The Core is mostly a lot of Gen Ed classes including a ton of humanities / writing classes that are required of you before you get into your major classes. You’ll be reading a lot of ancient philosophy texts and writing a lot of essays. If that is your thing, Columbia could be a good. Disadvantage is that you won’t get into courses you need for internships until after you are done with core. This is not a big deal though. It’s just a matter of preference.
For me I wanted to get right into a practical curriculum so UG B-school made more sense to me
@DeeperBlue25 surprisingly it does not. If you look at Penn’s recruiting stats they tend to be better than Columbia’s. Maybe it has to do with differences in student interest. Also yeah Stern has amazing placement for finance but the fact remains that most people choose any Ivy over Stern ( maybe if it is Brown or Cornell the choice is harder) and for good reason. You won’t get an education that is as high quality and well rounded at Stern as you will get at A place like Penn or Columbia.
Disagree with that statement that most people choose any Ivy over Stern. I myself actually chose Stern over Columbia. Had plenty of friends at Stern in my class that came to Stern over Dartmouth, Brown, UPenn, Cornell, Columbia, Yale, Duke, JHU, NW and other top schools. This might sound surprising but I think a lot of students realize the value of getting a business education in NYC. It is amazing the opportunities that you can grab at such an early stage if you put in the effort.
Btw as much crap as Cornell gets, its has some of the best Wall Street recruiting in the country – one of the top 5
I think Columbia is a better holistic/traditional college experience than Stern. You have more of a real campus, you’re not as ‘in the city’ (I find NYU’s campus really ugly, I’m sorry), there’s guaranteed housing for all four years near to campus, etc. I also really think I have learned a lot by going through the core curriculum.
I have quite a few friends interning in finance this summer, at places like DB IBD, CS IBD, GS Securities etc. (I’m a rising junior and I think typically the BB don’t take summer interns until the summer after junior year), and I know people who are starting full time at Barclays, GS, etc. so I certainly don’t think you’ll have a problem getting recruited.
I think the part about not getting into certain courses until junior year may be true, but my friend working this summer says that they covered the info during orientation. Also, I have another friend who did take accounting (the course the other friend was complaining about) already, so.
I’m not into finance myself, really, although I attended some events last term to test the waters, but I personally think you can’t go really wrong with any of them. Each school is quite different and has its pros and cons.