JHU vs. Dartmouth vs. Columbia

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
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<p>Hey guys, </p>

<p>May 1st is really soon, and I can't choose. Although I'm split between 6 schools, let's just compare these 3. I'm strongly considering a neuroscience major, but I plan to explore a variety of options (especially BME if I go to Hopkins). Here are some of my current opinions on them:</p>

<p>JHU: It probably offers me the best shot at getting into a top medical school if I go that route, but it probably has less of a diversity in overall student interests. I was accepted into BME, which is a more challanging but potentially more beneficial program if I do well. I also like that there seems to be a tight-knit group of 100 BMEs within a big school (I'm used to schools with 45-60 kids per grade). My concerns are the large workload that students have complained about and there not being any major draw-factors that make Hopkins unique (D-plan / core curriculum). </p>

<p>Dartmouth: It probably has my favorite campus community. Everyone seems really friendly and thrilled to be there. I like the idea of going skiing or kayaking near campus since I'm an outdoorsy person, and I like the internship and study-abroad opportunities that come with the D-plan. My concerns are that Dartmouth is not really known for its cutting-edge science teaching and research (although research seems more accessible there) and that the D-plan might make me cram too much work into a short time frame even if I am taking less clases. </p>

<p>Columbia: I love the core curriculum that really seems to provide a well-rounded education for my classmates and I in small, discussion-based classes that change the way we think (although I hear that some teachers are duds). I also like all the great science research going on there and the learning, internship, and social opportunities in NYC. My concerns regard the red-tape bureaucratic system I keep hearing about and maintaining a strong campus community while in a big city. </p>

<p>So yeah, what do you guys reccomend. How's the workload and competitiveness at each of these schools? How's the social life? How are the classes (I prefer small, discussion-based courses to lectures)? How's the premed system and the placemend at top med schools? Any further advice would be GREATLY appreciated!</p>

<p>Thanks,
cc2212</p>

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<p>first about columbia, because i can speak to that:</p>

<p>columbia is very rigorous, but doable. grade inflation is there for sure, but what you get out of it is a lot of knowledge in fast placed classes. competitiveness is highest in premed classes - especially early on when half the school is premed - and evens out by junior and senior year. though i don’t think that columbia is back scratching competitive, it just means you have to keep up with the joneses.</p>

<p>social life is varied, no one way to call it, though i would say if you want to have a lot of fun for 4 years and do things your peers in Baltimore or Hanover could never do (i.e. go to clubs, meet famous people, try thousands of kinds of food, sneak into closed off parts of the Met) columbia is the place to do it. if you want to do research at 2am in the chem lab, or to have an internship at Rockefeller University, yeah, you can do that too.</p>

<p>classes probably max out at 150-200 person lectures for intro premed classes (they are required for all engineers, majors in those departments and premeds), but then core classes are capped at 20 students or so, and by your sophomore year unless you take a class with an uber famous professor most if not all of your classes will be sub 50 with opportunities to do seminars are small workshops really early on. the core is a great balance where discussion is always present and at columbia there is a premium on students speaking their minds and talking in class. premed placement is high - probably as high as jhu even with bme - but remember that you get into medical school, no school increases your chances of getting into medical school. if you don’t work hard it doesn’t matter. and neuroscience is very different from a BME major, fyi. i know you can explore both, but the rigor of it and the math for each is different. that being said, you can get into medical school with each major.</p>

<p>re: your analysis of columbia. teachers can be duds at all schools, it really is how you make of it, if you don’t do your share - you wont enjoy it as much. sci res on and off campus is pretty incredible, way up there. the bureaucracy at columbia is not overwhelming, but it is there. columbia is not a coddling kind of place that hands you life on a platter, but if you are creative and have a bit of adventure you can easily circumnavigate all the rules. and as i’ve said before - the uni has been working a lot lately to bridge gaps and make thins easier for students (must give them props for that), but the operation of a major research university is far different than a smaller college/uni like dartmouth.</p>

<p>that is really where i see most of your differences coming - columbia and jhu are research universities, dartmouth is an undergrad focused ‘college.’ the communities therefore will of course be different. jhu and columbia are in cities, hanover aint close to anywhere. between jhu and columbia i find you hard pressed unless money is involved to chose jhu over columbia - cu has a lot more to offer - better location, equally strong sciences, stronger humanities overall, stronger alumni network. columbia and dartmouth are pretty opposites in most respect. </p>

<p>a way to think about each.
dartmouth is more for someone who sees college as a break from society, a place where you have friends, may or may not have cell phone service, and can enjoy things with a certain distance from the ‘real world.’</p>

<p>columbia certainly can mimic that lifestyle - the campus is self-contained, you will spend most of your time in a few blocks with all of life’s necessities around (including more restaurants than in the entire state of New Hampshire, a huge 24/7 library, great reserach facilities). there is a “columbia bubble” as there is a “dartmouth bubble,” but columbia’s bubble is far more porous because you cannot mistake columbia for being just an ordinary college town - it is for people that see college as a jump start to their future through internships, conversations with leading figures in the world, work in local communities. it is a very active experience that engages you with important questions right away. i consider columbia a layered experience where one layer is your college life, then your city life, your career life, etc. etc. </p>

<p>in the end you have to decide which of these you find most compelling. if you chose columbia, you wont be disappointed. but you have great choices out there.</p>

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<p>Go to Dartmouth, or your local community college. Its basically the same thing but less money.</p>

<p>hope this helps and good luck!</p>

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<p>Have you visited all three? If so, I suspect you know your choice, deep down. Focus on where you want to spend the next four years, on a day-to-day basis. My son knew within a couple of hours at Columbia that it was his place. (I preferred Stanford and Yale, but what do I know; we are all different.) Go with your gut–four years is too long to spend at a place determined by high school perceptions of what others dictate.</p>

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<p>I mean, just by the way that you described the three schools, it is obvious that you are learning towards Dartmouth. I wouldn’t recommend Dartmouth to just anybody, but your particular interests seem well suited for the school. Did you go to dimensions?</p>

<p>Anyways, you’re running out of time… better choose quick!</p>

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<p>Dartmouth and Columbia are polar opposites in many ways (attending one and frequenting the other)</p>

<p>Columbia’s major drawback is its lack of campus cohesion. That said, groups are ubiquitous and you will have your own group of friends. </p>

<p>Dartmouth, on the other hand, REVOLVES around the fraternities. Personally, I enjoy it on occasion, however, if every single weekend was like that for four years and the sole recreational activity is drinking, I would die.</p>

<p>GPA, on the other hand, should not be an issue at either.</p>

<p>To be quite honest, to those who had a rigorous HS curriculum (along the lines of TJ, Stuy, Hunter, AAST), Columbia/Dartmouth are EASILY less rigorous.</p>

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<p>Dartmouth is much more than frats. Its all about causal fun. Swimming in the river during sophomore summers, amazing study abroad, hot cocoa in the library in winter, ice skating on occum pond, playing pong with friends at house parties, skiing on the dartmouth skiiway, snowball fights, ultimate frisbee on the green, etc. IMO much more of a true college experience, not to mention the amazing recruiting, access to research for undergrads, and in turn top 7 grad placement.</p>

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<p>I’d pick Columbia for the reasons outlined by admissionsgeek, but that’s just me</p>

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<p>lolcats - Dartmouth is much more like Pomona than Columbia.</p>

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<p>I think Dartmouth is an excellent school, but I’d rather go to Columbia because of New York. If Columbia wasn’t in NYC, I’d probably like Dartmouth more for all the reasons I chose Pomona (at Pomona I kind of get the best of both worlds). I was deciding between Columbia and Pomona, but never applied to Dartmouth, because having a big city was one of my requirements.</p>

<p>Anyways, besides city, campus community was a primary factor in my decision. It sounds like the OP prefers Dartmouth’s, so it might be the best choice for him/her.</p>

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<p>slipper, i think he just likes my long-winded prose more. ;). </p>

<p>regarding your description of dartmouth. i am curious why it is centered around a lot of things that really are not ‘college’ specific when you called it a college experience. i could go through every thing you mentioned and it could be done in a prep school, or in my case my exurban public school and town (though we didn’t own a skiiway). in any case, my above description of dmouth i think still stands, nothing wrong with it, not for me, but i know many students want that walden pond-esque reserve.</p>

<p>re: pomona and dmouth - just because they are both LAC-ish doesn’t mean that pomana and dartmouth are the same. a lot has to do with student culture. i gather that pomana and the other cm college kids are a little bit more on the quirky side, more columbia/brown types. so i could trust that lolcats would like columbia even if he goes to pomona.</p>

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<p>yeah it was a tough decision, and I definitely saw myself going to Columbia at certain points. Not so sure it would be the case with me for Dartmouth.</p>

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<p>with regards to social life, class size and format, and medical school success, I would cast my vote for Dartmouth.</p>

<p>As you yourself observed, there’s a strong sense of community and warmth at Dartmouth, in addition to the fun lifestyle that appears to be prominent on campus. You would have an enjoyable personal and academic experience there.</p>

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<p>I have been to both. I know this is the Columbia board and I have many friends who are alums of columbia. Its a great and unique school. But there is no question in my mind that, for me at least, the Dartmouth experience was much more well rounded. Columbia is an intense school and the campus is relatively dead. Without a doubt the most active weekend at Columbia (bacchanal) would be a quiet weekend at Dartmouth. I also went to both the Columbia and Dartmouth 5-year reunions (my ex girlfriend is a Columbia alum). Columbia’s was a nice tent on the lawn with about 150 people attending in suits. Dartmouth had about 850 people for the whole weekend - people stayed in dorms, took over the frats at night with people running around everywhere, and both nights there were wonderful nights under the stars with wine, basically feeling like a wedding. I think this is indicative of the difference between the schools.</p>

<p>Dartmouth does so many things that are intangible well. sure many schools have study abroad for example - but Dartmouth takes it 5 steps further with excursions on weekends, a dartmouth professor as a chaperone, week long paid trips around the country, etc. I know that eating with your professors, ice skating during the winter on campus, and hanging out with your entire class in rented houses for the summer is not for everyone- but personally I found the intimacy of the Dartmouth environment far more community oriented and it was just more special to me. </p>

<p>Many people prefer going out to clubs and restaurants over “casual fun” and house parties and I think for those people Columbia is a better choice. But if you want the “quintessential” college experience I don’t see how one could do better than Dartmouth. To each their own, but I think this is a fit decision over anything else.</p>

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<p>slipper - let’s be clear with our bias.</p>

<p>i think columbia offers the quintessential college experience because to me college is more than frat parties and ice skating on occum’s pond. so let’s just admit that your definition of what the quintessential college experience is, well speaks to each of our biases.</p>

<p>but what i think i am arguing and others are to is that all that you get at dartmouth you could get at columbia to an extent. i felt a great community at columbia. i will say first of all, i wonder when you graduated college, i graduated pretty recently and i know my experience at CU is marketedly different than people who graduated at the beginning of the decade. </p>

<p>so there is an intimate community with some good ‘casual fun’ involved which i can certainly attest to; but you also get an incredible academic experience with the core that certainly mirrors in intimacy any LAC academic foundation with a unique and unified introduction to literature and philosophy; you also gain an education of and in new york city which has a dynamic unto itself including an acute understanding that there are people outside of the ivy bubble; and you gain direct access to the internship/resources of the city; and you can go to clubs and restaurants when you are not going to frat parties and EC dorm fun.</p>

<p>i think you are right in the to each his own. to me, i like the package columbia offers, i think it is complete, complex and fascinating. does that mean you could go to it and hate it or have a bad experience? of course. columbia is certainly intense and at times overwhelming with the opportunities, like many things, it could just be the luck of the draw - and so i tell people to go visit and if you don’t like it, don’t go and don’t have a prejudice about it - it is your chioce.</p>

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<p>I graduated in 2002, but I actually know many many people who graduated between 2006-2007. I’ve spent my fair share of time this decade at places like 1020 and the Heights. I’ve actually been to the school, heck I’ve spent just as much of my life at Columbia as I have at Dartmouth. The reality is the community elements aren’t close. there isn’t even the physical infrastructure to support an off-campus party, EC apartment parties don’t come close. The ftay scene is fragement - open campus wide frat parties are rare. Walk down Webster ave at Dartmouth and people are everywhere hanging out and having a good time. 113th on the other hard has brothers in their houses and the occasional party - not a big campus wide scene. Columbia is definitely good for a certain tupe of person - but its not a traditional college environment.</p>

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<p>cc2212,</p>

<p>i’d be happy to get on the phone with you, listen a bit more to your story, and talk about the pros/cons of both. PM me if you’re still reading this thread and are interested.</p>

<p>Best,
Steve</p>

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<p>[Greek</a> life restructures, grows | Columbia Spectator](<a href=“http://columbiaspectator.com/2009/04/23/greek-life-restructures-grows]Greek”>Greek life restructures, grows)</p>

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<p>Columbia would be my choice</p>

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<p>pbr has given the best advice in this thread. This is my go to “best advice” piece for people choosing between schools: [SENIOR</a> COLUMN: That Time the Numbers Lied to Me | Columbia Spectator](<a href=“http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2007/05/02/senior-column-time-numbers-lied-me]SENIOR”>SENIOR COLUMN: That Time the Numbers Lied to Me)</p>

<p>The takeaway: trust your gut!</p>