These are both absolutely wonderful schools. When I applied to college I ended up in the fortunate position of being able to choose between Penn, Columbia and a few other ivies so perhaps my experience can be of some help to you.
After visiting both schools there were a few things about Penn I just couldn’t pass up. One, as you mentioned @shadyconcepts , is the campus feel. Penn has a beautiful, perfectly manicured 300 acre campus that is only a 15 minute walk away from the heart of America’s fifth largest city, Philadelphia. On Locust Walk or in the Quad, you feel like you’re in the middle of a tree-lined suburban campus yet you still have access to all of the amenities you could want from Urban living. As a student, it can be hard to pull yourself away from Penn’s bustling campus life but Penn’s proximity to every other fascinating, diverse, and exciting neighborhood in Philly makes it so much easier to visit other parts of Philly and still be back in time and energized to study or write a paper at the end of your exploration. Because Penn’s campus is so spectacular and spacious, you get the “true college experience” without ever having to pass up on the great restaurants, art, music festivals, cool clubs, and other attractions an exceptional city has to offer. The Penn experience is quintessentially traditional and yet punctuated by the benefits of a thoroughly modern, forward looking university, adjacent to the center of a vibrant metropolis.
The One University Policy at Penn also contributes to an incomparable, interdisciplinary, and profoundly intellectual experience. As an undergrad in Penn’s College, you can take classes in any of the other 3 undergrad schools as well as most of Penn’s graduate and professional schools. With every one of Penn’s schools on one campus, you also have easy access to these different departments and disciplines for both study and research. Because the barriers between each entity at Penn are so low, you can easily major in the humanities in the College and do incredible research at Penn Med, America’s oldest medical school and one of only two Top 5 med schools on the same campus as its undergraduate counterpart. Penn is also home to amazing centers like the Wistar Institute in which you can partake in the groundbreaking research that is at the forefront of Cancer health care. Furthermore, the one university policy ensures that all of Penn’s students are taking classes with one another, allowing for a level of intellectual cross pollination that would be impossible to find a university with fewer offerings or greater barriers between disciplines. Simply put, the way a Business student, an English student, and an Engineering student will approach a problem in a History class differs widely, meaning you are exposed to an unimaginable number of different perspectives and ways of thinking in every class you take. It was the ability to take classes at the Law school while conducting research at Penn’s school of government all while pursuing my BA in a couple of departments in the humanities that attracted me so strongly to Penn. The resources of the university are so easily accessible to every Penn student that truly anything is possible. And with every student living on or with a couple of blocks of Penn’s campus, the vibrancy of the Penn experience is felt around the clock.
Penn is also the Social Ivy which leads to a really strong emphasis on building friendships and relationships that will last well beyond your years at Penn. While it’s true you will make friends anywhere (and college can be as fun or as boring as you make it no matter where you go), Penn’s reputation as the Social Ivy inspires students to take time from their books to engage in an unimaginable number of exclusively social activities in addition to their clubs, extracurriculars, volunteer initiatives and more. Community is central to the very core of Penn.
Penn also has no core- curriculum. Instead, students choose from a wide variety of courses to fulfill Sector Requirements and Foundational Approaches requirements, ensuring that students are exposed to all of the “practical” and “ornamental” aspects of education about which Ben Franklin, Penn’s founder, wanted students to learn. The flexibility of the curriculum allowed me to earn two majors and two minors while still exploring the breadth of subjects the University had to offer.
All that being said, it is also important to keep in mind that Penn has a very preprofessional atmosphere. With 3 of the 4 undergrad schools relating to actual professions (Business, Engineering, and Nursing), there is a strong focus on how your degree will lead to a job afterwards. I personally loved having so many pre-professional students around me because it helped me focus my interests towards my future goals, especially when it came time to hunt for jobs. And thankfully Penn Career Services are outstanding and available to all Penn students, regardless of school or major. Thus, if you decide at the end of four years you want to go into I-banking or join a tech start up with your sociology degree, you will be able to partake in all of the same recruiting opportunities as your friends in Wharton and Engineering. Or if you decide Graduate school or Med school is the next step, Penn’s career services will help you every step of the way there as well. These are the senior surveys for the most recent graduating classes: http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/reports.php. This is the most comprehensive information released by any university in the Ivy League and it demonstrates Penn’s confidence in its students’ outcomes.
With regard to ED, however, you need to make sure that the school to which you apply is your absolute number one choice. College is a huge financial expense and spending four years anywhere is a huge commitment. ED is a binding commitment and you want to make sure you’re committing to a place and an experience you will truly love.
Also- feel free to check out another thread on which I say many similar things about what makes Penn special: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-pennsylvania/1792191-why-is-upenn-different.html#latest
Finally- I leave you with this video that is slowly starting to become a little old, but still captures the Penn experience quite well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGpOizUIY60
Good luck! You honestly cannot go wrong with either Columbia or Penn. Both are among a small handful of truly outstanding universities with opportunities for every different type of person.
At this point I think it’s a bit more likely for me to get into Penn, which might in turn cause me to like it more, but I’m still very much in love with Columbia. Any other input from alumni or any other people is always welcome!!