<p>I was wondering what are the similarities and differences of these two cores? All I know is that they both focus on liberal arts education and take 1/3 of your courses, which I really am looking forward to. I know that the Columbia Core has specific courses you should take and, correct me I am wrong, the Chicago Core is more relaxed in terms of which courses you take, right?</p>
<p>Here goes nothing:</p>
<p>In many ways, I think the two cores are fairly similar. The Columbia core is a little more homogenized than the Chicago core: for the core of the core, everyone at Columbia really takes the same course dealing with the same material at the same time, while Chicago has a "menu" approach for everything. Both have language, science, and phys ed requirements that are met through courses of your choice, and a major-cultures ("civilization" in Chicago) requirement that is met through a broadish menu of courses. Columbia has a common scientific method course, and common, required art and music courses; Chicago just has effectively a distributional requirement that you take a couple of courses in art and/or music, and no common broad science course. Columbia has a single, year-long common course in each of literature and in "contemporary civilization"; Chicago has five or six choices (many but not all of which overlap some) in "humanities" and "social sciences". Chicago has a math requirement that Columbia lacks.</p>
<p>Also, my impression is that the Columbia literature course is much more like a "great books" course than Chicago's. Columbia reads more works, and they are all "greatest hits". Chicago tends to read fewer things in greater depth, and some (not all) of the courses have non-mainstream texts.</p>
<p>thanks for the insight! I think I prefer the Chicago, menu Core. I don't want to be 100% controlled over the courses I take... but that's just assuming they both accept me :P</p>
<p>^^ Good summary, JHS. </p>
<p>I think it's important to point out that I think Chicago's core and Columbia's core see somewhat different end goals... Columbia's approach is a "greatest hits" approach, the kind of "here's everything important that you should know about intellectual history." Chicago's approach emphasizes critical thinking above all. (Some of the Chicago core courses, like Media Aesthetics, Language and the Human, Democracy and Social Sciences, and Mind, are not particularly Great Booksy, but they still fulfill the objective of getting you to think a certain way about a certain subject-- these courses would never fly as Columbia core courses).</p>
<p>With Chicago classes, are they compressed because they are in quarters? For example, if you take Calculus 1,2,3 at college X, then it is 3 semesters (45 weeks), but when you take it at Chicago it is 3 quarters (only 30 weeks). Is the material thrown at you faster at Chicago and you are in faster-paced learning, or am I missing something here?</p>
<p>chicagoboy12,</p>
<p>Chicago courses aren't exactly "compressed." For example, at Chicago, you (normally) take 1 year (3 quarters) of calculus, followed by 1 year (3 quarters) of analysis. At Johns Hopkins (my brother's school), you take 1.5 years (3 semesters) of calculus, followed by .5yrs (1 semester) of analysis (or honors analysis). </p>
<p>P.S. This is roughly the idea, although Johns Hopkins has some "linear algebra" and "multivariable calculus" courses in between calc & analysis, as most schools do. Note that the two programs would thus be roughly analagous if the rigor of both programs was equal, though it seems to me that Chicago math is significantly more difficult than JHU math.</p>
<p>Having taken courses only at Chicago, I'm not I have a super good answer, but I would say that Chicago classes a somewhat more concentrated than semester classes, but not completely porportionately (i.e. there is more than in a quarter than in 10 weeks of a semester course at another school, but probably a bit less than in the entire semester course). Of course, I think it depends a lot on the department/professor as to how much/how fast they want to cover material. In my European Civ class, we did a book a day all quarter. In my SOSC class, we spent four weeks on the same book sometimes.</p>