Berkeley has some street people, but otherwise is an awesome college town. I have no idea what some of you are thinking.
@jym626 - A couple of things stood out on that visit. It was mid-afternoon on a Saturday, and there was a drunk/drug user passed out in his own urine in the wooded area near the main entrance to campus. Nobody seemed to notice.
Later we walked through a street festival that along Durant that mostly attracted a variety of locals. While the campus was nice, they all rapidly decided that Berkeley was not someplace they wanted to live for four years. In contrast, they liked other urban campuses like Chicago and Columbia.
Chicago and Columbia can be scary! . Harlem is a whole lot better than it used to be, though. I recall going uptown onto… maybe Amsterdam Ave (this was decades ago) and the food place we passwd whose name has always stuck with me was “Lord of the Chicken”.
“2. LAC is not possible. My father and in-laws think that LACs are finishing schools for rich girls, and I would not be able to convince them otherwise. I am not planning to pick this battle.”
So people give you erroneous information and you follow it? If your father said NYC was the capital of NY, would you just nod and agree? They’re simply wrong.
NYC is the real capital of NY. No disputes here.
Well, NYC had Lord of the chicken, but I didn’t see a castle or parliament anywhere.
UN building? Castles are in New Haven…
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I think there are enough non-LAC universities in US. LACs are not worth fighting with parents / in-laws. LACs may be fine, but they are not worth having issues within the family.
Columbia is not in Harlem. It’s in Morningside Heights, always was.
The brand new Manhattanville campus is in fact in Harlem.
There are castles on the Hudson, CCDD14. Just not in the City.
And when I was in school, my friends that went to Columbia lived in Harlem - walking distance to campus, IIRCC.
They may have called it that but the boundary never went that far south on the west side @jym626 - only the east 
Not even in the 1600s: http://ny.curbed.com/2015/8/20/9933196/tracing-350-years-of-harlems-ever-shifting-boundaries
That said, I lived on the northern boundary of MH/southern of Harlem, and many of my friends from school (on the upper west) were not allowed to come to my house to play because it was above 96th. Morningside Heights wasn’t Harlem but it was seen as just as dangerous at one time. IMO it never was, I moved around solo as a kid there quite happily.
A small city is not the same as “suburbia”. No one who has been to Ann Arbor would probably equate it with suburbia. That is the sort of nuance you miss without visiting.
Parts of Harlem are beautiful. The Hudson is beautiful. My memorable trip upstream was to see Sing Sing. Now that’s one fortress.
Can you double major at Columbia? Engineering and Pol Science? Don’t ask, both are D passions.
That would be tricky @SincererLove , between engineering and the Core (which is slightly less for SEAS but still a lot).
This program is their answer to that, I think - it’s a 3-2 or 4-2 with Columbia College or Barnard.
http://undergrad.admissions.columbia.edu/learn/academiclife/engineering/combined-plan-program
I go to U of a M AA. Can confirm Ann Arbor is not suburbia. And Ann Arborites would probably get hives if you suggested otherwise 
Since JHU came up, lots aren’t crazy about Baltimore, either.
Trinity is in Hartford, another tough city.
Middletown CT (Wesleyan) isn’t quaint.
UCLA? Now there’s a beaut’.
The mansions and “castles” of the Hudson Valley are spectacular. http://www.newyorkupstate.com/catskills/2015/11/castles_of_the_hudson_valley_take_a_photo_tour_of_these_magnificent_landmarks.html
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-hyde-park-vanderbilt-mansion
Actually Cloisters in Manhattan can be considered a castle.
But we deviated greatly from the task at hand - make sure that Californiaa’s daughter gets accepted to a very good college.
I’m puzzled by this. Middletown has a lovely Main Street that is chock-a-block with restored colonial houses, mom and pop owned cafés as well as your usual assortment of franchises. FWIW, Starbucks is coming soon. For a city that is three quarters the size of Utica, it’s plenty quaint. However, years of urban renewal have left the area between it and the Wesleyan campus a bit of a dead zone. That must be what you are referring to.