| To get away from the "college X is better", "no it's not" debate, and back to the OP's questions:
Will I be able to handle CORE, major reqs, and premed reqs at Columbia?: I would say "probably. It depends on what you major in". If you choose, for example, engineering, then completing your premed requirements will use up just about all of your elective time, and the combination of premed and engineering will be extremely challenging. I know people who have done it successfully, but it is a grind. At the opposite extreme, if you major in something like biochemistry, then the premed requirements will simply be part of your major, and no extra work. Premed at any top college is a lot of work, but it will be similar to Brown or Dartmouth. And the Core courses will fulfill your non-science premed requirements. In general, the farther from science your major, the more the premed requirements are "extra" courses.
If you major in neuroscience, then you will end up taking just about all of the premed requirements along the way, so it will not really matter.
Which has the best neuroscience? Here you get to the classic question "best for whom?" Among these three Columbia has a traditional huge graduate and research program in neuroscience. The Columbia neuroscience faculty is larger than Brown's and much larger than Dartmouth's. More importantly, Columbia also has all the neuroscience resources at Columbia Presbyterian hospital, one of the top clinical and research neuroscience places in the world. Adding the neuroscientists in the medical school department of neuroscience to those at the main campus more than doubles the numbers. That is before considering all the research that takes place in the departments of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Neurosurgery. Brown and Dartmouth have medical schools of course, but their scope of neuroscience, clinical and research, is nothing like what exists at Columbia.
So on scale, you really cannot compare Columbia to the other two places for neuroscience.
On the other hand, this does not mean that it is the "best" place for an undergrad interested in neuroscience. This depends on the extent to which all of these glorious research labs welcome undergrads, how readily one can access the resources at the hospital, and whether, as an undergrad, spending most of your time in a neuroscience lab is what you really want to do.
It is difficult to imagine anyone running out of neuroscience courses or opportunities at any of these places. Academically you could not possibly go wrong among these choices. |