Columbia or Duke?

beard_tax
Tue, 27 Apr 2010 23:04:31 +0000

It really depends on what you want to do in the future. I know that’s difficult as a high school senior to decide the career path you want to go down, but it would be extremely helpful to have a sense of what you like and what you don’t like.

First, Columbia SEAS hasn’t changed from 5 years ago, except for the students entering into the class. This, of course, makes a huge difference because you’ll be exposed to more intellectually stimulating peers, but the engineering school itself (faculty, research, etc.) has stayed the same (you can bring up the Northwest Science Building but that’s coming online later this year). The trend of selectivity in the past few years has less to do with the quality of education from the faculty but more so to do with the overall prestige of Columbia University.

If you want to do medicine or biomedical engineering, Duke is the obvious choice. It’s BME program is ranked behind JHU’s and it offers the flexibility of incorporating a premed curriculum. The SEAS BME department, for the class of 2012 and later, has precluded the premed option for many students because of the number of requirements. They replaced classes that were premed requirements with biomedical engineering specific ones. It was already a rigorous program, but the program is now brutal for students pursuing BME and premed.

For finance, Columbia beats Duke. However, if you have no interest in this field whatsoever, then Duke would offer greater flexibility in curriculum. In Duke, changing between Trinity and Pratt is easy, and you have the flexibility of majoring in humanities and the social sciences if you find that engineering isn’t for you. In SEAS, this is significantly more difficult, because you apply as a regular transfer student to the College. If you find that engineering really isn’t for you (which probably means you weren’t interested and didn’t get A’s in your classes), it’ll be difficult to transfer and the admissions committee won’t even consider your application if your GPA is below a minimum threshold.

The community is different from Columbia and Duke. I’ve visited Duke once, and it seemed to have a more traditional college feel, i.e. fields, parties, and isolated campus. This can definitely get boring, but this can also breed community. As for Columbia, you can enjoy the city - that is if you have the time. From my experience, we, as engineers, are constantly working on problem sets or other forms of work. This is no different from engineers at other schools, but a major selling point (New York City) isn’t really pertinent to engineering students. The fact is that, we can only go out at most once during the entire week and few students who go out regularly do well. Keep in mind that Columbia is not downtown and it takes approximately 40 minutes to get to the area that NYU and Pace are in, which is much more lively, so transportation time is not trivial for students. You can always hang out in Morningside Heights, but it’s more residential.

Another point is that you can always live in New York City but you cannot replicate the college experience. Columbia definitely has a unique city experience, but that’s not to say you can’t live in the city once you get older (mid to late 20’s). You’ll never be able to have the undergraduate experience again.

My main point is that you should target the school to your career goals, and if you’re not sure what you want to do, then give yourself the most flexibility possible. You don’t want to be stuck doing engineering for 4 years and wishing you were somewhere else. My secondary point is that New York City hasn’t been an integral part of my college experience. Columbia College students definitely have a lighter workload than engineers (with a higher curve) so the city is more accessible to them.

That said, I’m satisfied with my college experience thus far. I want to work in the financial services and I know that sacrifice is necessary for success. I’m proud of my academic accomplishments and the work I’ve put in to get where I am now. Plus, no one really regrets working hard in college after they graduate. If you want to work in the financial services, Columbia is the better choice (College or Engineering).