My daughter is fortunate enough to have the above choices…
We believe we understand the different cultures of the schools but the decision is very difficult. She is interested in the liberal arts but has not chosen a specific area of study.
What are the pros and cons? How about internships/career opportunities - I have heard that Brown is worst - is that true?
P.S. I meant that Brown is the most difficult for internship opportunities amongst this group!
Yeah Brown and Dartmouth are a lot different and a lot less prestigious than Columbia. I’d take Columbia in heartbeat because its in NYC and you’re really exposed to so much. The others are just in small collegetowns. The experience and job opportunities from Columbia completely dominate those of the latter. Again, it’s in NYC…
If it came down to those choices for me personally, I would have chosen Brown for liberal arts. The academic climate, breadth and variety at Brown is stimulating and rewarding, and Brown provides excellent resources and advantages. Columbia also offers some superb opportunities, but the atmosphere is quite different – relatively more competitive, perhaps somewhat pre-professional in specific areas (I’m speaking of on-campus atmosphere, not of NYC).
I also think Providence is a very nice place to spend four years. NYC is NYC; it really varies per individual. With this caliber of schools, and for liberal arts especially, worrying about respective “prestige” comes off as snobbish and misinformed.
edited to add: if there is a specific program at Columbia, or Dartmouth, that speaks to your daughter specifically, then that could take precedence.
BROWN- no required classes beyond your major - more freedom to explore other areas.
Pass/ Fail options for elective classes.
Rhode island currently has a lousy economy = poor local internship opportunities.
Columbia- the CORE- many required classes the first 2 years= great liberal arts education but less time to explore other fields of study.
plenty of internship opportunities due to location.
Congratulations to your daughter!
At this level, I would go on personal fit and feel. All three of these schools will open doors for great opportunities. The Dartmouth kids are not doing internships at the candle shop in Hanover, NH; they are working in NYC, Boston, LA, London, Beijing etc… just like the Columbia and Brown kids. The Dartmouth curriculum is designed around taking advantage of outside opportunities while in school.
My D is a freshmen at Brown presently applying for a highly selective summer internship. One of her Profs and a graduate assistant told her not to worry about it, they’re connected to the program and would call on her behalf. During the Skype interview, she said 70% of the interview was spent talking about mutual friends at Brown. We’ll see how it turns out - waiting for a decision this week.
Also, Brown has a website called “Connect” that connects students and alums with intern opportunities. It’s pretty good, but, as is probably true everywhere, there seem to be more paid internship opportunities for STEM kids than there are for humanities majors.
Yep, anyone who will argue an appreciable difference in job/internship placement is kidding themselves. Curriculum and student life? Huge differences.
Possible, but I think unlikely, that anyone here has the experience or knowledge to rank the ease of internship opportunities among Brown, Columbia, and Dartmouth for someone who is described solely as being interested in the liberal arts.
Sure, being physically proximate to the location for many internship opportunities provides advantages. But everybody knows that.
So what are you looking for that might help you? Anecdotes about internships from each school that you can compare? Our opinions about the reputations for each school? You say you understand the respective cultures.
If you would like data, just for Brown, here is a start:
http://brown.edu/campus-life/support/careerlab/post_grad_data/list
http://brown.edu/campus-life/support/careerlab/internships
Do you have comparable citations for Columbia and Dartmouth, so we can all learn about this?
Thanks for all the input.
The following is what we understand of the schools:
Dartmouth: Strong undergraduate focus, strong Greek culture – effect of recent announcements re communities yet to be determined
Columbia: More competitive environment, probably more “prestigious” than the other two
Brown: More collaborative and friendly?
She has also been admitted to UPenn but does not want to consider it (does not have a positive view of the intellectual environment as compared to these other choices).
She’s strongly leaning towards Brown because of the people that she has met from Brown. I want her to consider Columbia seriously and keep an open mind re Dartmouth. Not sure about Dartmouth because of the Greek life - she is socially adept and outgoing but not a big time party person.
Being in NYC is not a consideration - I think she would happy at any of the three from a location standpoint.
My concern is only that Brown may be too “relaxed” and therefore she will have to be much more self motivated for internships etc. And, I realize that liberal arts is very generic but she is 18 and really has no idea as to what she specifically wants to study.
I think your question is about culture.
Don’t know where you have gained the opinion that Brown is too relaxed. That information may help some of us respond if you would be willing to share it. If you are thinking Open Curriculum=relaxed, then you have been sorely misinformed.
But let’s say you are right and I am wrong, and Brown is too relaxed. Then I would draw the opposite conclusion from yours. If your daughter is not a slacker, she will be on the top of the list of Brown students who get internships…and the student body as a whole nails down some great ones.
Dean Maud Mandel recently said that the people at Brown who benefit most from the curriculum and environment are those who are more interested in drawing maps than reading maps. Which better describes your daughter? (EDIT: She has also been quoted as saying that “life is an open curriculum”)
It takes self-discipline and a heightened degree of responsibility to realize the full benefits of the Open Curriculum. But I have not heard the word “cutthroat” to describe Brown. Instead, the adjectives I hear most often to describe Brown students are “motivated”, “inspired”, “creative”, “collaborative”, “nice”
i’ll add “happy,” “enthusiastic,” and “passionate” to the list of adjectives for Brown students.
Brown is not relaxed as in lazy if that is what you are getting at. It is full of bright overachiever types who are doing multiple endevors. But yes, it is collaborative and it is interdisciplinary. I would let your daughter have the freedom to choose the environment that appeals to her for best results.
Brown is great for exploring and has many policies that will make her life easier and more flexible. It is stressful enough being at a top college. When you say liberal arts, that traditionally includes english, philosophy but also math and science are liberal arts. Many students do have the motivation to step out of the comfort zone due to some of these policies where I know students at other Ivies who didn’t take a language, for instance, as a means of gpa protection. Where my math/cs student took Mandarin and Russian for Credit/no credit. Many students try out CS through the 3 different types of intro courses that are all pretty famous in an excellent department. She didn’t get a humanities degree, if that is what you mean by liberal arts (though like I said, that is not the definition) but she feels her Brown degree is an advantage. I think the point is clear that brown grads and interns aren’t stuck in Providence just like Dartmouth grads aren’t stuck in Hanover, lol at the candle shop @arwarw.
I think all the colleges are great but I like the Brown bubble for closeness of student body. I think Columbia is more scattered and outward looking because of the lure of the city life.
I think all students would be wise and do well to be proactive with internships and opportunities, especially if they are not in a hot field where people get snapped up.
Congrats on her great choices, how exciting.
I like Jeffery Eugenides’ satirical take on these universities. Eugenides is a Brown grad who now teaches creative writing at Princeton.
Funny, yes. Cartoonish stereotypes, yes. A small grain of truth, maybe?
“P.S. I meant that Brown is the most difficult for internship opportunities amongst this group!”
Ummm…definitely not true. Where did you hear this? All the top finance (banking, Hedge funds, private equity), consulting (strategy, management, economic), tech (google, microsoft), recruit here year round for juniors (internships) and seniors (full-time).
I know nothing of Columbia, so this is hearsay, but I have a friend whose son is at Columbia and says the advising is terrible. He is in music, though, so that may be an entirely different thing. He often says he would rather have gone somewhere else, but being in NYC is where you need to be for music performance. As far as Brown being relaxed, that has not been my son’s impression. It is definitely a liberal arts college, with enormous support and encouragement for students to try new things (hence the open curriculum and pass/fail option).
FWIW Providence is a great music city (obviously not on the scale of NYC) and Brown has one of the few electronic music departments in the country.
It still boggles my mind that there are students who apply to both Brown and Columbia. The curricula are polar opposites and there’s a huge trickle down effect in terms of how it shapes the student body. In one school everyone takes the same set of classes, picked by the university, to start out their college career, at the other school, the university gives you the keys to car and lets you design your curriculum. May I suggest reading through this thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/brown-university/385841-the-brown-curriculum-and-university-college-explained-p1.html
@iwannabe_Brown I think, that people who applied to both (like me) do so because at Brown, they intend to take some of the core classes from Columbia ANYWAYS. I am probably going to concentrate in CS, but I still want to take a class on literature or writing. So, for me Columbia’s core isn’t irritating, as it may be for some Brown students.
I know all the reasons students say they are interested in both. I think frankly most people just don’t care that much and don’t really think about the overall message that differs between a school like Brown and a school like Columbia. Columbia’s core isn’t just some courses. They are specific courses that they deem (based on what exactly?) are the best way to teach students (and thus no other combination of courses is acceptable). Additionally, there is a difference between courses where everyone is there electively vs. courses where students are forced to be there. As a Biology and Classics double concentrator, I took science classes in the 3 major scientific disciplines (bio, chem, physics) + cognitive studies, math, history, sociology, literature, foreign language, writing, religious studies, and theater, but many schools would not have allowed me to do this. Obviously Brown’s open curriculum is unique (or one of a very small number so I expect students to apply to Brown and schools with distribution requirements, but Brown and Columbia/Chicago is a different story and I think it’s different in ways people don’t fully appreciate until they spend a couple years on campus.
^^^It seems that you satisfied the course requirements for the Columbia Core…voluntarily at Brown! Maybe not on the same timetable as Columbia would have required, but even so.
I understand the point @lb43823 is making
I agree. I think with the rise of the common application and declining acceptance rates, a lot of kids are applying to as many highly ranked schools as they can manage, and then sorting out the differences after they have acceptances in hand.