Penn vs Columbia

juillet
Thu, 29 Dec 2016 09:15:06 +0000

Both places are great for pretty much all of the things you mentioned - for graduate preparation, for consulting work, for a rigorous environment, for research opportunities. I have heard (only second-hand) that Penn’s student life is more fun, and I’m inclined to believe it. Columbia students tend to be very, very active, although I would say by junior year a lot of that activity seems to happen off campus.

I wouldn’t say that Columbia’s campus is integrated into the city - not the main campus, anyway. It’s a pretty circumscribed campus between 114th St. and 120th St. and between Broadway and Amsterdam.

One thing I will say is that if you are interested in health research, most of Columbia’s health/medical schools and research facilities are located at the Columbia University Medical Center campus in 168th St., which is about 40-50 blocks north of the main campus. It’s pretty easy to get to - there’s a routine shuttle and a subway line that stops right outside both. However…for an undergrad, it may feel a little jarring or disconnected to have to go up there to do research, if you wanted.

They also have a nearly impossible time encouraging full professors to teach Core Classes at Columbia and consequently you’re often stuck with some random graduate student who has maybe read one of the texts on your syllabus but is otherwise not really qualified to teach the class.

Not true - definitely not true. I got my PhD at Columbia.

The vast majority of Core Curriculum classes are taught by professors. There are some sections taught by advanced doctoral students, but they’re highly qualified, not “random.” In order to teach in the Core, you have to be finished with your coursework and have advanced to doctoral candidacy, which means you’ve been in your program for 4+ years already. Most of the doctoral candidates teaching in the Core have been in their PhD programs for 5-6 years already and are writing their dissertations; they’ve largely read every book on the syllabus. You also have to be in a related department to teach in the Core - for example, only English PhD students can teach University Writing. This is especially true of Lit Hum, which is mainly taught by humanities students who have dissected those books six ways to Sunday.

Professors also lead every departmental level course at Columbia - graduate students don’t teach department courses offered during the academic year. (They are sometimes allowed to design and teach summer courses, but there’s a special program with a selection process you have to go through to do it. You only do it if you want to). Graduate students may lead recitation or discussion sections or serve as TAs, but they don’t teach full courses.