<p>Hi,
How would you compare Columbia's science program to the rest of the Ivies? Of course, I understand that each university has departments that are stronger than others, but in terms of general excellence in the sciences, where would Columbia come in? Thanks all.</p>
<p>At or near the top.</p>
<p>yale, harvard, brown all would be at bottom... yes i know yale and brown are spending millions to revamp them but that wont affect their standing for years to come</p>
<p>princeton has a good fisx department (at least that i know of) so i guess it's up there...dartmouth i know nothing about</p>
<p>cornell has a really world renowned science faculty but then again so do Columbia and U.Penn.</p>
<p>rough ranking i would say</p>
<p>cornell/columbia/u.penn
princeton
dartmouth(?)
yale
harvard
brown</p>
<p>
On the contrary, Harvard has a top-notch science department. Columbia (along with Harvard, Princeton, and perhaps Cornell) is one of the world's foremost research universities. Its undergrads have very good placement into top graduate schools, and its graduate students have very good placement into top post-doc/assistant prof. positions. For undergrad it is well to note that Columbia, Harvard, and Princeton all have very small college populations, making it very easy to find professors to do research with. Also, it makes it easy to get to know your professors better which in turn makes your undergrad science experience all the more worthwhile.</p>
<p>As a graduate of Columbia and a biology/medical school professor at a major university now, having trained at Yale after Columbia, many of the statements here are not correct. Columbia is strong but certainly not anywhere near the top of the ivies. Chemistry is strong, but Yale and Harvard are better, no question. Physics used to be a strong department at Columbia, but many of the ivies (Princeton, harvard yale) are much better. Biology is strong, but again, Harvard, Yale, and Cornell would probably be stronger. But this is certainly not an important issue here for undergraduate teaching. As a research unviersity, Columbia is sorely lacking in strong resources. The medical school is in serious financial trouble and this is reflected in the support for scientific research. But the real issue is how good is the teaching and what are the opportunities for research. These are strong at Columbia, but also strong at many small private LACs. But lets not exaggerate Columbia's strengths or its reputation in the sciences. And this is just the ivies. MIT, CalTech and the UC's are much stronger as well.</p>
<p>Is the med school really in serious financial trouble? Why isn't the grant money rolling in? This is shocking to me.</p>
<p>the endowment is not strong and the hospital is a big time money loser. For most med schools, profits from the hospital support the research arm. columbia clearly has great faculty, but overall their federal funding support is weak compare to for example, harvard (which is legally divded into many different entities, each counted separately), Yale which is much smaller than columbia (less professors, much smaller hospital), hopkins, ucsf, washington, wustl, etc.</p>
<p>yea it's still one of the top med schools in the country, though. all other things aside, it's hard to argue w/that simple fact.</p>