<p>I am deciding between Columbia, Carnegie Mellon, University of Chicago, and Northwestern. I am interested in pursuing Computer Science and Visual Arts. I eventually want to go into a career of either film or design. I want a university that will also let me explore Creative Writing and my parents are pushing a school where I'll be able to pursue financial engineering (or some other means to big $$). I really really like New York and am really excited to take advantage of intern opportunities. I know Carnegie should fit the bill, but I didn't really like the school when I visited.</p>
<p>drop chicago and NW off the list. CMU is great for mixing cs and visual arts, but if the school sucks in your books, just come to Columbia. It gives you new york city which is the heart of art, fashion and entertainment. The Columbia SEAS CS program is rock solid, and if you decide that you want to pursue the big bucks, it’s right at your door step, because seas is one of the best stepping stones to wall street.</p>
<p>^^Yup yup. And SEAS Financial Engineering is da bomb</p>
<p>so basically, you’ll satisfy yourself and your parents, because you have the option of applying for the FE program: if you really don’t want to do it, you can just say “oops, I guess my GPA wasn’t high enough” :)</p>
<p>Basically: you apply for the FE program after your first year, or something…</p>
<p>thanks confidentialcoll, that was helpful</p>
<p>just curious, but why drop northwestern?</p>
<p>also, how easy is it to double-major/minor at columbia?</p>
<p>not easy to do a double major in seas, very easy to pick up multiple minors. i believe one of the seas minors is art history, and there was talk about making a vis arts one (if you want to make a minor in seas you really just have to ask, they are pretty amenable). but you are welcome to take any number of courses in the arts as there is no audition to take fine arts classes at CU.</p>
<p>to be honest about NWU, i’ve never heard someone choosing it for engineering over columbia. “rankings” put them at about equal for grad school, but i am not sure if that is how most people would decide undergrad (cu is a slightly bigger engineering school, has a lot of resources, access to nyc, and a good compsci). that also might be my naivete on the subject. i’ve heard people choosing n’western for ugrad journalism or acting, but never engineering. in the end though the schools are very different. n’western is larger undergrad, very frat oriented, more compartmentalized with even more undergraduate schools than columbia, and people say they go into chicago - but a) that is going into chicago and not new york, b) the el is not the most amenable subway system. columbia is a great eng education that gives you strong analytical skills (soft skills as concoll would say), access to the city, and is very helpful if you change your mind.</p>
<p>I’d say that CMU is better if you know you want to, after college, continue into the CS/VisualArts/maybe even game design field. That really is their speciality and they have a really neat approach to CS that makes them distinct in a progressive sort of way. </p>
<p>However, I’d say Columbia or UChicago would be best if you do not have a direct picture of what you want to do. You’ll go in, take your required spectrum of classes, and through first following their solid beaten path, you’ll then form ideas about how you want to customize and advance. Think about whether you want to get a minor or dual major - if you want to also specialize a little in econ, consider CMU and UCh with more strength. </p>
<p>Naturally on the columbia forum you’re going to get some serious leaning. That’s why I’m focusing on the other schools here - don’t get the idea that I don’t think very highly of Col</p>
<p>cmu does have solid game design and i think anyone familiar with the last lecture knows about that by now. </p>
<p>but i wanted to highlight with greater positivity than nick (i am glad a future yalie does speak with accuracy about cu) the idea of flexibility in a columbia education. there are very few students who know exactly what ‘they’ want to do in their life though the college process often forces people through checking boxes to decide earlier and earlier. columbia is a place where you can study the particular and the general, form connections between multiple disciplines and have a degree of certainty that you will find some form of employment because of the university’s resources. </p>
<p>i think that columbia is a place that makes you smarter because it rejects as dogma the certainty of direction - apply for CS end up in CS. it is a place where you come in as a hardcore CS person and fall in love with enviro-engineering and have the time to switch and adjust. so the concept that you can have one of the best liberal arts experiences coupled with top notch training in particular disciplines (CS in your case, physics, biomedical engineering, and other hard and applied sciences; poli sci, econ and other social sciences; english, comparative literature an the humanities) is something that is extremely compelling for an 18 year old who sees college as a period of exploration and affirmation than unidimensional and narrow. ultimately this means that in your path to where you end up, the career choice you make - you have been given the opportunity to see multiple things an affirmatively choose your career.</p>
<p>i think that is what makes columbia such an ideal place and something to consider in the process.</p>
<p>the usual ending statement: you really can’t go wrong, it is what you feel is best, if you are industrious and work hard you will be happy in life. if you go to columbia - you will not regret it because it is really a fantastic learning community.</p>
<p>Pittsburgh is a pretty dreary city… as far as opportunities go, you can’t compare it to NYC. that’s enough reason to choose Columbia IMO.</p>
<p>im gonna disagree with confidentialcol and admissionsgeek.
northwestern (mccormick) is one of the most reputed schools for engineering there is. if you go by undegrad ranking. us news puts northwestern a lot higher up than fu foundation and almost at par with princeton. (as an international student. i cant think of too many people who would turn nw engineering down for that of ivy engineering, which imo need to catch up by quite a bit - except for perhaps cornell/princeton)
yes, nw journalism and theatre are superb. but nw engineering is really really good too. and for the op. nw offers a kellog undegrad certificate program in financial economics which is very very prestigious.</p>
<p>having said that - i absolutely love columbia!! but i just feel that nw engineering is probably a notch above that of columbia’s. yet columbia seas is coming up very rapidly.</p>
<p>CMU has the strongest CS dept. It’s one of the 3 or 4 best in the country. Columbia’s is very strong, but not quite at that level yet. NW (and UC) is a notch or two below that, contrary to what slicedbread “feels”.</p>
<p>Columbia and NU are schools with such vastly different cultures that I’m not sure you should be deciding based on the difference in engineering rankings.</p>
<p>@ herenow
i was speaking of the overall ‘engineering’ depts and not just cs. & what i feel is based not only on common perception but also rankings.
us news undegrad engineering rankings :
northwestern (mccormick) : 12
columbia (fu foundation) : not in the top 20</p>
<p>having said that. ill repeat that I absolutely love columbia and rankings should not determine one’s choice.</p>
<p>and with regards to cs.
both columbia & nw lie between 10-20. so theres really not a tremendous difference in the quality of the programs.</p>
<p>@ slicedbread
Rankings of undergraduate departments are very subjective and unclear about what’s being measured. Graduate school rankings give a much better objective sense of the overall department strength, measuring the quality of the faculty and research coming out of the department. CMU is top 4, Columbia is 17, and UC and NW are mid-thirties in the usnews CS rankings.</p>
<p>its very convenient to reason against the value of undergrad rankings in order to justify your opinion.
however; i hope the OP makes a very well informed choice and refers to the most credible sources possible (which would probably indicate the strength of northwestern’s engineering dept)</p>
<p>this is a thread that is over a year old sliced. </p>
<p>i’m glad you’re down with the times.</p>
<p>I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I’ll just say that for Financial Engineering NW seems to the be the obvious choice over the other schools. NW Engineering Does indeed fall barely short of the top 10 engineering schools - no small feat since several top 10 spaces are more or less reserved for MIT, Stanford, CalTech, Cornell etc. NW also offers the advantage of Kellogg - a business school that is generally considered to be top 3 in the US. Undergraduates may take courses there their senior year and I imagine that seeing classes from Kellogg would lend a pretty powerful punch to a Financial Engineer’s transcript. For other aspects of engineering such as CS, Columbia and NW are fairly equal and NW is as much a hub for the arts as Columbia is.</p>
<p>That being said, both NW and Columbia are fine institutions indeed and some of the best in the world. The OP is very fortunate to have been accepted to both.</p>
<p>suzaliscious has no clue about Financial Engineering program. Columbia Financial Engineering program is one of the best in the nation and is ranked in the top 3 worldwide.</p>