<p>Disclosure: Columbia was my first choice, but I was deferred then rejected, and I am now a 1st year attending UChicago.</p>
<p>Better campus: UChicago (it’s pretty darn beautiful), but Columbia definitely has the better campus location if you want to spend a lot of time in the city. Chicago and NYC are both amazing cities, but Columbia is legitimately in NYC while UChicago is in the Southside, about 30 minutes by public transport from downtown Chicago.</p>
<p>Friendliest/most outgoing: I haven’t met many Columbia students, but I attend UChicago, and a large proportion of the students are very socially awkward, especially if you don’t get into one of the “mainstream” dorms (Max or South) as a first year. Not to say they aren’t friendly and eager to make friends, but they just don’t do it in a traditional/common way. That being said, my personal experience from living in the Northeast is that New York City has a knack for breeding a-holes that are significantly rarer in the Midwest. I don’t know how that specifically affects Columbia’s student population though.</p>
<p>Intellectual: UChicago definitely has a huge intellectual vibe to it. Some students take too much pride in this and end up sounding like conceited d-bags. This bothers me on occasion, but it’s not too too common. And ultimately I’m still really grateful that a lot of kids take their core curriculum seriously and are genuinely interested in the texts that we read. I’ve heard that Columbia is one of the more “intellectual” Ivies, but that’s the most I can say about it.</p>
<p>As for freedom to explore many options, I think UChicago’s “quarter” system (really trimester, since they count summer as a quarter) helps you take a few more classes during your time there. The standard is to take 4 classes per quarter, so 12 classes a year. I think it’s designed so that on average, one third of your classes will be core, one third will be your major, and one third will be electives. They’re pretty generous about allowing AP credit to fulfill core requirements, so I only need to take 10 classes for the core, and I was given credit for one of the classes required for my major. </p>
<p>My verdict: I can’t really imagine having a better academic experience at college than I am having right now, at UChicago. Nonetheless, I would rather be at Columbia, mostly for the location (I’m sort of obsessed with NYC), and partly for the (possibly, slightly) more socially mainstream student body.</p>