Columbia vs Notre Dame

This sentence doesn’t make sense to me: neither college is dramatically better than the other in any of those fields (and don’t be @ing me, fellow posters! yes, there are distinctions, but at the UG level both schools are plenty strong across these subject areas. Neither is going to better for getting the OP into a PhD program either.

OP, you have the choice of two super schools. Both will be really good at what you need most right now: the chance to explore a range of subjects and figure out what you are really interested in.

These metrics are much more about what you do than about the school.

You really can’t see any difference between 4 years in a tight community with a strong catholic ethos and obsessive relationship with their football team, all in an out of the way place vs an urban, deeply diverse college whose best sport is tennis? No opinion on the Columbia Core vs Notre Dame’s Core?

All of those things- and more- will materially affect your college experience, which in turn will affect the field you choose to specialize in, which (if you keep the same dream), will affect your choice of PhD programs.

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