<p>What is your opinion? (selectivity, quality of academics)</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>What is your opinion?</p>
<p>Personally, I would go for Amherst. The kind of personal attention you get at a smaller school is very valuable, and they are of pretty equal quality.</p>
<p>The settings are quite different - Amherst v. NYC. Also, academically, Amherst has a totally open curriculum while Columbia has an extremely structured, rigorous core curriculum. Also, as Endicott mentioned, the graduate v undergraduate focus also makes them different.</p>
<p>Columbia has many more options to do advanced work and take advanced courses senior year with its vast array of world class professional and graduate schools.</p>
<p>Have you visited? They are about as different as the could be. Both excellent, but since they are so vastly different in terms of the kind of experience you’d have there it seems you’d have some preference of one over the other. Big/small, urban/small town, uni/LAC, structured curriculum/open curriculum. Don’t your have some sense of where on those divides you fall? You’re going to be there for 4 years, after all.</p>
<p>Amherst and Columbia are two completely different schools.</p>
<p>Since you bothered to mention academics, pay attention to the point that kcmdonahue made, that at Columbia, you’ll devote a substantial amount of time and energy fulfilling Core requirements, and that at Amherst, you’ll have complete freedom to decide your academic career. The former forces you to get out of your comfort zone to explore authors and disciplines you might have never considered on your own. The latter trusts that you have the maturity to create a curriculum that will give you that same liberal exposure but does not compel you to do so in any way.</p>
<p>Both are the most ethnically and socioeconomically diverse of their kin.</p>
<p>Amherst is located in the medium-sized New England town of Massachusetts’ state flagship. Columbia is located in New York City.</p>
<p>If you are undecided between the two, you can apply regular decision to both, and decide between them if you are admitted to both.</p>
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<p>That’s an understatement. You would be hard pressed to find two such opposite college experiences.</p>
<p>Columbia is more well-known, but I would say the quality of the academics would be similar. You would def. get a more undergraduate focus at Amherst since the focus at Columbia is grad students.</p>
<p>If you anticipate going to grad school, you might consider Amherst for the ultimate undergrad focus and aim for Columbia for grad school…then, you’ll experience the best of both.</p>
<p>Haha Collegiate. That would be the master plan if the OP was going to graduate school.
I guess it really depends on what you like though.
If I got the chance I would never pass up NYC. Colulmbia all the way.
Location is a huge factor for me and I think it should be.
So if you like small town then go to a school in a rural area. If you like a big city then go urban.</p>
<p>The two schools are completely opposite. If you like the idea of living in New York and going to school there, and like the idea of a Core Curriculum then i say definitely choose Columbia because its urban environment and Core classes are unmatched. That being said, if thats not something you would be interested in then definitely don’t consider it. Columbia had a way higher ranking and name credibility and its an amazing school, but, you have to spend four years there so i suggest you do research on both schools and figure out what kind of atmosphere you would be best suited for and then make your decision from there</p>
<p>Help us out here… What are your preferences?</p>
<p>so I think there are a few stereotypes in this thread that aren’t true here, Columbia has ample resources to focus on undergrads, while our grad schools are strong, there isn’t a necessary trade off between having good grad schools vs. good undergrad. The undergrad student:faculty ratio is 6:1, students are also in small classes (% of classes less than 20 are comparable to Amherst). Anecdotally at least undergrads have the attention of their professors, because classes are so small. And the award winning researchers either only teach phds or teach undergrads in courses specialized in their sub-discipline.</p>
<p>The difference is Amherst professors have little research focus, and so have self-selected into Amherst to teach undergrads. At Columbia you have some professors who teach undergrads who were selected largely because of their research abilities. But again any student who wants to, either gets involved with professor research or develops relationships with professors in an intimate setting through class meals, office hours, (a snowball fight once in a while) etc - basically the same mechanisms present at Amherst. The good grad schools just don’t make a difference to my or my classmates’ lives on a daily basis.</p>
<p>Columbia and Amherst are also not polar opposites in terms of students they attract. While they are polar opposites in terms of requirements and location, the two schools attract similar students who tend to be liberal and want a strong liberal arts education. Amherst and Wharton might have opposite feels but not so much Amherst and Columbia. Columbia students in general would be more pre-professional which is both a negative and a positive. </p>
<p>I would argue that Columbia is slightly more selective, but not by an appreciable amount, it should definitely not be a factor in which school you choose to apply to/attend. Quality of academics are top notch at both places, again no appreciable difference. I’m sure students at Amherst, like students at Columbia, find their classes highly intellectually stimulating and engage in vigorous debate while they’re at it.</p>
<p>Culturally Columbia is a bit more a cynical with a challenging student body. Challenging in the sense that people will readily confront you about your views and actions. Amherst is probably more congenial. If you want to get into a top law school or phd program for example, both will offer some of best platforms in the country, so it really comes down to what sort of a culture, location and curriculum you want.</p>