<p>OP,
I’m not sure what I can say to you. You seem to have already made up your mind that Columbia students are “selfish/arrogant/ungenerous” based on a few non-representative forum posts. Your question is obviously rhetorical and is intended as a flame. You’re upset because of what you’ve seen posted (ostensibly by Columbians) and you’re attempting to shame or embarrass us. You want us to believe all our prospective students will be scared off by a few non-representative forum posts, and Columbia in 2011 will resemble Columbia in 1970. Obviously, that’s not going to happen, since the vast majority of prospective students will never read those threads and even those who do will have enough sense to realize that those comments are not representative of Columbians as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, Columbians can certainly be arrogant and selfish, and the general attitude does tend to be a bit brusque. It IS the city after all. If you’re truly so thin-skinned that you’re turned off an entire school because of what a few forum posters who may or may not be Columbians said on CollegeConfidential, then it’s certainly possible that you would not be happy at Columbia. Generally speaking, though, if you actually cared to know the answer to the rhetorical question you asked, you’ll find that Columbians are in fact decent human beings. Of course, we don’t have to prove that to you, and we’re just going to get defensive when you make ignorant, asinine generalizations about us in our forum. So please, either consider posts like this: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1065186847-post646.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1065186847-post646.html</a> along with your experiences interacting with actual Columbians in person when you’re making generalizations about the attitudes of the entire student body, or simply accept that we’re not going to take your ire seriously.</p>