<p>tkm256: I was just in Temecula a while ago for this Boy Scout trip to Lost Valley, if you know about it. It's a nice city. We stopped at the big plaza with the McDonalds and Taco Bell.</p>
<p>So here is my prospective college list:</p>
<p>Harvard (SCEA), Stanford, Princeton, Yale, Columbia (NYC), Duke, Dartmouth, and so on. Sound good?</p>
<p>Ack! The Promenade! That place has brought the plague of traffic and development upon us. Highly convenient if you like to shop, highly inconvenient if you like to go a mile by car in less than half a day. You must have gone past my high school, it's half a mile down the road, hopefully you were there at the 2 hour window that isn't rush hour. ;) Anyway, it looks like you've chosen very good schools to apply to, but as I said, keep those safeties!</p>
<p>The other school I was considering applying early to was Stanford SCEA. I did summer programs at both and loved both schools. My college counselor at my school really helped me figure out which school was better for me. Stanford, while amazing, and a clear #2 choice after Columbia for me, didn't offer the variety of musical interests that I needed. With New York City, as well as over 100 performing groups on campus, Columbia had tons of musical opportunities. I do play an instrument (4 to be exact: oboe, english horn, alto sax and tenor sax), and found that the Stanford music program was not as good (at least or what I wanted to do).</p>
<p>Stanford also, was for me, a little to country club, and not enough real world for my tastes as an undergraduate. I think a more sheltered environment might work for a graduate student, knowing they need to be in the top 10% of the class to get a great job. As an undergraduate, I would like to be in a major city (or extremely close) in order to do more enjoyable things.</p>
<p>I also really like political activism and since its inception, Columbia has always been on the front lines of political activism on college campuses. Stanford, I found, had very few openly political demonstrations/debates, which turned me off from the school a little.</p>
<p>For me, it was a mixture of what the population was like, the music performance opportunities as well as viewing opportunities, and the total undergraduate experience that drew me to Columbia over Stanford.</p>
<p>Hopefully that helped answer your question.</p>
<p>Really? I was thinking the opposite, that I don't want to take on the pressures of the real world until I'm a grown-up graduate. I wanted to go to Vassar, IUB, Yale or somewhere 'schooly' for undergrad and then go to JHU for medical school. Then I'd live in Baltimore and learn how to take care of myself.</p>
<p>I don't think I could stand being in the real world and then retreating for further studies. I'd be missing out. That's not to say that anyone else's approach is good, though!</p>