<p>I’ve had a long conversation with my friend in Columbia yesterday, since I am also applying Columbia.
There are some noticeable differences
Both schools have very hefty core classes, but they work in quite a different way.
In Harvey Mudd, you are encouraged to place out of classes, but you cannot place out for Columbia core classes. My friend says that even students going to Juliard (that INSANE fine arts school) with the Columbia/Juliard program can’t place out of the core class on music. In Harvey Mudd, besides the science core classes, you have a large variety of choices for the humanities requirement. For example, you don’t have to take history if you want to take music instead. In Columbia, you HAVE to take a certain semester of english, certain semester of history, certain semester of language, and certain semester of music.
In terms of science classes, (since we are comparing with Harvey Mudd) you are going to have large lecture-based classes. Also, this surprised me, but there will be no lab classes proceeding in parallel with your science classes(at least in the core), and they do it AFTER you finish the class. And if you want to do engineering, you will start taking actual engineering classes later than harvey mudd.
And something worth looking into is, if you have a certain major you want to pursue, research the professors teaching those majors. Columbia for example has Brian Greene for Physics. Quite an amazing person.</p>