Brown vs Columbia, and Barnard vs UMich?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I'm interested in majoring in English Lit and/or one of the social sciences. I'm looking for good undergrad teaching and opportunities for literary extracurriculars. My first priority in selecting colleges is strong academics.</p>

<p>I want to pick one of Columbia and Brown to apply to:
Columbia I like because I love the arts and culture, and NYC will provide great opportunities. And because it has strong English and Writing programs.
I LOVE Brown's Open Curriculum, because I think its perfect for me. </p>

<p>I also want to pick one of Barnard College and U Michigan. (I know they aren't much similar and prolly difficult to compare, but I have room for just one on my list)
Barnard because of its location, its ties with Columbia, and because it is pretty good for my courses. I'm not <em>overly</em> keen on a women's college, though.
UMich because of its highly ranked English program and because I'd like to a attend a large-ish univ I guess. But I'm not too happy with its location. </p>

<p>Please help?</p>

2

<p>FYI, Barnard, UMich, Columbia and Brown are all completely different. You say you like Brown’s open curriculum, but Columbia has a core curriculum and is somewhat on the opposite side of the spectrum in terms of required classes. You say you like UMich because of its size; how are you even considering Barnard? It only has 2000 students. I think you need to take a better look at the learning environment you will be in at any of these schools. All of them have good English programs, but they all have really different campus settings and many other important differences as well. You can find many schools with good English programs, that shouldn’t be your only qualifier.</p>

3

<p>Hmm. Actually, I myself am really unsure of what I want and what my priorities are. Hence the indecision. But I realize that I should think about it in greater depth and then choose.
Thank you Mmerachel13 :)</p>

4

<p>The acceptance rates for all of those schools you listed are very low. Why are you not applying to ALL of them?</p>