Tufts or Barnard

monydad
Mon, 25 Apr 2011 09:51:17 +0000

“… Barnard and Tufts are kind of VERY different…”

Yet an ultimate decision between these two schools has come up several times before on CC, so evidently there are people who find areas of somewhat common ground between them.

“Can anyone give me any insight as to how I might solve this problem?”

I see two main aspects: curricular- most important, IMO- and social/lifestyle.

In this case, curricular may be quite important. I agree that you need to sort out the implications of being in the engineering school, and the ability to switch out if desired. At many schools, the engineering department grades a little more stringently than their Arts & sciences programs do. Plus, engineering colleges require physics & math courses that are harder than the versions pre-meds often elect to take. Neither of these factors is optimal for a medical school aspirant, who also has to worry about a different set of hard science courses.

As for social/lifestyle, it all comes down to how you weigh the various unique characteristics of each school. Barrnard is right smack in NYC, it is actually a city school. The city is highly prominent, which is great for those who want to be there, but as a result campus life is relatively less prominent. Tufts is in a suburb, it has a more traditional campus-based feel.The city is quite readily available, but enough effort is involved to get there to maintain a campus feel (or so I was told in other CC posts, you should verify if you care). Tufts is actually coed, in the dorms presumably, and does not have an affiliate relationship with Columbia obviously.