I’m trying to decide between Yale, UChicago, and Columbia (if someone has a very strong case for Penn I’d like to hear that too).
I will probably be doing math with economics focus, or applied math. I might do chemistry too, but definitely something with math involved. UChicago is probably the best for both math and economics of the three, but I’d like to hear what your thoughts are on that, because they’re all pretty amazing academic schools.
I also value school spirit and athletics a bit, which I worry Columbia and UChicago lack (this isn’t a major factor, but cmon Columbia football went 0-10 last year). But Yale has a more laid back attitude from what I hear than the intensity of UChicago. I don’t want to never have fun, but I think that’s more a reputation based thing than anything. And cities are a nice asset, but there seems to be plenty of stuff on campus at Yale all the time. I also am a John Jay Scholar at Columbia, which means my advising will be supplemented and summer research is funded, among other things. Something I don’t know about is how good the career and grad school advising is at each school.
The schools would each cost about the same for me, so it’s really just about which I like best. I’m super torn! Any thoughts, comments or advice is greatly appreciated, especially on the math there! Thanks in advance.
Thank you! What do you mean by “he would have chafed”? I’m visiting the schools this month, so hopefully I will have one school really resonate with me and not have such a hard choice.
He would have found it restrictive. Yale works fine for him, although it being a bit looser in distribution requirements (although not quite as loose as Brown) would be okay also. To be honest, since it’s not a strength of his, any school without a foreign language requirement would rate highly :). Nevertheless, he is happy at Yale.
On the point about core/distribution requirements mentioned above, I see Chicago and Yale as pretty comparable on that dimension (about 1/3 of classes going to this with a fair amount of latitude regarding specific courses), where from what I hear Columbia’s requirements are more structured.
In the past the core was more structured at Chicago too, with a limited set of courses to choose from for the humanities and social sciences requirements and a preponderance of Great Books type courses in that realm . . . roughly comparable to Directed Studies at Yale, with the difference being that everyone took those courses at Chicago, where DS at Yale only enrolls about 10% of the students. Today though I don’t see a big difference between Yale and Chicago on general education requirements.
I was wondering that point exactly… Is there actually a big difference in the Cores vs Yale? It seems as if every school has distributional requirements, I don’t really understand how those schools are different.
Yale doesn’t really have a core–at Columbia, there are specific courses every student must take. At Yale, you are required to take a certain number of courses in different categories (look at the website to understand this). It’s not terribly onerous, but in can be annoying sometimes. I think the distribution requirements at Yale are easier to satisfy for STEM students, because there are so many more humanities/social sciences classes that are appropriate for non-majors.