<p>My kid applied to both brown and uchicago, and loved both (they were his two top choices, and Penn was a distant third bc he didn’t think the student body was as good a fit for him). While he’s a STEM concentrator, he also loves the humanities. He felt that he’d choose to take the core classes at Chicago even if they weren’t mandatory. But Chicago still had choice within the core, whereas at Columbia everyone takes the same exact courses. That restriction didn’t appeal to him, so Columbia was not on his list.</p>