<p>Which is your first choice? Which do you like more? Apply to that one’s early program. From your post, you seem to like Stanford more. A few things:</p>
<p>Stanford emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach to education. In fact, this is explained in virtually every one of the publications that Stanford sends out. It offers a wide array of interdisciplinary majors and 13% of the students are in such majors (that’s more than engineering, which is the second largest category of student majors, ignoring the broad social sciences category). That said, Stanford offers a very strong IR major. Here’s the page for it:</p>
<p>[ICA[/url</a>]</p>
<p>You can also try the international policy studies:</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://ica.stanford.edu/?q=ips]ICA[/url”>http://ica.stanford.edu/?q=ips]ICA[/url</a>]</p>
<p>Or if you really like SLE and the humanities, you can try the interdisciplinary studies in humanities:</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/group/HSP/GPH/]Interdisciplinary”>http://www.stanford.edu/group/HSP/GPH/]Interdisciplinary</a> Studies in Humanities](<a href=“http://ica.stanford.edu/ir/]ICA[/url”>http://ica.stanford.edu/ir/)</p>
<p>Here’s a full list of interdisciplinary programs offered at Stanford:</p>
<p>[Stanford</a> University | Academics](<a href=“http://stanford.edu/home/academics/programs.html]Stanford”>http://stanford.edu/home/academics/programs.html)</p>
<p>You can, of course, design your own major, even, and with the 1,500 courses offered to undergrads and the myriad courses offered to grads that undergrads also have access to, you have plenty of options to design a strongly defined major.</p>
<p>Stanford also has top departments in English literature, comparative literature, and philosophy, and counts over 40 members in the American Philosophical Society in its faculty.</p>
<p>Another matter to consider is Columbia’s core; while you may like it, it may prove difficult to take classes in all your interests while pursuing a major and satisfying all the core requirements.</p>
<p>Columbia is an excellent school, obviously, and you can’t go wrong with either, but your post seems to show that Stanford fits you perfectly (though I might be a teeny bit biased! :)).</p>