<p>Anyone know anything about the Chinese department at Columbia? Is it strong?</p>
<p>ELAC (Eastern Languages something something) is one of the best in the country. One of my friends LEARNED Chinese ENTIRELY there. Amazing professors- now he's completely fluent and better in chinese than I lol despite the fact that he's white and I'm chinese =P.</p>
<p>Alright thanks.. how do you mean by one of the best in the country? As in, top 5, top 10? Roughly?</p>
<p>Just a note...EALAC (east asian languages and cultures) encompasses both the language classes and the history type classes.</p>
<p>EALAC is an interdisciplinary major where you can concentrate in literature, sociology, political science, history, economics , etc.
and from working at the East Asian Research institute @ Columbia and researching other undergraduate /graduate programs in East Asian Studies, Columbia has by far the BEST program.</p>
<p>I say this based on course availability in language, history, literature and economics of which Columbia has some unparalleled courses compared to other schools. In addition, the government funds the following five schools - UW, UCLA, UHawaii, Harvard & CU for Korean Studies - an uncommon field in many other schools. For Tibetan Studies, CU has one of the most leading programs. In addition, Professor Theodore William de Bary is a legend in EA Studies who's at Columbia.</p>
<p>Hope this answers your question and also, the pull of guest speakers and invitees in the East Asian field in particularly strong with the NYC location. (i.e. the annual China Symposium, Donald Keene Center for Japanese Studies, etc.)</p>