Columbia/Harvard/Caltech/Princeton for undergrad?

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>I've been admitted to Columbia, Caltech, Harvard, and Princeton, and I am planning on studying some sort of engineering (probably mechanical or electrical), but I have also been looking at other fields like applied math and computer science. The financial aid packages are all the same, except my scholarship from Columbia removes the need for work-study.
I am visiting all of the schools next week to get a better feel for them, but I would love some outside input beforehand. Here are my thoughts on them so far:</p>

<p>Columbia:
Positives --- Egleston Scholar (no work-study, $10000 stipend for summer research and internships, personal faculty mentor), great engineering program, great location, easy to access research with my scholarship
Negatives --- small campus, there doesn't seem to be a lot of school unity</p>

<p>Caltech:
Positives --- best choice for engineering, small faculty-student ratio, incredibly easy to access research, JPL, awesome weather, beautiful location, close to Los Angeles
Negatives --- very small student body, nerd stigma, not great if I change my mind about engineering</p>

<p>Harvard:
Positives --- beautiful campus, Boston is awesome, great school for everything in case I decide against engineering, growing engineering program, fancy brand name, great network if I go into business
Negatives --- not particularly amazing for engineering yet</p>

<p>Princeton:
Positives --- great for engineering and everything else, gorgeous campus, happy students, high alumni giving rate
Negatives --- relatively isolated campus</p>

<p>Any input would be great. Thank you!</p>

2

<p>I say Caltech, the weather is great here and just 35 minutes away from the beach. 20 minutes from Downtown LA. JPL is literally 5 minutes away; SpaceX is about 25 minutes away. The Mexican Food around Pasadena: it’s great. You won’t be getting the same quality Mexican food in the other schools. I really don’t think the small student body is a negative at all. If you want friends, Pasadena Community College is next door. If you are bored, you can drive down to the beach, Disneyland, Six Flags, Knott’s, the Grove, China Town, Pasadena itself has great shops and restaurants to visit, you can go hiking in the Angeles Crest Mountains, go to Big Bear or Mountain High. Just great.</p>

<p>I don’t know why you would go anywhere else unless Stanford, MIT and Carnegie Mellon are involved.</p>

<p>edit: if STEM is not the thing for you, you can always drop out and go to PCC and learn Japanese language and culture. But I don’t think you want to do that.</p>

3

<p>Did you not apply to Stanford or MIT? Harvard doesn’t do anything half-way, so I think you could get a very good engineering education on top of the prestige and networking advantages that the other schools in your list cannot match. Perhaps companies prefer to hire engineers from the big engineering schools, but Harvard turns out a lot more than skilled engineers.</p>

4

<p>KamelAkbar, I did applied to those two but I wasn’t accepted. Thank you both for your input.</p>

5

<p>Is this for computer science/engineering?</p>

<p>If so, I would look at which school is the best pipeline into the tech industry.</p>

6

<p>For engineering, I’d take Cal tech in a second.</p>

<p>If you’re going to an Ivy Leauge, why are you worried about the nerd stigma?</p>

7

<p>Why go to Caltech and trash your GPA?
Go to Harvard where the average is probably like 3.6, and you can go to grad school in Caltech or anywhere while keeping other options open such as Law, Medical, MBA…</p>

8

<p>If it were up to me, I would choose Princeton- the awesomeness of a top ivy coupled with an amazing math department</p>

9

<p>If it were me, I would choose Princeton. They are one of only two Ivies with a truly good engineering department (the other being Cornell) and they have the full array of students, not just engineers. For an undergrad, that kind of diversity is a good thing if you ask me. I would do Caltech or MIT in a heartbeat for graduate school (assuming their departments and research were the best fit for me of course), but for undergrad, you will likely get a fuller experience elsewhere. For what its worth, I am friends with a handful of MIT and Caltech grads who said they wished they had done their undergrad somewhere else and then gone there for graduate school.</p>

<p>That is just my two bits.</p>

10

<p>Mind if I ask you your high school stats?</p>

<p>I say harvard. There is unimaginable opportunity there in all fields. If you change your major, you still get the cream of the crop with any degree. Also, the networking is amazing, and the name just sells itself. Anywhere in the world, you can hand in a resume withthat school name and get a job.</p>

11

<p>You get essentially that same opportunity at Princeton that you get at Harvard overall, but Princeton has a much better engineering program. The OP would be a fool to go to Harvard over Princeton in this case.</p>

12

<p>Would the OP really be a fool to choose Harvard over Princeton? Lest we forget, Harvard has an extensive cross-registration program with MIT. Princeton has no comparable cross-registration program with any elite engineering school. I would contend that the combination of the engineering resources at Harvard & MIT clearly exceed that of Princeton. </p>

<p>I would also contend that Harvard’s location is superior to Princeton’s in that the Boston/Cambridge area is arguably the world’s premiere technology & entrepreneurship center in the world this side of California. A Harvard engineering student would therefore be able to leverage a bevy of part-time tech internship/co-op opportunities local to him. The location around Princeton, by contrast, would seem to be less munificent. </p>

<p>To be clear, I’m not saying that the OP should necessarily choose Harvard over Princeton. I simply doubt it to be the slam-dunk that it is made out to be.</p>

13

<p>To update those of you who commented on this, I ended up choosing Princeton. Thank you for your input!</p>

14

<p>My advice: choose based on which school has the most interesting research (for you), because if you go to one of those schools and <em>don’t</em> get involved in undergraduate research then you have totally failed and may as well have gone to any engineering college.</p>

15

<p>Note: there are significant caveats to the Harvard cross-registration “benefit.” You cannot take requirements for your major at MIT. You cannot take classes at MIT that are also offered at Harvard. From what I have heard, this typically means you will be able to take 3-4 elective classes at MIT.</p>