Help! Columbia or Yale?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>I have a really big dilemma. I've visited both Yale and Columbia and fell in love with both of them. I know that I'm going to apply early to either one but I just can't decide which it is I want the most.</p>

<p>I'm a math/science person but also have a deep interest in the humanities. I'm really interested in Yale's biomedical engineering program and their strength in the humanities but I also like Columbia because of it's location in the city as well as its liberal arts curriculum.</p>

<p>Please help!!</p>

2

<p>If you can't decide then don't apply early (duh). Apply to both regular and then make a better informed decision depending on where you get in. Although if you aren't going apply anywhere else early you could consider Yale's SCEA b/c it's non-binding and still gives you an edge.</p>

3

<p>I agree. If you aren't sure about which one you like more, then apply for Yale's SCEA as it is nonbinding and you could still possibly go to Columbia if you find out that you do indeed like it better.</p>

4

<p>I don't know about Columbia, but those of us at the other core school (Chicago) are pretty intense about having and wanting our core. It's certainly something you can recreate for yourself at any school, and many students do. I think it would be foolish to think of Columbia or Chicago as the only school where you get the true-blue liberal arts experience. </p>

<p>For me, the core was a way of feeling connected to the people around me, knowing that we had charted our way through similar texts together and created a support network for each other when it came time to read Aristotle, Marx, and Kant.</p>

<p>Keep in mind that Yale is not all that far from NYC, and I have friends who make a trip into the city maybe once every month or two. The nice part about Yale (or a school with a similar distance and accessibility to NYC, like Vassar) is that the city is available for entertainment, yet it doesn't detract from your sense of community and campus. At Columbia, it's all urban, all the time, and it would have been difficult for somebody like me to retreat to a place that was grassy, serene, and not Central Park.</p>

5

<p>"At Columbia, it's all urban, all the time, and it would have been difficult for somebody like me to retreat to a place that was grassy, serene, and not Central Park"</p>

<p>for the record a lot of this response is taken from a columbia vs penn thread, but the same advantages are applicable</p>

<p>Columbia isn't engulfed by the city like nyu is, the city far more accentuates campus by offering opportunities than it detracts from campus life. it has a stand alone campus, in which 90% of the people walking around, laying on the lawns/playing frisbee etc are students - and so maintains the college atmosphere that you find at more remote schools. our athletics are not great, this is what dampens school spirit, not in the least bit the city. the city gives opportunities for you and a random group of friends to go off campus and do something cool on the thursday or friday evening.</p>

<p>columbia is not far from a bunch of serene getaways apart from central park, so if, for a day or a weekend, you want to get away from it all, there are many options, and if you want to do that for an evening there are parks on either side of campus and the river and central park each a 5 minute walk away. </p>

<p>as for recreating the core, it simply is not the same for a few reasons:</p>

<p>the core has been debated over and optimized over the years, making it a structured and flowing set of classes (for the most part), lit hum flows into CC, and there is a proper order to the humanity classes that you take, structuring the order of classes and making them gel into one another is one key benefit of the core. Also everyone does it, this has three-four distinct advantages:
1) you always have something common to discuss.
2) if you hate the class, others are in the same boat, and it makes for better bonding
3) everyone is exposed to these ideas, and it makes your peers too 'enlightened', college is mostly about the peers, so the whole student body gets the broad education
4) there is no competitive disadvantage to taking the core classes, by recreating a 'core' at another univ you'd take for example a lit class primarily with english majors, and doing well will be more difficult there than doing lit hum at columbia where there are all the sorts of majors.</p>

<p>generally speaking I dislike the idea of forcing college students to do anything, but columbia's core ends up being beneficial to all sorts of people, even those who come in simply not being able to stomach that they'll have to read a book a week, or take a science class. it rips you out of your comfort zone and makes you incredibly grateful for what you learn and more importantly the way you learn it. </p>

<p>yale is a great school, but nyc has too much to offer that accentuates your college years.</p>

6

<p>Though I wouldn't call Chicago's core "easy" by any stretch, I do agree that studying the material is not quite at threatening when you are with students whose academic strengths are all over the board. You are not expected to have a certain body of knowledge before you study these texts-- at other schools, going straight into a seminar on Marx, Locke, and Hume may be quite intimidating if you are placed with third and fourth-years who have been studying political science and have a lot of outside information to rest opinions on.</p>

<p>New York City as a whole has always felt very enclosed to me, and not in a good way. I'm happy that Columbia students do have access to serene areas , but I imagine that it's not so easy to jog along the West Side Highway and ignore the ongoing traffic and noise. My friends from UChicago who stayed in Morningside Heights over the summer complained about the noise levels. (Though traveling from Times Square to Columbia is analogous to traveling from the Loop to UChicago-- both are about 60 city blocks away-- Hyde Park is quiet for a city neighborhood). For what it's worth, I think Yale's campus offers more variety in terms of quiet and serene/ bustling and busy which I would prefer. Again, that's just me, though, and I think the OP has to come to his or her own conclusions about what fits better.</p>

7

<p>Yale SCEA.....and see what happens.</p>

8

<p>About location... it all depends on what kind of a neighborhood you're used to and what you want. My undergrad was completely engulfed in the city, my apartment was in a neighborhood with a lot of bars, nightlife, etc, and I grew up in the city as well. So, the first thing I noticed when I started grad school at Columbia was the exact opposite of what unalove's friend felt; the area seemed so QUIET to me. It's all relative, and as unalove said, it's different for each person.</p>

9

<p>I'm going to second everyone above... if you aren't 100% sure of a school (which you claim that you're not), do NOT ED.</p>

<p>SCEA Yale.</p>

10

<p>" yale is a great school, but nyc has too much to offer that accentuates your college years"</p>

<p>yes, because when I think of a perfect college setting, NYC is what comes to mind. Get real, work in NYC, go to college some place else. </p>

<p>I've heard before that Columbia is just a bunch of Yale rejects. Not sure how true it is.</p>

11

<p>Do Yale SCEA since you're undecided. It's non-binding and it gives you an advantage.</p>

12

<p>
[quote]
I've heard before that Columbia is just a bunch of Yale rejects. Not sure how true it is.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>That's a silly thing to say. First, Columbia fills a very big part of its undergrad class with Early Decision applicants-- students who wanted Columbia first and did not apply to Yale. Secondly, both schools are highly, highly competitive, with Yale being slightly more competitive than Columbia-- slightly. If Columbia is a Yale reject school, give me a school that isn't.</p>

13

<p>"That's a silly thing to say"
I'm just repeating what I've heard ... even though I've heard it multiple times from multiple sources. </p>

<p>"give me a school that isn't"
H</p>

14

<p>There are smart kids who get into Yale and there are smart kids who don't get into Yale. There are smart kids who get into Columbia and there are smart kids who don't get into Columbia. There are smart kids who get into Cornell and there are smart kids who don't get into Cornell. There are smart kids who get into MIT and there are smart kids who don't get into MIT. There are smart kids who get into Stanford and there are smart kids who don't get into Stanford, There are smart kids who get into Harvard and there are smart kids who don't get into Harvard. There are smart kids who get into Swarthmore and there are smart kids who don't get into Swarthmore. There are smart kids who get into Duke and there are smart kids who don't get into Duke.</p>

<p>My point is that at any of these uber-elite schools, you're going to be surrounded by smart kids who may or may not have gotten into other uber-elite schools. Whether they did or did not get into other uber-elite schools does not have any bearing on you and your experience as an undergraduate. </p>

<p>If some kids are bitter about the way college admissions treated them, so be it, it's an unpredictable system and it's not necessarily a fair one, either, and people will find ways to be bitter about anything, especially "settling" for a "lower" school. Even among my friends, there's the Duke kid who's bitter about not getting into Stanford and the Yale kid who is bitter about not getting into Penn, but once they get into the swing of things at their schools, they will start wondering why they ever considered that other "inferior" school.</p>

15

<p>Yale's advantages: Despite Yale's graduate population, it remains undergrad oriented, while Columbia feels more grad school oriented. Yale is far richer per undergrad and spends significantly more on advising and grants than Columbia does on a per student basis. Yale does much better at placing its grads into top law, business, and medical schools (look up any list available, including even Columbia's own grad schools). Yale has more top recruiters on campus (vault). Yale has a better social infrastructure, and a more campus oriented social scene. Yale has far more loyal alumni, and the feeling of "family" is much stronger.</p>

<p>Columbia, on the other hand, has New York. Advantages include being in a world-class city and getting part-time internships in media, fashion, whatever if you are so inclined. Socially, I am not sure its an advantage or disadvantage, because New York does seem to drain the local scene. The core, while intense, seems to be very rewarding.</p>

<p>Personally I think Yale is a stronger school and I personally prefer it socially as well. But Columbia is a great option.</p>

16

<p>New York is overrated (imo of course).
My opinion on the two schools is rather equal however, as I have no desire to attend either (they're not at all strong in the engineering I want to go into).</p>

17

<p>I agree NYC isn't ideal for a college kid.</p>