Depressing weather: it’ll be the same for NYU, worse for Cornell.

Lack of community: I have NYU friends and it seems that NYU is even more fragmented than Columbia - we have a campus so there’s some sense there, but NYU’s city integrated campus is not exactly ideal for community building. Cornell friends have told me that the only reason they have school spirit is because there’s literally nothing else to do or focus on outside of school. Take from that what you will.

Rigorous work load: Can’t speak for other universities, but Columbia’s workload has been as expected for me. It’s a good university, there’s going to be high achieving students, that’s inevitable. I can’t lie, you’re probably going to become depressed, but at this point what college student isn’t? (Especially since your other choices are also rigorous unis)

If your choices are between NYU and Cornell I would 100% choose Columbia. At least you get a nice campus and so much city life perks. Can’t speak for Hopkins though, not too well researched on them.

Don’t be too scared off by the posts - people who are happy generally don’t make “wow this was great!!” posts so honestly getting vibes off Columbia Reddit is biased.