| 1) Students seemed more 'chill' than at peer schools - took themselves less seriously.
2) Lack of football success meant that the school truly focused on academics and there was no 1st-class-citizen mentality for athletes in glamour sports
3) NYC gave all sorts of opportunities, for one thing it was urban and thus never boring, for another it was just far enough away from my hometown - close enough i could go home for thanksgiving but not so close that i'd feel like someone was looking over my shoulder
4) The core meant that a science/math student such as myself could take all these great liberal-arts classes without being at a competitive disadvantage for choosing to do so, i.e. choosing to go outside my comfort zone where i could be expected to get the best grades. In other words, because everyone had to take it, I could actually enjoy taking it.
5) guaranteed on-campus housing all 4 years, and a real sense of campus community, neither of which were true of NYU when i visited.
Although this didn't really factor into my decision, Columbia is also easily the most diverse Ivy. Historically, it catered more to working-class and middle-class kids from the city rather than the old money, and you can still see that as true to a certain extent. Of course, Jews still make up like 20-30% of the campus population, so it also depends on what you consider diverse =) |