<p>What are the main differences between those schools. I already know that Columbia is urban, and has a larger core curriculum than Cornell. What other differences can you add. How do the class sizes compare between those two? Which workload is harder? Which one is more selective upon admission?</p>
<p>I think the workload is probably about the same at each.</p>
<p>I considered both schools very closely when choosing a college. I was accepted at Cornell, waitlisted at Columbia. </p>
<p>There were several things I didn't like at Columbia:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>It's nearly impossible to transfer from the engineering school to the college if you should decide to change your mind about engineering. If you want to change your major, you pretty much have to leave Columbia.</p></li>
<li><p>Even engineers have to take "the core." At first I didn't mind, but then I realized that engineers don't have all that many electives...so the core eats up a lot of the time you could be exploring genuine interests.</p></li>
<li><p>I like vacationing in large cities, but it's not where I'm used to living. Plus, things get expensive fast...</p></li>
<li><p>Some of Columbia's engineering programs are not ABET acredited, while it's probably not too big of a deal, ABET sets the standard for engineeirng programs and it seemed really odd to me that the programs were not acredited
Intro classes are probably slightly larger at Cornell. But most are not really big. For example, MATH 191 has about 15-20 students a class, intro to computer programming had about 70 in the morning lecture...there are some really big ones out there, but once you get to more specialized classes the size drops a lot.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>As far a selectivity, I think they're about even...not really sure. I know Cornell is regarded the best engineering school in the ivy league, Princeton is a close second.</p>
<p>Both are great schools, it's largely personal preference.</p>