<p>I got into both RD, and am undecided in the liberal arts (leaning toward the humanities.) I visited Columbia and loved it, but have yet to visit Yale. Assuming cost is not an option, which do you prefer (using whatever criteria you consider most important)?</p>
<p>columbia!!! location is important: new haven vs new york? i cant speak for yale, but columbia is truly amazing, i cant see myself anywhere else.</p>
<p>Yale without a question, especially for the humanities</p>
<p>Yale. This is not even debatable.</p>
<p>i love how kwu and lesdia never fail to make it seem as though columbia can absolutely not compare to hypsm.</p>
<p>‘without a question’ and ‘not even debatable’. </p>
<p>seriously? you dint attend columbia and you dint attend yale. so at the least, leave some room for debate instead of sounding so ridiculously uninformed and providing nothing but your (highly biased) personal opinion.</p>
<p>Not even close, this is a Yale win…</p>
<p>Columbia has its core curriculum; Yale doesn’t seem to have anything very distinctive about its academic program, other than the fact that it’s Yale. Columbia has New York City; Yale has … New Haven. Columbia is one of the world’s great research universities; Yale is excellent too, but not quite at the same graduate level. Compare the Chronicle/NRC S-Rankings for various Humanities fields, Yale’s supposed area of greatest strength. Columbia comes out ahead in Classics, Philosophy, History of Art/Architecture; ties in English; falls a little behind in Religion and a few others.</p>
<p>So I think there is room for debate. You need to visit Yale. If you visited Columbia and liked it, I think the chances are good you’ll like Yale better.</p>
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<p>They typically have agendas… Notice neither one attends/attended one of these schools yet want to draw distinctions of this “so called” gap of hypsm and the rest of the top schools (e.g., sort of like divide and conquer). If there is ever a gap, it would probably stop after Harvard and have another one or so. Anyway, most often this is an attempt by people who went to another school other than these (or went to YPSM) and they want to use this as a method to minimize the prestige/reputation of Columbia–as if to pretend that it is not among only a handful of the most prestigious and world renowned schools, with an alumni roster that is practically second to none, ranging from the current president of USA, attorney general (and the former), president of Citibank, two of the world’s former richest men (Kluge and Buffet), etc. haha</p>
<p>I find it a common tactic from kids from Duke, Chicago, and the like…</p>
<p>Anyway, to answer your question, you should visit Yale as well. You can’t go wrong with either place.</p>
<p>I admire the enthusiasm expressed by above, but it is only recently, in the big picture, that Columbia has reached its current levels of relative selectivity. If its alumni roster is “practically second to none” that is indeed a testament to something, because that alumni group was near the bottom of the Ivy league when I was applying, when the College accepted twice the % of applicants as Yale did. The strides Columbia has made in recent years is probably just as amazing to its own alumni as it is to outsiders. I daresay most Columbia alums would not be admitted there today.</p>
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<p>True, but that could be said about all elite schools then, right? 10 years ago, UChicago accepted 70% of applicants, today that figure is in the low teens. 10 years ago, Yale probably accepted around 12-15% – I don’t care to look this stuff up–so people who were admitted then would face much greater odds today and the overwhelming majority of them would not be admitted in 2011. The tide lifts all ships, but yes, Columbia’s ship has risen much greater (along with a few others) because you are right that the acceptance rate was probably 20% back then and now it is even. </p>
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I don’t understand the point here!? What does this have to do with the time when you were applying to college? Are you suggesting that there were no prominent alumni back then? Have you ever heard of the Beat Generation? or maybe we have to go back a little further when FDR had to call upon the Columbia Brain Trust…We can always start with the founding of this country and look at the contributions of Alexander Hamilton or John Jay. ;-)</p>