<p>How do the programs at these two colleges differ, and what paths would you recommend taking if you were a student in one of these programs? </p>
<p>I am trying to decide between these two schools, and it is a very tough decision. I would appreciate as much aid as possible.</p>
<p>i cannot speak to dartmouth specifically, but if your concern or interest is going into law school then that by itself will not help you make a decision. both schools will prepare you exquisitely to go to top law schools, and both have great placement in law school (by virtue of the fact that smart kids attend both, but also the schools have good advising programs that work out).</p>
<p>beyond that the schools are quite different, and i think folks in the dartmouth board (and some pro-dartmouth kids on this forum) can give a good appraisal of that.</p>
<p>i will run through an abridged list with an eye toward your interests.</p>
<p>Columbia has a law school</p>
<p>This by itself is something to consider as a difference. It doesn’t make Columbia better or worse, but it does mean that you can ‘test’ out what law school is, through taking courses in the law school, and especially taking Bollinger’s once a year course on constitutional law. This means that you can find out earlier than later that law is or is not for you. </p>
<p>Also it means that Columbia’s network for you extends beyond just undergraduate alums, but to folks like Preet Bharara (US District Attorney for the Southern District of New York), Professors in the law school that are in the thick of public policy discussions.</p>
<p>Columbia has New York</p>
<p>Dartmouth’s strong alumni presence in NYC notwithstanding. Columbia clearly has the advantage in that you can do school year internships and work with a variety of different areas of the legal profession. Human Rights Law (Human Rights Watch), International Law, White-Shoe firms, Public Defenders, U.S. Attorneys. You can network with and speak with folks who are working in the profession. You can do internships (most of my friends did with the above) even as an undergraduate.</p>
<p>It also means that you can confront legal issues from the most mundane to the most critical. International law is being developed in your backyard. Immigration law. Columbia and gentrification. its just a hotbed of pressing legal issues worth studying.</p>
<p>Columbia has the Core</p>
<p>One of the most rigorous intellectual experiences still around that brings all students to think about and talk about critical issues in the humanities and to improve critical thinking skills. This by itself doesn’t sound like an advantage, but i will note two things. 1) My experience as a graduate student has shown me just how valuable this knowledge base and how ‘real’ the idea that the core stimulates critical thinking is true. I feel more prepared for graduate school because of my ability to think about counterarguments, to develop a sensitivity to how people will respond to my statements. There are rare fora that still exist in undergraduate education that allows you just to think and become a better thinker. Columbia’s Core is one of them. 2) Alums in the law tell me that a) they appreciate just how much the core continues in their every day, how Aristotle’s work on ethics, or Lockean rights doctrine, or utilitarianism continues in their every day, b) they like to hire folks that went to columbia and they say that their bosses like to hire folks that went to columbia not just because it is an elite school but because, and this is a quote from an alum friend who works for a top White-Shoe firm in NYC, “columbia students think better.” </p>
<p>Columbia has diversity</p>
<p>All top schools have diversity, Columbia is more diverse. This means that you will confront folks from different backgrounds with different interests and who will push you to think about things in ways you never thought imaginable. This is good, and hard. It means you will regularly have uncomfortable conversations about race and religion. Class differences will be apparent. You can’t escape these issues because they flow out into the city you live in. </p>
<p>It also means that your opportunity to find something or someone that is interested in what you’re interested in is greater. You can find fellow travelers who are willing to do what you want to do, and you can find just about anything you could imagine wanting to do in the city (unless you imagine skiing, then you need to take the university shuttle bus).</p>
<hr>
<p>There are things that Columbia doesn’t do as well: it is hard to throw huge parties from a space constraint but also because your neighbors may not want rowdy college folks making noise at 4am. The city itself can sometimes feel alienating; it is a concrete jungle where no matter how many people live in close proximity you can feel very alone, especially with how brash and unfriendly some new yorkers can be.</p>
<p>On par, I recommend Columbia highly. I think it is one of those experiences where you will feel challenged, you will have a lot of fun, you will be able to do whatever you want and you will feel claustrophobic at the sight of so many options. Very rarely will you ever hear a Columbia student jump up with effusive praise. In general that is because we’ve been taught to think too much, in fact we have thought our way out of that kind of blind and mindless spirit that students talk about at other schools. It isn’t because students love Columbia any less than students at those other schools. I just think you grow to be more realistic about what Columbia is, and what it is not.</p>
<p>What it is, IMO, the best undergraduate experience out there. And sometimes the best, or rather what is best for you, isn’t the most obvious thing. It takes peeling back some layers to see what goodies are in store.</p>
<p>Columbia has a “pre-law” program? Dartmouth too? This is news to me. Either institution would prepare you finely for admission to Princeton Law School.</p>
<p>kwu - well columbia does have a pre-law program 
its a weird thing where you can sign up to ‘major’ in pre-law, but that is more just for tracking purposes. there is no ‘program.’ though when you sign up for pre-law during major declaration, you automatically get emails from the law office.</p>
<p>As someone recently admitted to Harvard Law from Columbia (but will defer), let me give you a <em>crucial</em> piece of advice regarding law school admissions.</p>
<p>2 factors:
<p>Go wherever you’ll have fun, and wherever you have a better chance of earning a higher GPA. Dartmouth is the better social experience - but grade inflation is pretty rampant at Columbia, so either one will get you where you need to be.</p>
<p>aim for a 3.9GPA and start prepping LSAT ahead of time, aim for a 175 and that’s essentially a <em>lock</em> on Harvard Law.</p>
<p>Oh and your major doesn’t matter <em>AT ALL</em>. So yeah, take the easiest major, get the highest GPA, score high on LSAT –> HLS.</p>
<p>truazan hits the ‘how to get into law-school’ part. i agree. but misses out on the whole pedagogical side. how and why would i want to go to law school. i think college is supposed to make you better, change you, push you.</p>
<p>and though the formula works well, he is forgetting part 3) what school you attend matters. between dart and colu it doesn’t, but if you get a rockin’ gpa and lsat from nowhere, you might not have the resources or the push to know you could get into HLS. when your career office has deals with test-prep companies, it changes things.</p>
<p>nevertheless congrats truazn.</p>
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<p>I wish CC had a ‘like’ button so I could like this.</p>
<p>My son is also deciding between Columbia and Dartmouth (though not pre-law, not particularly sure of his interests, but include biology/neuroscience on the one hand and classics on the other). His early preference is strongly for Columbia.</p>
<p>^ Columbia is superior to Dartmouth in both Biology and Classics, although it really doesn’t matter at the undergraduate level.</p>
<p>OP, go for fit.</p>
<p>As a recent Columbia alum I would say Dartmouth. Columbia has the following issues:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Hard to access professors/ lots of TAs. Columbia’s graduate focus hurts the undergraduates that outside the core can be left behind, particularly for popular majors</p></li>
<li><p>Weak/ fragmented social life. We don’t have the tightness or campus community a school like Dartmouth offers in spades. I think native New Yorkers who don’t need a cohesive social scene are fine with it, for me it was a huge issue.</p></li>
<li><p>Bureaucracy. Columbia makes it hard to get access to its resources. I felt like I had to fight with the administration to do anything, and any special resources had to be dug out with a shovel.</p></li>
<li><p>NYC - I personally never thought it was an advantage, not as much as its sold to be. It hurts the social life as people leave campus, and the lack of space was a issue as well. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>I don’t know that much about Dartmouth, having not attended the school but I go to a top law school now. The Dartmouth alums, particularly, are glowing with their love for the school and seem to all know each other and have a healthy view of college, the Columbia alums just all seem to not really care about their college experience. Just my two cents.</p>
<p>Thanks almamater, that was quite helpful. My D would have loved Columbia (esp the core) but was rejeccted and now we are trying to decide between Dartmouth and UPenn, we have’t visited either as of yet.</p>
<p>good luck funny. those are two fantastic schools, but also very different. visiting really is the best way to go, and wherever she ‘feels’ the fit is better she should go to and not look back.</p>
<p>@almamater:</p>
<p>I was accepted to CC yesterday and these issues (which I’ve heard about since early last year when researching Columbia) really have me thinking. I was only accepted to Columbia and Cornell, and between them I think I’d prefer Columbia, but is it really that bad of a college experience and that non-beneficial towards a future in something like law (which I can see myself pursuing)? I mean my options are the two schools I mentioned above, University of Illinois, and anyone who accepts me off their freaking waitlist (which, between Princeton and Yale, might MAYBE, POSSIBLY happen, if I’m really lucky, but I’m not counting on it at all). Columbia seemed cool when I visited last summer, but do the issues you describe actually keep it from being an enriching, enjoyable experience like it should be (especially for $80,000 of debt)?</p>
<p>Rocky-</p>
<p>take alma’s words as helpful, but not necessarily the only thing on the subject. feel free to read what i say about columbia as it is different, and come to some sort of conclusion on your own.</p>
<p>i think alma would agree to the following. columbia is very good, but in his estimation it is not the best or quite similar to places like dartmouth or princeton that are more fun and have a lot of resources (official and unofficial) around making it an enjoyable experience. that is to say if your choice is between a worse school and columbia, he would say choose columbia because even though it is not d or p level, it is for him still very good.</p>
<p>my flip is that i think columbia is not just a very good school, it is a great school and that if your choice was between princeton and columbia, i think you should choose columbia.</p>
<p>i like columbia’s strengths a lot, i like columbia’s momentum a lot, and the university and the undergraduate experience is changing and improving in tremendous ways. it is really exciting sometimes to be part of a school that is transforming.</p>
<p>in the end it is part fit and part attitude. make sure that columbia is a place you want to attend - knowing its weak spots and its strong spots. mostly this means being ok with the fact that it is not a sprawling campus in the middle of the woods, where rules are not as followed and students can be more free wheeling (aka traditional campus culture). if you like cities, if you like complexity, if you want options, and you want one of the best educational experiences out there, columbia is amazing. </p>
<p>it is also attitude - if you go to columbia with the desire to try it all, do it all, live it up, you will love columbia and new york because they are just brimming with opportunity. if you go to it not sure, or you try to compare it to other schools or your friends at other places, you will be disappointed.</p>
<p>for a contrary position to someone like alma, talk to current undergraduates, especially folks that are part of the URC (the student tour guides). don’t take their word as gospel, but in the end see where your gut takes you.</p>
<p>i hope it takes you to columbia. and if you’re in the chicagoland area, feel free to reach out to me, i live here now.</p>
<p>Rocky - Admissions last post is correct. I’m comparing Columbia to the cream of the crop, and my concerns about the experience are vs. schools like Princeton, Yale or Dartmouth. In terms of overall experience, a Columbia education is absolutely worth it over a school like Illinois. I think Columbia’s faults are very apparent, and vs. a school Dartmouth would have me attending the latter. In addition I prefer the undergraduate focus, tightknit communuty, free-wheeling, social campus environment that many other schools offer.</p>
<p>But Columbia is one of the pre-eminent institutions in the country and its going to open doors. As far as super-urban schools go clearly columbia is one of the, if not the, best. Just know what you are getting into.</p>
<p>Thank you very much for both of your input. It’s like, everything about the educational experience sounds right up my alley (especially the Core), except for the bureaucracy (though I’m not sure–does tied-up resources impact me as a social science-type major compared to engineering?), but I do like the wide open campus vibe of places like Princeton. Of course going off of just what schools actually accepted me, it’s Columbia vs. Cornell, and I never visited Cornell so I’m not sure what it’s like (though it seems like a big campus from what I’m seeing online).</p>
<p>I can say that based off of what I saw at Columbia when I visited last summer, and how the courses and everything looked, I only didn’t apply Early Action because I wanted to see how my Princeton app went and Princeton didn’t do anything early (grr…). Princeton was/is my dream school because everything just seemed to click about it, with academics and with the school itself and the campus vibe. But Columbia does still appeal to me academically. It just comes down to a hard choice I have to make, as many other kids do, especially since I won’t really get to visit either school before I would attend. Basically, “Is it worth it to trade the campus atmosphere I want for the academic atmosphere I want, for undergrad?” It’s a tough one for sure, especially when 4 years of life and tens of thousands of dollars of student loans are on the table.</p>
<p>Also I should add that Columbia does offer some very real benefits for certain people. There are definitely people who are the right Columbia “fit,” my only advice is to look deeply to see if its right for you.</p>
<p>Rocky, I would join the Columbia - Class of 2015 Group on Facebook and speak with hundreds of current students and other admitted students who will share with you their Columbia experience and their energy for Alma Mater (Columbia, not the questionable poster on College Confidential). I would also come to Days on Campus and judge Columbia based on actual time spent on campus with current students, faculty, administrators and other admitted students to see if it feels right. Congratulations, and best of luck!</p>
<p>I’m also considering Columbia (with potential law school intentions). My other options are Chicago and Brown, between which I probably prefer the latter. </p>
<p>Can anyone elaborate further on the social scene at Columbia, perhaps in the frame of what they perceive to be Brown’s? On a very practical level, how does NYC affect the social life, especially of someone currently in a relatively rural area?</p>
<p>Is Brown’s greater grade inflation a worthy factor for consideration, in your opinion?</p>
<p>Thanks for anything relevant anyone has to say.</p>
<p>silverturtle - first, how do you get to 10k posts, wow.</p>
<p>second, i live in chicago area, i’d be happy to talk to you about columbia v. uchicago. i am a graduate student at the latter. </p>
<p>without question, i can say, i prefer columbia. i think that there is a general sense in which you can be a geek and a jock at columbia, but at uchicago you are more likely a geek or a jock, and i think that creates for a different culture. in fact i like the fact that columbia students do wear so many different hats at the same time, it means that you wont see someone who only is in a frat, but is part of so many different things. there is a flipside to that, but i find that to be more interesting culture to be apart of, and why i like columbia a lot.</p>
<p>feel free to pm me if you want to chat more.</p>