Should I choose Columbia or Penn for undergraduate nursing research opportunities?

Choose Penn for undergraduate nursing research opportunities. Penn has a dedicated undergraduate BSN program within the School of Nursing, so nursing research, faculty mentorship, and clinical education are built into the undergraduate experience rather than being something you would need to assemble across separate schools.

Penn undergraduates can pursue research with nursing professors through coursework, faculty labs, independent-study arrangements, and university-supported research funding.

Columbia offers excellent health-related research across medicine, public health, psychology, neuroscience, and biomedical fields, and its location near major medical institutions can be valuable. But Columbia does not offer a traditional undergraduate BSN pathway comparable to Penn Nursing’s. A Columbia undergraduate interested in nursing research would likely pursue it through broader health-science or pre-health opportunities, with less structured access to nursing faculty and nursing-specific research training.

For a student whose central goal is hands-on research with nursing faculty before becoming a nurse, Penn provides the clearer and more integrated route.