The initial report was done in the early 2000s and I think they updated it in 2014, so it’s not that current but the biggest change was the foreign universities as eeyore points out, the National University in South Korea (162), Harvard (74), National Taiwan University (63), and University of Delhi (61) are the top 4. After Harvard for US colleges it’s Berkeley, Cornell, and Stanford in the research U’s and top-50 liberal arts colleges are Swarthmore, William and Mary, and Williams.
I couldn’t place the link cleanly, just google Stock and Siegfried 2014, if interested in more details. Anyway this is just for one major.
As many have said, you really should be deciding based on fit.
As for the dream of being a college prof: be wary of dreams. For one, I think of the analogy with Oxbridge: many kids dream of being at Oxbridge, but Oxbridge actually wants kids who dream more about the subject they are studying than being at Oxbridge. Same deal with being a professor. It seems that you want to be a professor because of secondary aspects. But if you want to go down that route, you really should love the subject you will study. Otherwise, it just doesn’t make sense to go down that route (and there are other paths you can take to do the job that professors actually do: research and tutor/mentor/teach)*. Not to mention that a tenured position is extremely difficult to get these days. I doubt you would love the life of an adjunct.
I am assuming you are not dreaming of sitting in endless committee meetings.
I think that a couple of things favor Columbia in this decision:
Both are great schools with excellent student:teacher ratios, but it’s 6:1 at Columbia with 80% of classes under 20 vs 9:1 and 60% at Notre Dame. A great situation at Notre Dame is even better at Columbia.
My friend’s son told me that almost all of his classes at Columbia were small seminars with a lot of discussion. I think that for someone who is interested in academia and really getting into the subject matter, the small seminars and low teacher:faculty ratio favor Columbia for the kinds of experiences and faculty relationships that you’ll find valuable.
Columbia sponsors a full year study abroad program at the London School of Economics. Both schools have strong study abroad opportunities, but for a potential Econ major, even a semester at the London School of Economics would seem to be an invaluable experience - especially where the goal is to go on for a doctorate.
With two Top 20 schools, both will offer wonderful opportunities, so the small differences may be the tie breaker. These 3 stood out to me. There may be others in the fine print.
I come back to this. This sentence honestly makes no sense to me. This is like saying “I am stuck between gymnastics, swimming, wrestling, and javelin, but I dream of being an Olympian” at age 18.
BTW, I have to roll my eyes at this statement. Columbia already has one of the strongest econ faculty in the world. Arguably stronger than LSE, and LSE has study-abroad arrangements with many colleges (a lot lower than Columbia on the totem pole).
In any case, the faculty at Columbia would be more accomplished (than ND’s) from a purely research standpoint. And Columbia probably does send more undergrads to PhD programs than ND. But fit really should trump all for an undergrad (part of the difference in fit is that Columbia would likely have more kids looking to enter PhD programs).
My son chose Notre Dame over Cornell. In that situation, both have rural campuses. He liked the dorm culture at Notre Dame better than the system at Cornell. He wanted a school with a strong school spirit. I have to believe you could choose between a school that is probably more focused on the city around it versus a school that is focused on the campus. Just my two cents. Both are excellent academically and you can’t go wrong in that sense.