<p>This topic has been made before, yet has not addressed enough issues. Assuming one may gain admittance into both prestigious colleges and that both city life and suburban life are admirable, what advantages would each college yield?</p>
<p>I for one have toured both colleges and could not come to a conclusion. Columbia offers far more opportunities during your college experience, but also is rather expensive even if you get a generous loan. Duke on the other hand may not offer as many opportunities, but does seem like more of a friendly, fun-loving, and enjoyable place to be. What do you think?</p>
<p>(I will be posting this topic in both forums as to get more varied replies)</p>
<p>Hey! I was actually in the position of choosing between Duke and Columbia two weeks ago, after I was accepted from the Columbia watilist (I was planning on going to Duke before that). I had a difficult decision to make, and like you have expressed, I loved both Duke and Columbia despite their distinctive differences. I think an important factor that will go into making your decision is your intended major (one school may have a better program). But the main decision will come down to whether or not you like the Core Curriculum (which is the essence of a Columbia education) or if you like a more liberal education where you can take whichever classes you like. If you don’t like the idea of the core, then you shouldn’t go to Columbia. If you are looking for intense campus pride and bonding over athletics, then Duke may be the place for you.</p>
<p>Overall, I decided to attend Columbia because it provided more opportunities for my area of interest, and I really loved the liberal arts education offered by the core.</p>
<p>Unless you blow up a lot of money on entertainment at the more expensive end of the spectrum in NYC how is Columbia rather expensive compared to Duke? Columbia’s FA is excellent, probably a little better than Duke’s.</p>
<p>The social scenes are very different and I definitely think its different strokes for different folks. I would have disliked to be at Duke where college life revolves around athletics and frats, because I was neither an athlete nor a frat guy, and I would have hated to be treated as secondary to frat bros and athletes. I still wanted a college experience of going to parties, relaxing on campus lawns, randomly meeting up with friends in the middle of the night, screaming at sports games and Columbia offered all those, I look back at my 4 years with a lot of pride and contentment. One way to gauge how much people like / fit in on campus is the freshman retention rate, at Columbia 99% return, and at duke 97% return. What you can say from that is people are generally content with Columbia even if we’re regularly criticizing it and holding it to a high standard. Both colleges have very low suicide rates which is another measure of student contentment. </p>
<p>Finally you do not have to love the idea of a core curriculum to come to Columbia there are dozens of other reasons, but you definitely should not hate the idea.</p>
<p>My younger son is both a dedicated club athlete and a frat boy at Columbia, and he could not be happier. He could have a similar athletic/fraternity experience at Duke, I have no doubt. He would not have been in the City, however, which is important to him. He has a nice part-time office job/internship just a few blocks from campus. More importantly, even though he is utterly consumed by a college life that keeps him on campus virtually all the time, it is nevertheless important to him to know that he can take a long walk or subway ride to get away from it all, while remaining connected to his larger NYC community.</p>
<p>Duke is a fine school. I suspect that most folks who visit both Columbia and Duke will feel much more comfortable at one over the other. The choice should be made solely on the basis of which feels best as a place to spend four of the most important years of your life. In my son’s case, Columbia was it.</p>
<p>conorske - this is my first time seeing that list, i enjoyed it tremendously.</p>
<p>one thing i realized that perhaps is interesting. at columbia you can definitely be a frat head, athlete guy, despite all the rumblings that it is not true. i was as ironic as it all could be. but you can’t at duke or most places be the kind of urban adventurer at the same time, or have both kinds of students coexist simultaneously. so often when folks make the severe distinction between columbia and other schools, they often forget that columbia picks from the same pool of kids that apply to duke, brown and others, and so there is certainly a contingent of folk that desire and provide for themselves the kind of frat centered environment (or frat-like). but then you have an entire body of self-selecting students that want the city and its adventure. best of both worlds for sure.</p>
<p>Dodo, I respect that you’re trying to control for the seemingly superfluous differences (“assuming…both city life and suburban life are admirable”), but you simply can’t do that. The colleges are incredibly different, and everything from their social scenes to their general atmospheres of the schools are informed by their location. You could not have Columbia without the city, and Duke would not be Duke if it was in Manhattan (or even a second-rate city like Chicago). Ultimately, you have to consider which lifestyle is more appealing, and which school you would rather live at. It’s an incredibly subjective and personal decision.</p>
<p>It depends on which program you get in. Overall, Columbia is much better. And no… it’s not more expensive, maybe more expensive by a few thousand dollars a year, but not more than that. So the answer is it depends on the program you get in, but for most programs, Columbia is better.</p>
<p>@SIPAPrincess: Way to be blatantly bias. You don’t go to Duke so how do you know Columbia is better in “most” programs. How do you know they aren’t the same? I’m taking it that you are relying on ignorance and the fact that you don’t know much about the undergrad program at Duke. OR you are relying on some bogus ranking produced by somebody who has no life. So really your post is misleading and bias. You pretty much emphasize the fact that people can’t get reliable replies without bias.
I really think pwoods sums it up really well :
<p>@gunit5: How do you know I didn’t go to Duke? I don’t go to Duke now, but I did before. I haven’t studied all programs at Duke and Columbia, but I’ve definitely met a lot of people while at Duke. If compare students at the two schools in terms of intellectual ability, I prefer people at Columbia. Don’t get me wrong, I still think that both Duke and Columbia lack intellectual diversity, which is really sad for both schools.</p>
<p>“Columbia=Duke same prestige etc. etc. They’re ranked the same on U.S. News”</p>
<p>Because, you know, US News is the be all, end all of prestige. And just what the heck is prestige?</p>
<p>Columbia and Duke are both very respected selective institutions of higher learning. You need to ask yourself one simple question: Is it more important to you to live in New York City and have everything that it offers at your finger tips, or to spend four years at a school where the undergraduate experience is front and center? If obsessive and hard to explain institutional loyalty is something you want in your life, go to Duke. I’m in grad school and I realize that my friends who went to schools like Georgetown, Duke, even Cornell, have a level of passion and love for their schools (see any sporting event) that you’ll never find at Columbia. The sense of community here derives less from a passionate attachment to the institution as from the bonds you form with your classmates and life mentors, whatever form they come in.</p>
<p>Furthermore, with rare exceptions, you really shouldn’t be thinking about specific programs unless they’re specialized, particularly famous at one school, or simply non-existent at one school.</p>
<p>Nah, people found me at Columbia (and I found others). I really had a lot of school spirit, would defend and cheer our teams while they were hammered at basketball and football. I wouldn’t call my love for Columbia delusional or unconditional, but I had a lot of school pride and school spirit, got people to sing the fight song often etc. Even now I’m proud of what I got out of my 4 years, and what Columbia did for me. These people exist at Columbia, you just find them in greater proportion and more open about it at large sport schools.</p>