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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Harvard is so dominant in so many fields, that its hard to argue against it being the best university in the world. That doesn't mean that its the most rigorous/difficult school - its not - nor that its undergraduate students are the best - they're not.

If you talk to people in the specific fields, in reality Harvard is not the outright best.

Law, they may say Yale is stronger
Medicine, they may say Johns Hopkins is stronger
Business, they may say Wharton is stronger
Economics, they may say MIT is stronger
Foreign Affairs, they may say Georgetown or Johns Hopkins is stronger

But like Berkeley, Harvard is among the top 3 (top 5 in Berkeley's case) in an absurd number of non-engineering fields. And for that reason it will always be incredibly prestigious - not because of their undergraduate school.[/quote]

This is a version of how I made my undergrad decision (Harvard vs Wharton). Basically, if you are going to a school for one program and you end up not liking it, what are your options? At the time, my Plan B for Penn did not look interesting/appealing to me. Conversely, there were lots of interesting options at Harvard. Which worked out well for me because I ended up in a different major after getting bored with Economics.

Encourage DC to think about how sure s/he is about Engineering and to start by comparing Engineering programs.  But then ask, what if you’re wrong? What would your second choice major @ each school be.  If DC is pretty committed to Engineering and prefers Columbia’s program, and finds a comfortable back-up plan, then go for it. But if it’s all murkier than that (and if, for example, DC isn’t really that familiar with what studying engineering would look like), then have DC look more closely at backup plans.

Two more points. ECs at Harvard are as much or more of the education/experience as classes for many undergrads as classes. I wasn’t that kind of kid (ended up an academic, lol), but it’s worth encouraging DC to look at those (at both schools) as well.

And Core curricula are more about enforcing a kind of shared undergrad experience than about what you learn in college or a measure of “rigor.” Basically, anything an undergrad learns @ Columbia in the Core, s/he could take a class in at Harvard. In which case, said undergrad takes the course based on interest rather than because it’s required — and that’s true of others in the course as well. To me, that was preferable. My DC (STEM kid) really liked the idea of a Core because then (in theory) even non-STEM classmates would have basic math/science literacy.  So it really comes down to how much of your freedom to choose do you want to give up in exchange for limiting others’ freedom, lol!  (There’s also a longer discussion to be had here re Core as Great Books vs surveys for non-majors vs a glimpse into how people trained in other disciplines think vs skills-building seminars (reading, writing, data analysis) for frosh/sophomore, but if people want to have it, that should probably be a separate thread).[/quote]

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