<p>slipper: Please read my post more carefully; I wrote "more conservative", not "conservative". I am very familiar with Dartmouth College & many current & former students, and Dartmouth is definitely more conservative than either Brown or Columbia.</p>
<p>I definitely agree with someone's assertion above that Dartmouth may be "more conservative" than Brown and Columbia. After all, the people from my school who have gone to Dartmouth or generally anyone who applied tend to be conservatives, and especially preppy. Dartmouth also has a bigger emphasis on traditions more so than the other two universities.</p>
<p>Yeah but its still overwhelmingly liberal. Although its probably the most "friendly" to a conservative point of view, conservatism is not a defining characteristic of Dartmouth by any stretch.</p>
<p>Columbia dorms are disgusting. Does that help?</p>
<p>lol. Go john jay. wooot.</p>
<p>case in point, haha</p>
<p>I stand by what I've said. Brown has a significantly stronger student body than either Dartmouth or Columbia, and the successful fellowship awards Brown gets reflects this. Also, Brown probably is the best Ivy, including HYP, when it comes to Fulbrights. I don't think panting for a job in investment banking is reflective of a particularly strong student body. That profession is not a particularly intellectual profession. However, if that is a profession you aspire to, Brown will give you that too. I've long believed that Brown is the best-balanced college in the Ivy League. This isn't to say in any shape, manner, or form that Columbia or Dartmouth aren't superb institutions. They are. I just believe Brown is a better all around university-college than either, and is probably only matched by Yale and maybe, Princeton.</p>
<p>Do you really think that FulBright Scholars do mean anything about the school? Then Umich is better than all the Ivies and other top-top schools...Is that true? Definitely not! I think using rankings and/or award statistics is just meaningless when it comes to college selection...Prestige might be a factor(and a big factor in some cases) but prestige is just where it stands and can't really be seen in awards etc..</p>
<p>Yeah this is such an arbitrary statistic. Saying Brown has a better student body than columbia or Dartmouth is ridiculous.</p>
<p>"better" is obviously a subjective, normative judgement.
"different on average" is probably true, in my opinion. the dimensions across which brown students are different from those at columbia or dartmouth are difficult to characterize but something like intellectual independence may be among them. if this is the case, fulbrights (where you have to design an independent academic project abroad) is a good indicator. per capita, brown has the most (more than michigan)</p>
<p>Yeah..I really hate this "better"/"the best" business....Better in what? Does that "what" really matter? etc...Who cares!</p>
<p>quality of life - brown, dartmouth, columbia. Studies dartmouth / columbia. brown (and cornell) arent really up top the standard of the rest of the Ivy league are they.</p>
<p>sigh @ mia</p>
<p>when will people learn?</p>
<p>To get away from the "college X is better", "no it's not" debate, and back to the OP's questions:</p>
<p>Will I be able to handle CORE, major reqs, and premed reqs at Columbia?: I would say "probably. It depends on what you major in". If you choose, for example, engineering, then completing your premed requirements will use up just about all of your elective time, and the combination of premed and engineering will be extremely challenging. I know people who have done it successfully, but it is a grind. At the opposite extreme, if you major in something like biochemistry, then the premed requirements will simply be part of your major, and no extra work. Premed at any top college is a lot of work, but it will be similar to Brown or Dartmouth. And the Core courses will fulfill your non-science premed requirements. In general, the farther from science your major, the more the premed requirements are "extra" courses.</p>
<p>If you major in neuroscience, then you will end up taking just about all of the premed requirements along the way, so it will not really matter.</p>
<p>Which has the best neuroscience? Here you get to the classic question "best for whom?" Among these three Columbia has a traditional huge graduate and research program in neuroscience. The Columbia neuroscience faculty is larger than Brown's and much larger than Dartmouth's. More importantly, Columbia also has all the neuroscience resources at Columbia Presbyterian hospital, one of the top clinical and research neuroscience places in the world. Adding the neuroscientists in the medical school department of neuroscience to those at the main campus more than doubles the numbers. That is before considering all the research that takes place in the departments of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Neurosurgery. Brown and Dartmouth have medical schools of course, but their scope of neuroscience, clinical and research, is nothing like what exists at Columbia.</p>
<p>So on scale, you really cannot compare Columbia to the other two places for neuroscience.</p>
<p>On the other hand, this does not mean that it is the "best" place for an undergrad interested in neuroscience. This depends on the extent to which all of these glorious research labs welcome undergrads, how readily one can access the resources at the hospital, and whether, as an undergrad, spending most of your time in a neuroscience lab is what you really want to do. </p>
<p>It is difficult to imagine anyone running out of neuroscience courses or opportunities at any of these places. Academically you could not possibly go wrong among these choices.</p>
<p>I picked Brown over Dartmouth. In case you believe in the wisdom of crowds, a narrow majority favors Brown over both schools. </p>
<p>The</a> New York Times > Week in Review > Image > Collegiate Matchups: Predicting Student Choices</p>
<p>The grading is a lot easier, which I think does two things (1.) it contributes to happiness (more leisure time, less stress, less vicious competition for the precious few As on a sharp curve), (2.) it boosts grad-school/employment prospects (more time for extra-curriculars, higher probability of having the 3.96-4.0 sweet spot that Yale Law covets).</p>
<p>Ultimately it depends on your ambitions and how much you care about location. I won't deny that Columbia is hands-down in a much better place, but the Core curriculum sucks, and way more people there are miserable.</p>
<p>I hope this helpful, and let me know where you end up.</p>
<p>Brown neuroscience owns. There's no other way to describe it. :)</p>
<p>nice data. Not.
esp taken from 3200 random high school students. You really think a sample size f 3200 is enough to make such a blanket prediction like that?</p>
<p>Actually 3200 is a huge sample size. Its probably 99% accurate. The issue is whether the sample population was random. (lol sorry for being stats nerd!)</p>
<p>there has been plenty of criticism of that study since the sample group left many groups out, but oh well. work with what you got.</p>
<p>"it boosts grad-school/employment prospects (more time for extra-curriculars, higher probability of having the 3.96-4.0 sweet spot that Yale Law covets)."</p>
<p>IF this is correct..Does that mean that Admissions officers at top colleges are just stupid that they don't know how kids are graded in each school....And does that mean that Brown professors just give everyone an A unless you punch them for fun....This sounds ridiculous...I dont believe in the thing that Brown grades easily...but if so then I don't believe that Admissions people at top schools buy this...!!!</p>