University of Chicago, Cornell or Columbia

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Chicago ✅
1

My son was recently accepted at the University of Chicago, the University of Maryland Honors and Cornell University. He is waiting to hear from Comumbia. He is interested in Applied Math and/or Physics as an undergraduate and is planning on attending graduate school in these fields.

At this point, he is leaning toward the University of Chicago due to the new program in Applied and Computational Math, the urban location, research opportunities and housing system. It seems like Chicago may have a better social life than Columbia and a better location than Cornell. We are visiting for accepted students day soon and would appreciate any insight into this difficult decision. Thanks!

2

My son was admitted to Chicago and is waiting to hear from Princeton. Princeton had been his first choice, but he’s absolutely fallen in love with Chicago. The culture, the core, the housing system really fit him well. Also, he seems likely to find more kindred spirits at Chicago than Princeton. He is interested in many things and the core accommodates this. We visited in February and it was terrific. Good luck.

3

I think all three schools are comparable schools and your intended majors are well regarded by the academic world for all of them. What distinguishes them could be the social economic aspects of them and for that you should visit and stay for few days in each school to get a real feeling from each to make a decision.

4

You need to visit them. Columbia has one of the best physics and math departments in the US. Plus, beside the College, there is an entire engineering school.

5

If you son has some tentative interest regarding graduate studies in math / physics, I think Chicago or Columbia is the clear choice (I would only choose Cornell over these two with scholarship money in play, ceteris paribus).

Competitive PhD and terminal MS programs in non-life science STEM fields take few American undergrads, and when they do spots are almost exclusively reserved for graduates of highly selective colleges. There three basic reasons: 1) Generally, only students from these colleges can recommendation letters from reputed professors, and recommendation letters matter a lot; 2) GPA scales and nature of coursework at Chicago and Columbia will both be well known to grad school admissions committees; 3) The best measure of one’s ability to succeed in a top flight graduate program are grades from another top flight graduate program. Thus a student who racks up a few A’s in PhD level courses at Chicago or Columbia in advance of graduate school applications thus moves himself well ahead of the pack. While I am not saying that Maryland lacks very talented students or that it is impossible to get noticed from a strong, state school, is is appreciably harder and oftentimes leads to the need for a pay-your-own way MS (with superlative grades) to prove the student in question was not really a big fish in a small pond.

6

There is no advantage for Columbia in math or physics, and no strong advantage in either field for Chicago or Columbia versus Cornell. All of the major rankings by department (USNWR, Shanghai, QS) have Chicago as superior to both Columbia and Cornell in both math and physics, while recognizing that they are close peers in physics (actually, USNWR has Chicago and Cornell tied), and not so very far apart in math except in one of the rankings. Cornell’s and Columbia’s ranking relative to one another varies by who is doing the ranking; in some they are tied, in some one is superior and in others the other is superior. Chicago is involved in running the Argonne and Fermi national research laboratories, which means that there is a big physics community around the University of Chicago.

7

Whoops. I was looking at an outdated Shanghai ranking. The most recent one has Columbia slightly higher than Chicago in math, whereas two years ago it trailed both Chicago and Cornell. Which also means that all three currently rate Columbia somewhat superior to Cornell in math.

8

“…a better location than Cornell”.

“Better” for some purposess, undoubtedly. “Better” for the purpose of spending four years as a college student is a matter of personal preference.

Life as a student in a campus-centered college in a college town, geared for, and significantly populated by, college students, is very different from life as a college student in a large city geared for working professionals, where students just fritter off. And Ithaca in particular is in a very beautiful setting. I have myself lived in each of these cities, and loved them all. But I don’t regret spending my college years in Ithaca, and I still go back up there whenever I can.

When I did grad work in NYC I really did not like it so much. I liked it later, when I had money. And I was working, making money, when I lived in Chicago.
My daughter actually transferred out of college in NYC to Cornell and preferred her life at Cornell.

Re:Chicago, I believe in the past @JHS posted an on-point experience from his extended family.

To each their own.

9

Thank you for all of the thoughtful responses. My son is still trying to decide and is considering Chicago, Cornell and Columbia. He was also accepted in the honors program at UC Santa Barbara which has an excellent physics program. Since we are from the northeast, the distance to California is a consideration. UCSB would be the least expensive, but it seems hard to walk away from Chicago, Columbia and Cornell. We underestimated how difficult final decisions can be and are planning a few visits for accepted student days to make a final decision.

10

UChicago all the way. My son is a third year and loves it.

11

Re monydad’s post: My kids were (and are) city kids. They appreciated the beauty of Cornell, thank you very much, but had no interest in spending more than a day there appreciating it. That was not the environment in which they wanted to spend their time, They both loved the University of Chicago and its neighborhood (although the one who still works in Hyde Park has chosen to live in livelier, hipper neighborhoods on the Northside since graduation).

I have a cousin, a decade older than my kids, who was at Chicago for his undergraduate degree and Cornell for his PhD. He grew up in a small college town in the upper Midwest, a place not unlike Ithaca (but not anywhere near as exciting). I don’t think he felt comfortable at the University of Chicago for a day. He felt under siege all the time, sure he was about to be attacked. It was noisy, dirty. He never felt confident enough to leave campus and explore Hyde Park, much less the rest of Chicago Cornell was complete liberation – he could finally breathe. He loved every minute of his time there, so much so that they more or less had to pry his thesis out of him, because he loved his life there so much. Now, a number of years on, he lives in a gentrifying neighborhood that is considerably noisier, dirtier, and scarier than Hyde Park, and he’s fine with it, bikes everywhere. He’s considerably more mature than he was half a lifetime ago, when he just wasn’t ready to live in that kind of urban neighborhood.

It really doesn’t matter that his reaction to Hyde Park involved lots of plain, old immaturity, racism, and teenage resistance to change. He was really very unhappy at Chicago, notwithstanding that he thought the education was first-rate. Most students would have adapted after a few weeks; he didn’t. At Cornell, he felt like himself; it was absolutely the right place for him to be.

And that’s the moral of the story. Don’t make your life crappy. Go to a place where you feel excited and good about yourself.

12

Adding: It should be needless to say, but I’ll say it anyway. Chicago, Columbia, and Cornell are each among the great universities of the world. Personally, I love Chicago best, and I have a bunch of issues with Columbia. But the academic and educational differences among them are completely minor compared to the effects of their different locations, different organization, different feel. In the fields we have been discussing here (and in pretty much any other field as well), don’t overanalyze trivial academic differences. Go where you feel most comfortable and excited, by the people and the place.

13

Some consideration, I would think, should be given to the curriculum outside of your major, and to other options should he change his mind.

Columbia has a required core curriculum which occupies a significant enough number of credits that, IMO, someone should only go there if they actively want to experience that course sequence.Cornell CAS has conventional distribution requirements. Somebody associated with Chicago needs to tell you what they have now, I thought it used to be a core similar to Columbia’s, but now they are choosing courses so I don’t really know what it is. But whatever it is, you should be aware of its extent and whether you actively want it or not.

Regarding other options, a significant number of physics students wind up going into engineering in some capacity or another. Cornell and Columbia have engineering colleges. There may be courses or areas of eventual interest housed in these other colleges. For one thing, Cornell’s engineering school has a top-rated engineering physics program whose curriculum overlaps in many respects with the program in CAS, This offers a CAS physics student some additional extension opportunities towards applied areas, and more course scheduling flexibility.

Something to keep in mind, it’s very important to love the school and not just a particular major. Particularly when the features of the majors at different schools may not be all that different. College is supposed to open one’s mind. The valedictorian of my high school class went into college intending to be a physics major, and wound up getting a doctorate in Art History. The atmosphere, how much you like being there, may be bigger deals, in the long run, than the specifics of a major you think you want before you ever set foot on a campus.

14

“Re monydad’s post: My kids were (and are) city kids…”

You told it better (without all the qualifiers) last time…

But anyway, a lot of “city kids” - or suburban kids, in my case- go up to school in Ithaca and wind up loving it there.

I myself lived in a “hipper North side’ neighborhood when I lived in Chicago, and loved it there. Because I could afford to, I was working. Many students will likewise have that same experience, after they graduate, in New York, or Chicago, or both like myself , or in other major cities. And if they did their undergrad in that same environment then it may seem nothing special. That was one of D2s complaints when she was going to college in NYC. She felt like she was an “adult” working a job, like everyone else she passed on the street. The opportunity to live as a college student in a college town is far rarer, and one’s college experience can seem more 'special” and different as a result. IMO.

But I do think Chicago is a great city. New York is too. I probably like Chicago better, to be honest. It
is not overwhelming; it has a scale one can capture. After a couple years there I pretty much had Chicago mastered.
I’ve lived in or outside NYC for far longer and I’ve never fully mastered it.

FWIW, when I lived in Chicago I only went down to Hyde Park once, that I can remember. My roomate was a grad and took me down there. We had pizza at Medici. It was ok. The Chicago that I liked so much did not really involve Hyde Park. Perhaps my loss. Moreover Hyde Park was not exactly next door to the parts I did like, and there were some not so nice neighborhoods nearby it. But that was a long time ago.

15

Chicago has a Chinese restaurant menu core with some side requirements, and some integration with stuff you might be taking anyway.

There are four special main areas that do not correspond to specific academic departments: Humanities (HUM), Arts (music, visual art, theater), Social Sciences (SOSC), and Civilization (CIV). You have to take one three-quarter seuence in SOSC plus six courses from HUM, Arts, and CIV, including at least two sequential courses in HUM and CIV, and at least one Arts course (so you can do 2-2-2, 3-1-2, or 2-1-3). The HUM courses must be taken first year, and include a first-year writing component.

The HUM and SOSC sequences are the heart of the Chicago core. People can choose from among 5-6 choices each for their HUM and SOSC sequences. The courses have somewhat different orientations. For instance, within SOSC, there are sequences oriented towards political philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. But all the HUM and SOSC courses have considerable overlaps in their syllabi, so that, just as at Columbia, there are a number of works that everyone in the College has studied fairly intensively, no matter which courses they chose. Everyone reads Adam Smith, Marx, Durkheim, Homer, Dante, Augustine, Genesis, Walter Benjamin, among others.

There are more choices for CIV (lots more) and Arts, and no real attempt at commonality there. Some Arts courses are more academic (e.g., an art history survey), others more about practice (e.g., studio drawing), and some combine the two. CIV courses tend to be intro area-studies surveys. Many of the quarter-abroad programs are designed to satisfy the CIV requirement through study about the history and culture of the host country.

In addition to the HUM-SOSC-CIV part of the core, students must take six courses in Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, and Math. (As with HUM-Arts-CIV, you need at least two each of Bio and PhySci, but not necessarily sequential, and one Math.) There are special core courses available in Bio and PhySci for people who don’t want to take regular science courses, but the regular introductory curriculum in Biology, Physics, and Chemistry also satisfies the core requirement. The core gets satisfied by regular math classes at the level of regular calculus or above. Unlike in the other areas, the science/math core requirements can be satisfied in part with AP credits.

Finally, students are required to demonstrate competence in a foreign language at a level equivalent to a year of college study in that language. They can do it through AP/IB scores or passing a competency exam, or by taking and passing the appropriate college classes.

All of the HUM, SOSC, Arts, and Math classes, and many of the special core science classes, are taught in seminars of fewer than 20 students. Some courses are taught by tenured professors, some (but very few) by junior tenure-track faculty, many by recent PhDs hired just to teach core classes, and some by graduate students writing their dissertations. A single section taking a particular sequence may have different teachers each quarter or the same teacher; it varies a lot.

16

There’s little or no reason to go to Hyde Park unless you are doing something at the University. People do take their kids to the Museum of Science and Industry, and the two main University museums (Oriental Institute and Smart) and the professional theater (forget what it’s called) draw some people down there. But in a city of great restaurants, clubs, and stores, Hyde Park has none of them (except for 1-1/2 great bookstores and a whole bunch of non-chain coffee shops). Years ago the University shut down nightlife there to keep the riff-raff out, and it has never really re-established itself. The University has done a very poor job of promoting commercial development in Hyde Park, and much of the little development it has promoted has failed. In this, it has been aided and abetted by the local population, which is often both connected to and at loggerheads with the University, but which tends to be allergic to anything resembling glitz, fun, or intentional profit-seeking activity. It’s a pretty, sleepy little neighborhood that would be about as exciting as Hanover NH (which is not very exciting) if it didn’t have buses, trains, els, and bike routes connecting it with the rest of the fabulous city of Chicago.

But, hey, no one gets offended by the level of conspicuous consumption displayed by University of Chicago people, students, faculty, or staff. The University of Pennsylvania campus supports a number of designer boutiques, and you can see those clothes walking around the campus. The equivalent at Chicago is someone wearing a clean t-shirt, with hair that has been brushed since yesterday.

17

I dunno, JHS… Hanover, NH’s small-but-happening chain restaurant scene might give it an edge. :wink:

18

Chicago all the way. Cornell’s in cornfields. Columbia’s too embedded in the city. Chicago is the happy medium between rural madness and urban ennui.