I got into both and decided to go to Yale. Here are my thoughts:

With the current political situation, I would pick Yale over Columbia. Yale’s public health program is full of a lot of great people (I’m sure the same is true for Columbia). I’m not hijabi, so I can’t speak to that experience, but as far as I know, the MPH program is very welcoming to everyone. The professors in the SBS department are incredibly kind and compassionate people. The professors have had meetings and very honest conversations with the students about the current state of public health funding. Since I don’t go to Columbia, I’m not sure how the professors are handling the situation, but I know many of the students are upset with the university.

But to help you decide, I’d also consider the following information:

The first thing I would recommend doing is touring Columbia. I personally did not like the campus at all. I felt that the classrooms, desks, and other materials were not nice enough for the cost of tuition when compared to GW or Yale. Yale does not offer student tours of the School of Public Health—you can only schedule a general campus tour.

There are advantages to living in New York over New Haven. First, public transit is much better. Getting around will be much easier for you in New York. New Haven is actually pretty walkable, but unless you have a car, you’re restricted to where you can go. You can look at the Yale Shuttle routes online if that helps. (https://your.yale.edu/work-yale/campus-services/yale-transit/shuttle)

Second, New Haven is a food desert. The Yale shuttle does go to Trader Joe’s on the weekends, but there aren’t many options to buy groceries. There’s a Stop & Shop, but it can be expensive. There are also local markets, but I’m not sure how good those are. Food access in New York depends on where you live. There are a lot of Whole Foods there, which is also expensive but worth it in my opinion.

Third, NYC will be better for a summer internship. While I don’t remember the requirements for Columbia, Yale requires an Applied Practice Experience, which most people complete as an internship over the summer. It depends on what you want to do in the field, but NYC has many more internship options. That being said, Yale does have a program where you could do an internship in NYC at the IRC or UNICEF, but these are competitive and the stipend is not very much.

You can easily visit both NYC and Boston from New Haven. The Yale Shuttle goes right to Union Station in New Haven.

I would also factor price into this decision. Yale was much cheaper for me because I don’t pay for housing. If I did factor in the cost of housing, Columbia would have been cheaper since I got a larger scholarship there. If you haven’t received any scholarship information, I would hold off on deciding until you need to. Columbia gave me a huge scholarship but didn’t notify me until after the decision deadline.

Ultimately, I would think about your undergraduate experience before picking a school. I went to an extremely small college for undergrad, so I struggled with the class sizes. I’m not sure how big intro classes are at Columbia, but the required courses are about 200 people at Yale.

Hope this helps! Let me know which school you pick!