his overnight visit to Claremont: "It was late January, so the weather really beat the crap out of New England."