SCEA Yale or ED Columbia?

cmburns14
Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:49:07 +0000

As others have said, if you’re not sure at this point it may make sense to do Yale SCEA and then Columbia RD.

Columbia SEAS is probably a better place to study engineering because it has a much larger community of students- which helps in terms of making friends with similar interests, working on homework assignments, in labs and design projects, etc. Also Columbia SEAS departments are larger and have a broader range of research interests (the Yale faculty is excellent but significantly less in number). Not sure if it’s a deciding factor, but Horst Stormer, the 1998 Nobel Laureate in physics at the age of 49, teaches a class to Columbia engineering seniors every year.

Overall, Yale has a far more cohesive campus community and a smaller engineering program will likely make classes less anonymous and competitive than Columbia.

They are both great options, you can’t really go wrong with either. If you’re a “rankings freak”, obviously Columbia is much higher but in terms of tangible differences to an undergrad, there probably isn’t much separating the two.