How hard is Ivy League course work?

Answered

As someone who got accepted into Columbia Class of 2025, I will share that Yale and Columbia are very different schools with different philosophies.

At Columbia, everyone regardless of major, including those in the Fu School of Engineering has to take the core curriculum. For some applicants, this a complete nightmare because they just want to focus on their passions not have to take more writing, English, humanities, and art or music classes.

https://www.college.columbia.edu/core/

https://www.college.columbia.edu/core/classes

And since I'm just a new admit, I'm pretty certain you can't replace the core with AP classes (I took 9 as well) and I think the best I can hope for is to place out of basic STEM core classes and maybe get into some advanced core classes. Some core classes are universally required and others are more like core electives. I imagine about 25% of my college coursework will be the core and the rest my major and electives. I have a friend who just graduated from Columbia and she told me that the English courses kicked her butt. I think the reading list was like more than 10 serious works like Dante's Inferno and others. Luckily she was her private schools' Valdictorian so she braced herself for what was to come.

Now Yale has no core. Basically like Brown, you matriculate and make up your own schedule with your advisors. You can get multiple concentrations that have nothing to with one another. So you can be a dance major and a biology major or a film major and a math major. They do have distribution requirements but they are all like electives in various categories. Definitely not as intense and prescribed as Columbia's core.

http://catalog.yale.edu/ycps/yale-college/distributional-requirements/

So Columbia believes in the "HIVE" mentality where everyone should have various core competencies like being able to think and write well. They completely embrace the idea of a well-rounded liberal arts education and feel that whether you are a Chem major or a PolySci major, if you advance through the core you will be a better human that will serve the great good of the world better. When I listen to alumni from Columbia, they all talk about the core and how it forced them out of their comfort zone and made them interact with different groups of students, none of which would happen if the school didn't force them to take classes together and share and learn together. Therefore, the Columbia alumni association is very tight because they all went to boot camp together regardless if they are CEOs, Doctors, Scientists, Poets, Architects, or Teachers.

The last thing which is more of a housekeeping matter is that I feel blessed to have somewhere to go to college that is good. I was not surprised that the admit rates were so low this year. 3.66% for Columbia and 4.62 for Yale. If you are going to apply to college next cycle or so, make sure you apply to a lot of colleges because their admit rates are quite low. The caveat is if you are a certifiable genius of which 99.9% of us are not. I was watching this youtube college reaction video about this young Asian man from Texas who got into all 8 Ivys, MIT, and Caltech. I thought it was a fake video until I saw his LinkedIn page that had Gates Scholarship finalist, Cocacola Finalist, Horatio Alger Finalist, MIT summer gig, NASA summer gig, and realized this guy was legit and ran circles around everyone else. If you are like that, well you have nothing to worry about, every school is a "safety". Choose wisely, but apply to 10-20 schools maybe just 1 safety and 1 target, and don't focus too much on schools that you don't really see yourself thriving at.

Hope that helps.