Brown vs. Columbia: Which Is Better for an Aspiring Writer?

For an undergraduate who wants creative writing, especially fiction workshops, to be the center of their academic life, Brown is likely the more natural fit. Brown has a dedicated Literary Arts department and an undergraduate concentration built around creative practice, workshops, and close work with writers. Its Open Curriculum also makes it unusually easy to take many writing courses while building a self-designed set of literature, arts, language, or other academic interests around them.

Columbia may be more compelling for the writer drawn to New York City’s literary ecosystem. Columbia undergraduates can take creative-writing workshops through the English department, and the city offers proximity to readings, bookstores, publishers, magazines, internships, and a wide range of working writers. The School of the Arts also gives Columbia a serious literary presence, although its flagship writing programs are primarily graduate-level rather than an undergraduate creative-writing major equivalent to Brown’s Literary Arts concentration.

Columbia fits a student who wants to develop as a writer while being anchored by the Columbia Core Curriculum and the intellectual intensity of a broad liberal-arts foundation. The Core can sharpen close reading, argument, and cultural reference points, but it leaves less scheduling freedom than Brown. For fiction-writing depth and curricular flexibility, Brown has the clearer undergraduate advantage; for a writer energized by the pace, contacts, and cultural life of New York, Columbia offers a distinct kind of opportunity.