The 12 Top Rivalries

Stephanie Brown grew up in southern California and, though impressed by Pomona, decided Amherst was the place for her. She liked the changing of the seasons and the different cuisines and accents of the East. "It was like studying abroad without the passport issues," she says. Amherst was particularly active in reaching out to black students like her, she says, with a students-of-color weekend for visiting applicants. She graduated in 2007 and plans to return to California to pursue a career in mental-health care.

About 100 students in 2008 were admitted to both Amherst and Pomona, a competition likely to continue. Amherst changed all of its student loans to grants in July 2007 and Pomona did the same five months later. Each has small classes, with student-faculty ratios of about 8 to 1. Both are going after what Amherst spokeswoman Carolina Hanna calls "the same high-achieving, academically promising applicants regardless of their socioeconomic backgrounds."

Science Magnets: Caltech vs. MIT
The pranks never end. MIT still celebrates the 2006 theft of Caltech's Fleming Cannon and its transport to what a press release from MIT itself called "sunny Cambridge, Mass.," where 21 MIT women in bathing suits, looking uncomfortable, and one bare-chested male posed with the catch. Caltech got its revenge in 2008, when participants in the annual MIT Mystery Hunt discovered the puzzle they were working on was a fraud, fooling them into calling a number that announced it was the Caltech admissions office, welcoming all MIT students who wished to transfer to its sunny campus. Who would've thought hardworking geeks and wonks at both had such time on their hands?

The two schools don't have to worry about their reputations. Little Caltech with 900 students and bigger MIT with about 4,000 are both known throughout the world as research meccas that may be producing scientists who someday will solve the energy crisis, explore space and kill off spam in our time. But such minds can't be as creative without some fun. So applicants like to check out the practical jokes—called "hacking" at MIT and "pranking" at Caltech—as inspiration for getting us all to Tomorrowland.

Tim Black, Caltech '11 and one of the perpetrators of the Mystery Hunt hack, was going to such puzzle-gatherings when he was still in high school in Madison, Wis. Some of them lasted two days and had hundreds of puzzles, many of which lacked instructions. He met some Caltech students, saw the campus and decided that was for him. His friend Paul Hlebowitsh, from Iowa City, picked MIT instead. He decided he liked to see the leaves change and concluded the Cambridge school had a bigger and stronger hacker bench. "I don't think Caltech will ever get to our level," he says. But the fake admissions-office phone number, he concedes, "was an amazing hack."

Big Hoosiers: Indiana vs. Purdue
"My grandmother will hate me for this," says Indiana University senior Ben Homrig, "but I have never really liked Purdue." It is not just Grandma, but most of his family are proud Purdue grads, a serious dilemma in what is probably the most deeply divided state in college loyalties. Indiana higher-education officials purposely designed their two major universities to be complementary, not competitive. Purdue focuses on engineering, agriculture and veterinary medicine. Indiana specializes in liberal arts, medicine and music. But that has only aggravated the desire to crush the rival. Homes throughout Indiana have flags that say HOUSE DIVIDED, meaning the family has both IU and Purdue people. "Marriage counselors' eyes light up when they drive past those signs," says IU spokesman Ryan Piurek.