<p>Which one's more prestigious and why? Thanks</p>
<p>Columbia's probably more prestigious because of the whole Ivy League thing, and because it's more well-known. However, Williams is still a great college, probably one of the top three non-Ivy liberal arts colleges on the east coast (Amherst/Williams/Swarthmore), and it is well known among graduate school admissions committees.</p>
<p>I picked Columbia over Williams and some other very "prestigious" school. The reason why I picked it had to do with the social life though, not the academics. At this level (ivies+top lacs), the quality of education you recieve is pretty much equal</p>
<p>They're two completely different schools; in many ways they're polar opposites. Williams is located in the bucolic but isolated Berkshires, Columbia is in New York; Williams is a very small liberal arts college, Columbia is a large research university. If you're going for name recognition by average Joe on the street, Columbia wins... due to its size, lack of graduate schools (and therefore the kind of research that gets larger universities like Harvard and Yale acclaim), and location, not many in the general public know of Williams.<br>
However, Williams' small size, solely undergraduate population, and relative isolation gives it a major advantage over Columbia in terms of education and campus experience: there's a real sense of a tight-knit community among the student body that you simply cannot get at a huge research university in the middle of New York City. Columbia students tend to scatter into the city for their social life, which is great, but you don't get the same sense of being part of a close-knit student body you do in a small rural school. You'll be in mostly seminar-style classes instead of lectures, and because the professors actively choose to teach at a liberal arts college and therefore forgo the research opportunities of a large university, they are truly there because they love to teach undergraduates.<br>
The quality of the student bodies at each are equally stellar, as is the level of the academics. Williams is more undergraduate-focused, Columbia is more impersonal and DIY. Each appeals to a different kind of person; my best friend is going to Columbia because she loves the kind of independence that a sink or swim attitude and life in NYC fosters. I'm going to Smith because I want a school completely devoted to undergraduates with more of a sense of campus community. To each his own... at any of the top schools you'll get a fabulous education, it's the campus atmosphere that makes the difference.</p>
<p>Williams is ridiculously small. People talk about going to college not only to learn more out of books, but to learn more opinions from other people. You have an extremely limited sample size at williams for those opinions from different people. Columbia has an ideal size for its class and has seminars which break students down into discussion groups. Williams doesn't have profsthat love to teach more than Columbia profs, that's a ridiculous assertion. The truth is that the faculty at both places (and at other top colleges) are generally similar. It's just that the ones at Columbia are more often to be in the limelight - publishing a book, doing a news interview, hosting a conference with politicians, you know, real things. And these professors don't forget about their students. Part of the process of college is to realize that in the real world, you don't have someone holding your hand and you need to seize opportunity. Being in the presence of a world-renowned scholar itself casts a feeling of pride to the student, and certainly the discussion groups in the college give students the chance to talk to these people.</p>