<p>I think I might have to take you up on that offer if I go to Columbia. I do know someone at Columbia, but he’s a philosophy Ph.D. student, so I’m not sure how much help he’d be. I know a few alumni from Georgetown SFS and have connections with some faculty members at Princeton, so if we’re talking about how important networking is, I might be inclined to go to one of those schools instead. But your offer definitely sweetens the deal, and I appreciate your generosity.</p>
<p>And good job selling the Core Curriculum to me.</p>
<p>I respectfully disagree. The decision should be about which school fits you better - and believe it or not, for some people Columbia will be a better fit.</p>
<p>This coming from an HS sophomore whose parents are obsessed with prestige… Conversation between my mother and me:</p>
<p>Mom: “So what schools are you thinking about?”
Me: “A lot, but right now Columbia is my first choice.”
Mom: “But nobody really knows about Columbia… go with Harvard, sweetie.”</p>
<p>“nobody really knows” about, say, Hamilton, or Amherst, or Swarthmore - that despite the quality of the education, they’re not well known in the marketplace.</p>
<p>We took some flak for allowing – maybe even encouraging – our S to choose Columbia over both Harvard and Stanford. Our advice was that all universities of this caliber offer wonderful opportunities (we’d have been happy, for instance if he’d chosen UC Berkeley), but he should choose the school where he thought he’d be most likely to make use of those opportunities. He chose Columbia because he loved the idea of the core curriculum, loved NYC, and liked the students he met there. I know personally of 5 others in his year who made the same choice over Harvard, and so there must be more – not counting those who applied ED and never took their shot at Harvard.</p>
<p>Our S has graduated and loved his Columbia experience. He did, indeed, enjoy the core, loved NYC, took advantage of opportunities in the music performance program and working with professors. I suspect he might have done the same at Harvard, but who knows. He certainly had no regrets.</p>
<p>He is now in a top graduate program. I think there is confusion about professional schools versus graduate programs. But on the PhD track, in any case, it is not all about your undergrad institution, but how well you did there and what your professors have to say about your capacity for grad work and for research. In any case, Columbia is considered a top institution in the world of academia. It will not hold you back.</p>
<p>If, instead, you plan to head out into finance or business with a BA that might be another issue. There you’re talking about an alumni network. Still, wherever you go, you need to perform well and it sure helps to be happy.</p>
<p>I’m a grad student and we grad students joke that the Harvard kids in our field are all weird.</p>
<p>In any case, I didn’t even apply to Harvard for graduate school. Their department is one of the best in my field, certainly better than Columbia’s, but I would’ve pulled my hair out there.</p>
<p>In any case, the difference in hiring between Harvard and Columbia is negligible at best. We’re talking if you want to work at the top top tippy top financial institutions, but for most average Harvard and Columbia students whose ambitions lie elsewhere, either choice is fine and will give you more opportunities than the average university.</p>
<p>AS far as graduate school, I wouldn’t worry too much. I came from a second-tier liberal arts college and got into top programs in my field. What you do at wherever you go is far more important than where you went for undergrad, and regardless of where you go, you will need “stellar LoRs, award-winning senior thesis.” In my department at Columbia I know that we’d much rather take a student from Big State U with research experience, warm letters of recommendation and a solid thesis than a student from Columbia or Harvard with none of those things or a weak application.</p>
<p>“AS far as graduate school, I wouldn’t worry too much. I came from a second-tier liberal arts college and got into top programs in my field.”</p>
<p>But your field is clearly academia/medical centric, for professional school placement which half the applicants and accepts care about, Harvard tends to do substantially better then Columbia. Whatever the field, Columbia and Harvard student ambitions are to be at the “top top tippy top”. For finance jobs at least, Harvard puts people there more effectively than does Columbia.</p>
<p>“Harvard puts people there more effectively than does Columbia.”</p>
<p>Hang on, are you confusing the effectiveness of Harvard’s professional placement system with the number of firms that recruit there?</p>
<p>I have a couple of H friends who complained about their equivalent of CCE–but that may have just been them. More firms tend to recruit at Harvard, and some, including my own, don’t recruit Columbia undergrads. Period.</p>
<p>concoll: the first thing i am going to say is that i understand where you are coming from and it shows a very preprofessional/outcomes oriented trend. this is something that a lot of kids are looking for and all you say is true.</p>
<p>but that is also why people like me gotta post to put your stats in context. when you say stuff like if you want to go into top field harvard is better ergo go to harvard is an argument that is often floated, but in reality it is something that doesn’t account for other variables (least of all personal preference). there is also a simple game theory argument here why perhaps that doesn’t make sense: what if all the top kids went to harvard, then it doesn’t matter how smart you are if you are less impressive in your pool context you are not going to be admitted. sometimes being a big fish in a smaller pond makes sense for an individual.</p>
<p>and lastly - don’t hate on academia and non-professional paths. a Columbia education prepares a great number of students to enter the phd realm, but also a lot of students to do things that interest them even if it doesn’t look great on paper. self-selection as you say it in the williams board. i am happy with this self-selection. even amongst my friends that applied to top law/med school most were fiddling with two or three ideas if it didn’t work. and many of my friends did not have the ambition to be at the top top tippy top schools. it is a preference. </p>
<p>now here is my “worst thing” about Columbia is around people making you feel bad for having other choices or thoughts - there becomes a general consensus about what you are supposed to do, priorities that society has constructed. you must work at lazard and then jump to a hedge fund or pe firm - that is the life. i imagine it is not as severe at HYP, but it certainly is a downer when you could want to do X, but feel like you have to want to become an ibanker or attend a top 10 law school because that is what you are supposed to do. Bollocks. Columbia students are not monolithic and however difficult it may be for some of us to wrestle away from the attraction of a near 6 figure salary at age 22.</p>
<p>i know i am probably in the minority in looking at higher education, but i do not think a school’s prestige or worth should be measured on how prestigious it is a pit stop for future leaders. i like to think about education as being just that education. and if you want to spend $50,000 for a glorified experience that is a choice. i would look at columbia on its merits alone - something that i think makes it special. </p>
<p>but the thinking held by so many about outcomes (however misprioritized they are) obviously has currency - to that, check out the money columbia has raised for CCE to start pressuring top firms in various areas to start hiring columbia students. we may never catch up to H, but perhaps there is less to complain about our supposed inferiority.</p>
<p>admissionsgeek you’ve completely missed the point,</p>
<p>You’ve entered into a tirade of how I’m being narrow minded, without bothering to properly read my posts.</p>
<p>1) I’m not hating on academia, I never commented on it.
2) only about half the student body is interested in pre-professional studies
3) I never once said that outcomes and placement are all that matter.
4) I definitely see why someone could choose C over H even if they want to go into med/law/finance</p>
<p>I was saying Harvard is better than Columbia at getting it’s students top law and finance opportunities, this is one factor that a lot of students will consider in reaching a decision, so stop creating straw-men. </p>
<p>You seemingly look down on people who want to work on wall street and think people do it out of necessity, social pressure or greed, and so you refuse to acknowledge that it might be a legit factor in considering admissions offers.</p>
<p>Lastly with respect to your game theory: Certain firms are practically closed to Columbia students because they only target 2/3/4 schools with with H being one of those and Columbia not. Just like certain financial firms and divisions might be closed to Georgetown because they target only 6-10 schools. I’d rather have a shot at these firms in a more competitive pool than none at all. These firms take away the top applicants at H, leaving you with a less competitive pool for jobs that Columbia students consider close to the top. </p>
<p>On top of that if you look at placements in mckinsey, goldman and other top firms open to both, H beats out C soundly. The discrepancy (like law school placement) is not reconciled merely by H being more competitive. The H student body is hardly much more qualified or driven than C’s, they are slightly more competitive, but your big pond vs. small pond analogy exaggerates the difference. our acceptance rates are comparable which says something.</p>
<p>concoll…
i thought i was too tirade-ish, but i had to go to work, so i didn’t edit to make it softer, but i also thought that the sentiment was not that far off.</p>
<p>i don’t have a problem with your POV, but I wanted to offer a counterbalance. yes h has access to certain top firms that cu and others do not have direct ugrad access to, though this is not to say after a few years in the business that cu students are completely shut out from working in pe or funds. i think this is a marginal concern because i dont think it makes H better, but as it is your field, i understand that you may not agree. though we could have a conversation around how do we change this reality…perhaps we can change this reality. i am sure you have ideas. </p>
<p>but i think i was trying to articulate a broader concern that i gained from cu that precisely the field you strive to join is pushed as a pinnacle which makes us folk who have other aims to the side. i know that you probably had a good idea of what you wanted to do and that led you to wall street. but i don’t think the field deserves as much attention as it is given both while a ugrad, but especially for people who haven’t even gotten there. that doesn’t mean no one should consider wall street, but there is a very healthy proportion already going to do that. </p>
<p>as for your posts - you are legit in what you say, but it is highly prof inclined (which is very much like many students applying so that makes sense), but in my opinion you are not showing the full story. you are exceptionally practical, but a lot of columbia is not quantifiable. it is what makes cu special and why i like it. and yes you don’t use the words that placement is all that matters, but in this post and others you often reference placement as proof, or other statistics as proof. it is how you think about the problem - referencing rhodes and yls - it is what makes sense. me: i am skeptical about numbers without knowing the story behind them. and in general, numbers tell you how things worked out in the past, but are not great predictors of the future, especially if circumstances change. - like columbia rapidly ascending to awesomeness.</p>
<p>as a minor statistical refutation - our admit rate is low, but because our school is so much smaller and yield much lower that our selectivity is nowhere close to H. I mean we are no puddle, by comparison, but not quite the unbridled pretention of H (and pretention in a broader sense). as cu is not hyper competitive, you have a greater comparative advantage here if you really are smart to shine. not the same as turning down H town for a community college, but pretty decent.</p>
<p>admissionsgeek, you’ll find a lot of agreement with what you’re saying, not just from confidentialcoll, but also from the various “what do you like about Columbia?” threads that have pervaded our board occasionally.</p>
<p>Harvard’s chief advantages over Columbia are:</p>
<p>We are very comparable in a number of other parameters, some of which you suggest:</p>
<p>1) PhD-program admissions (anyone to whom it matters has heard of Columbia just as well as they’ve heard of Harvard)
2) Professional school admissions
3) Recruiting of name-brand professors
4) Academic research, particularly in the liberal arts and in fields related to medicine
(etc)</p>
<p>And some areas in which Columbia is no-doubt superior, in my view:</p>
<p>1) Student quality of life
2) Quality & rigor of undergraduate education
3) Internships during the school year are much more readily available
4) Less arrogance / sense of entitlement in the student body (not that Columbia’s is zero, mind you)</p>
<p>and of course,</p>
<p>5) A much more fair housing lottery & assignments system :D</p>
<p>I’m sure someone inclined to do so could go on in all three categories, but yes, there are many dimensions in which the two universities could be compared. And - this is the key point here - most current/former students at Columbia know someone who turned down Harvard for Columbia. They are comparable and it is by no means a recruiting slam-dunk in Harvard’s direction.</p>
<p>The size of its endowment notwithstanding, I certainly hope that Columbia will pay for me to take music lessons like Harvard will. I always wanted to brush up on my trumpet-playing.</p>
well, we do have free piano lessons, that much I know. and if you can’t get them from our music dept, CC/SEAS will also pay Teachers’ College for your lessons.</p>
<p>so long as you agree to be part of the music performance program…you get free private lessons. that means you have to participate in a performing group (jazz/concerto ensemble/wind ensemble/orchestra) - but they take people of all talent level, i think the idea is that you should be giving back in some way. otherwise you can pay for lessons, or take lessons up at the manhattan school of music.</p>
<p>“5) A much more fair housing lottery & assignments system”</p>
<p>I don’t know…a friend of mine got a suite in ruggles as a sophomore because she was dating the dude who designed the housing lottery system…or at least worked for housing :)</p>
<p>Not that I got the short end of the stick…until junior year.</p>
<p>I hope that’s true, because I thought I might have to take a year of private lessons before I’d be ready to play in one of the performing groups.</p>