<p>The first, and obvious 2 things that come to mind that are very different between these two schools:</p>
<p>Brown = Campus Life
Columbia = NYC Life</p>
<p>While not as bad as NYU since Columbia still has a campus, all my friends who went there said they spent basically no time on campus, and all of their time in the city. At Brown, my experience was basically the opposite.</p>
<p>Brown = New Curriculum
Columbia = Core Curriculum</p>
<p>My question, since you claim to love both, is why do you love the Core? Do you love it because you like the topics covered? Because you can probably take essentially all of those courses at Brown. The big difference here is obviously that at Columbia it’s required. Every freshman is in the same classes. Do you like that, or do you want to meet people who will go to your school who literally didn’t take a single class you took? Do you want to go to a school that believes it knows which classes are best for you, or do you want to go to a school where the onus is on you to make that choice?</p>
<p>I personally can’t comment on the departments you’re looking at, but I would definitely put a lot of weight into which school has the stronger/better fitting with your desires department for those areas.</p>