<p>I ordered Don Asher's Cool Colleges book from Amazon a few weeks ago, and fell in love with Deep Springs. I also thought the profile on the Merchant Marine Academy was interesting where kids spend their summers on sea. So, I'll be applying to go to school on a ranch and on the ocean this fall. Do any other out-of-the-box programs come to mind that are life-changing? Do you guys have any suggestions for back-up schools, because I understand admissions to both schools are extremely competitive. So far I have Swarthmore because I like the intellectual atmosphere, University of Chicago, because I like the Great Books program, and RPI, because I received a medal for math and science achievement for $15,000 per year. My parents want me to apply to all of the Ivys, and MIT as well, so that makes a total of 14 schools. Thanks for any help. If you need information about my academics/activities, let me know.</p>
<p>If you want a real “Great Books” program, you will find it at St. Johns College (two versions, one in Annapolis MD and one in Santa Fe NM). Chicago’s Core Curriculum is not really anything like a Great Books program, and they get grumpy if you call it that. Columbia’s Core Curriculum is sort of halfway between Chicago’s and St. John’s. </p>
<p>The only thing remotely like a safety in your post is RPI, and that’s a safety only if you have great grades and test scores, and you really want to go there. Which seems unlikely based on all the other colleges you are choosing to apply to, none of which remotely resembles RPI. Or MMA for that matter. You may find project-learning attractive, but Deep Springs and MMA are two very, very, very different approaches to that. (Read the New Yorker profile of Deep Springs from about 5 years ago.)</p>
<p>What’s so special about Colombia’s Core Curriculum versus that of Harvard’s or Yale’s?
Also, I do like project-learning. Do you know anything about the co-op programs at schools like Northeastern? Thanks.</p>
<p>Chicago and Columbia used to have very similar Cores, but Chicago shook its Core up about a decade ago. At Columbia, everyone in the College (i.e., not the engineering students) takes the same 5 courses (two of which are year-long) plus a writing course at some point during their first two years – about half of their overall course load. Those are broad, interdisciplinary classes that give everyone a common base of knowledge in mainstream Western culture, including the humanities, political philosophy, and the history of science. Then, on top of that, there are some distributional requirements (but not as many as at colleges that only have distributional requirements). </p>
<p>Chicago has more of a Chinese-menu approach, but everyone has to take a year of a special broad Social Science course and two years total of a special Humanities course, interdisciplinary Civilization courses (history/area studies), and arts, plus meeting semi-distributional requirements in math, physical science, biology, and language. Students can choose among 5-6 different courses for “Sosc” and “Hum”, but there is a fair amount of overlap between the choices. Compared to Columbia, the Chicago Core syllabi are a little less mainstream, more idiosyncratic – everyone at Chicago winds up reading Walter Benjamin and Emile Durkheim, names that I don’t think show up on the Columbia syllabus, in addition to stuff that does like Genesis, the Iliad, Dante, Plato, and Marx.</p>
<p>The Chicago and Columbia Cores both require 30-40% of a student’s courses to complete, and ensure that all undergraduates share a common base of reference (a little more so at Columbia). Contrast that with St. John’s, where everyone is basically in lockstep for three years, and the study of math begins with Euclid. (No one reads Euclid at Chicago or Columbia.)</p>
<p>Harvard doesn’t really have a core curriculum at all. Until a few years ago, they had something called a core curriculum, but it was really more like a broad menu of courses in a variety of fields that students were required to sample. They have the same sort of thing now, but they stopped calling it “Core Curriculum”. Harvard’s general education requirements have been more or less permanently in flux as long as I can remember. It’s a great university, so no one cares that much (except, of course, for the people who keep revising the rules – they care passionately). The distributional requirements outside your major field represent maybe 20% of your courses.</p>
<p>Yale has an interesting approach. Its general education requirements are mainly distributional (i.e., you just have to take a few courses in several areas outside your major). But it offers a voluntary (abbreviated) Columbia-style core program called Directed Studies that’s very popular (although tough for hard-science people to pull off because of the workload). Of course, it’s not quite the same when only 10% or so of undergraduates take the core, vs. 85% at Columbia and 100% at Chicago. Stanford has a similar voluntary humanities-focused core program called Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities that also gets high marks.</p>
<p>Of course, there’s no rule that you have to have a core curriculum to be intellectual or rigorous. Students sometimes assume that’s the case, especially high school students, but there are colleges like Amherst and Brown with no requirements at all, and the students still learn plenty and make certain they get broad educations without being forced to do that.</p>
<p>Why would you want to apply to all the Ivys? I can’t imagine liking both Dartmouth and Columbia. RPI is a fine safety if you are interested in math and science and since you got (I assume) the Rensselaer medal you presumably will be admitted. But if you like the idea of a core curriculum you don’t really sound like an RPI/MIT type.</p>
<p>My younger son liked the idea of a Core curriculum, but felt he could take similar courses at universities that didn’t make him do it. One awkward thing about the St. Johns curriculum is that you can’t take a semester off, you have to take the whole year and junior year abroad isn’t in the cards either.</p>
<p>JHS: I like the idea of a voluntary humanities-focused core at Yale. I wonder why only 10% of undergrads take it though versus 85% and 100% at Columbia and U of C respectively. The distribution requirements at Harvard seem tough (20% of your courses outside major field) as well as at Chicago and Columbia (35-40%). Do you think these offer an advantage compared to Amherst and Brown, or are they more of a burden in your opinion?</p>
<p>mathmom: I guess I got to figure out what type of school I’d like. It’s a waste of time to apply to both Dartmouth and Columbia when they are so dissimilar. Where does your son go to school?</p>
<p>run, </p>
<p>At Yale, you have to apply to Directed Studies, there is limited space, and it involves a lot of extra writing. All the classes are seminars, but not everyone wants that. It’s tough to combine Directed Studies with a lab science, and nearly impossible to combine it with two lab sciences, so that cuts out a lot of people. And the courses aren’t necessarily better than you can get off the shelf. I took and really liked DS, but if I had been operating with perfect information about the alternatives I wouldn’t have taken it.</p>
<p>At Columbia and Chicago, the core curricula are mandatory (except for engineers, of which there are none at Chicago). “Mandatory” tends to increase participation rates a lot. </p>
<p>The advantage of the cores at Columbia, Chicago, or St. John’s College, is that all the students have more in common with each other than students at other colleges. That makes it easier to have substantive intellectual dialogue among students who don’t know each other well. (Even if that intellectual dialogue is sometimes about how much they hate the core curriculum.) The cost of that is that not every section of every course is focused and coherent, because the goals are so diffuse, and you have people in almost every section who would rather not be there, which is not optimal. </p>
<p>My daughter, who graduated from Chicago a few years ago, loved the idea of the Core, and pretty much hated its execution. She spent a good part of her first year wishing she were at Brown and free to take courses she liked. She especially disliked her Hum class, which reminded her of high school, even though on paper it was right on her interests. But now that she is out in the big, bad world, she does appreciate how much faster she can get to a real exchange of ideas with other Chicago alumni, because they share such a vast set of intellectual reference points. My son, who also went to Chicago, originally thought the Core was a necessary evil . . . but the second quarter of Sosc changed his life and his major, and he pretty much loved every Core class he took (except the other two quarters of Sosc).</p>
<p>I never thought about the core offering intellectual inquiries among students and alumni. Interesting…I’ll have to think about Yale’s Directed Studies Program because I want to go into lab science.</p>
<p>Well I have two kids. The older one just graduated from Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science. He got into Harvard and had a hard time turning it down, but CMU had a lot more to offer in his major and he’s not one to take advantage of Harvard’s other opportunities, didn’t care about Boston etc.</p>
<p>My younger son, the one who liked Chicago’s Core Curriculum, ended up at Tufts. I think he made the right call for him. He’s really more of a change the world now guy than a theory guy, but he waited until the last day to make up his mind. He spent winter break in India and Pakistan interviewing people about nuclear disarmament and is in Jordan now studying Arabic. Like JHS’s son, he seems to have stumbled on a course that is defining his life.</p>
<p>That’s interesting that your son turned down Harvard for CMU. I’ll have to look into it. And your son going to winter break in Asia with Tufts sounds incredible. I am so excited to commence college next year. You have no idea!</p>