<p>Huh? Where are you getting this misinformation from? There is absolutely no way that someone from G-town will have greater opportunities than someone from Columbia-in fact, the opposite is the case… In what world do you live in? You can’t be serious…</p>
<p>I know plenty of folks from both schools, including the SFS, and that is absolutely not true. I know of one prominent Columbia alum who works in the foreign service who basically gives jobs to any Columbia student who meets him at an annual function on their campus. </p>
<p>Don’t get me wrong, Gtown is a great school but it is not on Columbia’s level.</p>
<p>I won’t comment on relative prestige (not very interested) or the campus environments (go visit), but here’s my take on the academics.</p>
<p>Columbia is a world class research university with a first rate college that has influenced undergraduate instruction throughout the country for many years. They have decades of experience with their Core program. Georgetown is the country’s #2 (arguably #1) Catholic college with a few pretty good graduate programs. Key facilities (such as Lauinger Library and the science labs) are adequate for most undergraduates but not all you’d expect at an Ivy or a top LAC. It does leverage its DC location well with good internship programs; this is a significant strength. However, its faculty does not have the breadth, depth, or academic distinction of Columbia’s (few schools do.) The Jesuits are respected as teachers, but the most prominent instructors tend to be political celebrities brought in from retirement or when their careers in public service are at a lull. These are not tenured faculty. More importantly, they usually are not distinguished scholars (or professional teachers, either). Now, you may be o.k. or even more than o.k. with that. If you don’t care much about original scholarship, if you think Madeleine Albright’s war stories would be more interesting and you could parlay the connection into a good reference, then go for it. </p>
<p>Georgetown is a very good school for smart, well rounded, career-oriented students. It seems to lack the quirky, brilliant characters (aspiring novelists, physicists, anthropologists and gadflies) you’d probably encounter at a school like Columbia. Still, for some top students (and it gets its share of them), GU would be a better fit and maybe a happier place to spend 4 years. I’d choose Columbia but a case can be made for either school so you are fortunate if you do have the choice.</p>
<p>sorry to add to the off-topic discussion of Cornell, but I don’t think people understand that Cornell is composed of (fyi “comprised of” is bad english) seven separate schools with separate admissions criteria.</p>
<p>The Cornell College of Arts and Science and College of Engineering are by far the most selective, have about 4,200 students and 2,800 students respectively, and fit nicely in terms of stats and admissions selectivity with Penn, Brown, Dartmouth, Columbia. The schools for Hotel, Agriculture (a NY State supported public entity), Labor Relations, etc. have lower statted students and the admissions criteria are different. This dichotomy was illustrated by the public spat between Keith Olbermann and Ann Coulter that included a Coulter comment that that Olbermann was not even an alum of the “Ivy part of Cornell” since he graduated from the land-grant School of Agriculture.</p>
<p>Cornell is the #3 overall ranked Ivy at the Ph.D. level just behind Harvard and Princeton, an djust ahead of Columbia and Yale. Just tally up the rankings yourself here and you’ll see what I mean: [NRC</a> Rankings](<a href=“NRC Rankings”>NRC Rankings)</p>
<p>Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but it serves everyone if there is at least SOME factual basis for that opinion.</p>
<p>From people who have graduated at both schools.</p>
<p>I’m talking specifically about someone who wants to have a career in business. I’m using personal examples of someone who attended Georgetown MSB and someone who majored in econ at Columbia. The Georgetown grad had more opportunities and connections that were made specifically through the business school, while the Columbia grad is currently unemployed and can’t find many job openings, even with an Ivy degree. </p>
<p>This obviously isn’t the case for everyone. I’m just saying that going to an actual business school undergrad rather than just majoring in econ (and not taking any business classes…) prepares you more for the real world and looks better on your resume…at least in my experience.</p>
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<p>I was referring to the opinions of many I know about the quality Cornell’s undergraduate education. Selectivity does not equate to quality of education.</p>
<p>And aren’t those NRC rankings over a decade old? I don’t personally care about Cornell’s graduate rankings, but I’m just curious to see if they would change at all.</p>
<p>As someone who graduated from two of Columbia’s Grad schools (SIPA and Columbia Business School) and who graduated from Georgetown SFS, I feel qualified to address the topic. Georgetown was every bit, if not more rigorous an intellectual environment than Columbia.</p>
Sorry, but that’s just wrong. Completely, wholly wrong.</p>
<p>Examining universities with which I am familiar, business majors at UNC (a business program at least as good as Georgetown’s) simply do not have as direct access to the top jobs in business as Duke econ majors do.</p>
<p>High schoolers tend to vastly overstate the value and importance of a business degree. Heck, I’d say an engineering or math degree would look better than a business degree. People with quantitative abilities are in demand.</p>
<p>It hasn’t been wrong in the experience I’ve had with people who have graduated from such schools. This not only includes relatives, but friends of such relatives, peers, etc. have all had better starting jobs when they received a business degree (McDonough, Sloan, McIntire, Villanova, Wharton, etc) than just an econ, polysci, history, math, etc. major. Not saying its that way for everyone…it just has been for the overwhelming majority of people I know. So no, it isn’t “completely, wholly wrong.”</p>
<p>^^^^Perhaps you have too many underperforming ‘friends’ or friends of friends…</p>
<p>Only certain schools are targeted at the most prestigious firms, and I have never heard of G-town being one of them. As a result, the opportunities would be less should Company X choose to only recruit at Columbia and some other schools but not at G-town, right?</p>
while I don’t disagree, I am not so certain you would be able to make a comparison unless you were a TA while in grad school and was able to see the level of discussion in the undergrad, right? I mean, I don’t know if it is fair to expect the same level of intellectual ability between a college class and a grad class. I don’t know…</p>
<p>Under-performing friends at Georgetown, Columbia, MIT, Penn…?</p>
<p>Here’s a list of some top-hiring firms from McDonough in 2008:
KPMG LLP, Deloitte Touche Tomatsu, Goldman Sachs Group, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Credit Suisse Group, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Citigroup Inc., Lehman Bros., Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank AG, FBR Group, Morgan Stanley, Rothschild, SRA, Teach for America, UHY</p>
<p>Are you sure Company X isn’t recruiting from Columbia’s grad business school?</p>
<p>^well I live there now, not quite as terrible as make it out to be. The Columbia precinct is statistically one of safest in manhattan and in nyc (look it up if you don’t believe me), the area also has nice restaurants and high rent prices in the vicinity, all factors substantiating that it’s actually in one of the nicer neighborhoods in the city. 15-20 years ago the area was depressing, dangerous and terrible.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t call Morningside Heights or the upper west side necessarily terrible in all caps (this coming from someone who has only ever lived on the upper west side). Morningside Heights has pretty much all of the standard amenities a college student could need and very much feels like student’s domain. The upper west side while not particularly exciting, is a very pleasant neighborhood. Amsterdam and Columbus have about 50 restaurants and bars between them from 116th to 90th. Not to mention downtown is about 30 minutes away on the subway. North of 116th might not be the best area, and I wouldn’t necessarily want to hang out in Morningside Park after dark, but students don’t have any reason why they would ever need to go to those places, and if they did its not like they are so overtly dangerous that anything would happen, they are just maybe a little sketchy. The rest of the area is pretty great for a college student: bustling and full of stuff, but also cozy and sequestered, and yet with access to the big city.</p>
<p>I lived in a TERRIBLE part of NYC, myself. It was the late '70s. First, a garbage strike, for weeks, with a perpetual stench you would not believe. Then, a serial killer who shoved folks at my subway stop onto the tracks. Then, a neighborhood crime rate that far exceeds anything in the US today. Then, a subway strike that drove the neighborhood to its knees. Which neighborhood? Greenwich Village.</p>
<p>I invite anyone who views Morningside Heights as sketchy based on the “old days” to spend a few days there now, as I have as a new Columbia parent. The stereotype I heard when I lived in NYC, that one does not go to the Columbia neighborhood after dark, although perhaps once true, is now totally obsolete. Morningside Heights now feels like a college town (which, by the way, it is).</p>