An objective comparison: Columbia vs Brown

College Life
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<p>Brown:
Selectivity: 9th most selective according to US News.
SAT Mean: 1320~1540
Admissions rate: 10.8% (whoa)
School advantage over others: curriculum, undergraduate focus
Disadvantage: very few world-famous professors at the Ivy League calibre.
Very little graduate school resources to make use of. not very impressive library.</p>

<p>Columbia:
Selectivity: 7th most selective according to US News
SAT Mean: 1340~1540
Admissions rate: 10%
School advantage over others: curriculum (core), great faculty resources
Disadvantage: little social life, bad location, inflexible curriculum</p>

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<p>Defenses, anyone?</p>

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<p>why? …</p>

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<p>What’s the ‘whoa’ supposed to mean?</p>

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<p>I think Brown should be the one that has the bad location. Rhode Island verses NYC? Come on, New York wins every time.</p>

<p>Also, what is the point of this?</p>

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<p>

Bad location?! If you ask a Columbia student why they went there, the likely response is “It’s an Ivy in Manhattan!” Same with social life, they’re not looking for frat parties and a Greek scene, the social life revolves around the city. A lot of people would hate this but people who come to NYC for college do so because they want that specific environment, not the traditional experience.</p>

<p>i don’t go to columbia btw, i’m just pointing this out because I would put “location” as a big advantage of Columbia’s.</p>

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<p>I’m going to Columbia</p>

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<p>^ Yeah, I’m going to college in NYC (not Columbia), and everyone whose going sees that as an amazing place to be. So location is definitely not a disadvantage.</p>

<p>And also, what’s the point of this thread?</p>

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<p>by bad location I meant the harlem area that Columbia is located in.</p>

<p>Plus there’s no particular point to this thread; I just wanted to see which college had more fans. I guess so far it’s Columbia.</p>

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<p>The person could be like me, and applying to both Brown and Columbia, for very different reasons. And needs a way to weigh them. Though, the only real way to do that is to visit both schools after you’re accepted…</p>

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<p>Just an add-note: Although I go to Brown, I find Columbia more appealing because it’s more structured, and more resourceful, and sometimes regret why I didn’t apply there for early decision in the past – because in the end I got waitlisted from Columbia but ultimately got rejected.</p>

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<p>Um…Columbia is in Morningside Heights, while formerly part of Harlem, is no longer anything like Harlem. Walk to Columbia and then north of w 125th (where Harlem technically starts) and see if you notice a difference.</p>

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<p>plus, Columbia’s US News ranking/World research universities ranking: 8/11, Brown’s: 16/27 (though both rankings aren’t that credible; for the former they take in money into account, for the latter they even make Stanford 19th or Cornell 15th and so on…)</p>

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<p>lol @ harlem being a “bad location,” even harlem proper. i’d punch my mother in the face to live between W 125th and W 145th.</p>

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<p>When I visited Columbia I was really underwhelmed by the location. It’s not dangerous by any stretch of the word (and egolikestomach is right, the area directly north is gorgeous), It’s just mostly residential buildings around there it seems.</p>

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<p>1) Do you have a clue what poor library resources even means or how to measure it? You do realize that Columbia and Brown (and every Ivy but Harvard) shares their libraries and you can pretty effortlessly get resources from any of them within 2-3 days (hard copy, 1-2 days for electronic stuff).
2) What graduate school resources do you want to access that is not available at Brown?</p>

<p>There are far better ways to compare these two schools objectively, it seems you’ve chosen some pretty odd qualities of each to highlight.</p>