<p>I'm seriously considering applying ED to Columbia. My parents and I visited 10 schools together and we all agreed that we liked Columbia best for many reasons.</p>
<p>However, there are several other schools that tied for a close second...</p>
<p>So basically, is there anything about Columbia that I should know about before applying ED? As in, any potential dealbreakers?</p>
<p>So I’ve written a lot about why I love Columbia and I chose it over other great schools, and I’d probably do it again and again. It is fantastic, and it is great that you had that gut feeling after visiting and it is clearly at the top for you.</p>
<p>The only reasons I would put out there to not consider ED are pretty basic ones.
a) You want to apply to other schools because you like them as much, and are not sure. (Sounds like this isn’t you.)
b) You are worried about financial aid, probably come from an upper middle income family (north of 62k is officially the number) and want to make sure you can afford the experience.</p>
<p>I will let the more negative and critical folks take on what they might think why not to apply. But supposing you’ve done your homework, you know what Columbia is about, you know its strengths and weaknesses, I can’t imagine someone mentioning something on here that should dissuade you from Columbia. About the biggest negative that is repeated on here that I have done a pretty solid job defending is the fact that it is a large research university in a complex and convoluted city leading to some bureaucratic impasse (i.e. you will not feel coddled at all times at Columbia). I didn’t mind it, I knew about that before I chose Columbia, and maybe it is the naivetee of not knowing any other school, but I never found it problematic, and I think a lot more good than bad comes because Columbia is as big as it is - it means you have so many other people you are sharing the experience with, and in the end if you have a big smile and are a nice talker there are very few doors you can’t get to open for you. But most other negatives that might be talked about often can be seen as positives depending how you look at it of course.</p>
<p>From what I’ve heard based on my visits there (spent a couple weekends there last year) and from my friends who go there. I definitely thought about columbia but didn’t pick it in the end for two reasons.</p>
<ol>
<li>Social Life: for an Ivy its sort of dead. There just doesn’t seem to be there energy you see at other ivies</li>
<li>Lack of school spirit: Alums aren’t as loyal, reunions less attended.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>There are pluses for sure. NYC is a big plus for some, for me it was a distraction. I was looking for the “frisbee on the green” college experience and I didn’t think it fit the bill. Great school but its different than the other top schools in many ways.</p>
<p>I don’t care if there is a lack of a traditional social scene, but is the student body unfriendly?</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062547335-post340.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1062547335-post340.html</a></p>
<p>i had never seen that post before kwu, anyhow, i know a lot of kids from columbia like that poster, but then i also knew a lot of kids at columbia like me - who had a great time, went out, met people, loved the city, and loved hanging out on campus. i had great relationships with my advisors, and feel i made the most of the situation. in the end i would never write “i don’t like my fellow students,” at some point you have to question the messenger when someone writes something like that. whether that person went to columbia or amherst, i wouldn’t want to be friends with him/her if that’s his/her attitude.</p>
<p>i think we ought to remember that the student that attends columbia is cut from the same cloth as those that go to other ivies and ivy like schools. which means in the end it is rare to say absolutely that columbia is unfriendly or even all that different. there are habits that come with living in a big city, i find people who live in bigger cities to be flakier than those who live in smaller ones (the crisis of too many options), but then there are also opportunities that come - you take the good with the bad, and personally i think the upsides to columbia are huge.</p>
<p>I’m not surprised the person in post #5 felt isolated. Nobody likes to hang with Eeyore after he ingests a bag of downers, either.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I kid you not when I say that was the first thing I saw once I got on the Harvard campus.</p>
<p>OP, honestly I never really enjoyed the feel of the campus. It was almost closed in by the surrounding NYC, and a lot of the people were just lost in their own world wandering the place. I remember going there for a visit, and I asked one of the kids where the main entrance to the Low Library was. He had no clue, said " I dunno" and put his headphones back in and walked away. My tour guide was kind of a ditz, and was enamored by a little bird that fluttered in the middle of the group I was in. I don’t know, but the day I went no one felt upbeat about being a Columbia University student.</p>
<p>yeah I think you’ll get the whole spectrum, from super friendly to unfriendly, along with people who think those around them are super friendly and others who feel those around them are stuck up and pretentious. In my experience, the friendly people tend to think that those around them are friendly and the unfriendly people think those around them are unfriendly. So really it’s more about the attitude with which you approach college and columbia than columbia itself.</p>
<p>It’s very easy for kwu to find you posts from people who have negative things to say, but that is really only a small sample of people. I found that just being positive in college made a huge difference, there were certainly hurdles and low periods, but going out and attempting to make friends and strengthen the ones you had made everyone receptive to you.</p>
<p>If you expect people around you to give you all the attention in the world then you will be sourly disappointed, Columbia students are independent and don’t rally around any group of students (like athletes or frat boys or acapella singers or student body leaders or anything). I didn’t find other students to be unfriendly, and found it easy to meet and become friends with tons and tons of people as well as maintain a group of 4-6 really close “best” friends.</p>
<p>I guarantee that if you come to columbia you will meet tons of people who you will not get along with and tons of people who you easily will. That’s a function of diversity, there are serious differences between students on campus, whether racial or socio-economic or political or national or ethical/moral. Kwu will agree that Columbia is easily one of the most diverse (if not the most diverse) top college in the US. So be prepared to be challenged and be prepared to deal with people who won’t see eye to eye with you, who ever you are.</p>
<p>I’ve heard the complaints about Columbia students being “unfriendly,” but the same can be said about the majority of kids at my huge high school. I just found my niche of friends through extracurriculars and I’m kind of assuming I can do the same at Columbia.</p>
<p>You here that columbia students are unfriendly, that harvard students at d-bags, that princeton students are stuck up, that brown students are hippies, etc. I’m sure there’s plenty of them at each college, but if you want a really good idea of what the campus is like, visit. Attitude makes a tremendous difference as well, so keep that in mind. In my few days at columbia, I found plenty of people that were very friendly. In fact, I did not happen upon even one rude /even mildly unhelpful person when i pretty much pestered every student I could talk to about programs and majors and what they liked/didn’t like. I saw a couple (very few) people who weren’t happy for some reason or another (mostly choices they made) but that wasn’t really because of people or anything.</p>
<p>I think we are pretty friendly 
</p>
<p>but really now? you would think Brown has everyone throwing flowers at you when you get in? It might be rated the happiest school but I am sure not everyone is that happy. Statistics and rumors and just that, nothing more. But if its one thing I detest about columbia is the damn bureaucracy. Each dept. has its petty inter and intra dept. conflicts. Students who work for profs. or directors. get caught in the middle of the maelstrom. Dept. can’t and don’t communicate properly. </p>
<p>Oy at the financial aid dept. Human nature never looked better when people decide to take a week long break before the financial aid applications are done. </p>
<p>But aside from that, yes… we are quite friendly :D</p>
<p>Re: Frisbee on the green</p>
<p>Oh man. The irony. Frisbee on the green is exactly <em>why</em> I came to Columbia without reservations. The scene: It’s the admitted students overnight program. My “host” is AWOL and the other visiting students who were staying with my host had gone off to hit some bars. That’s not really my scene, so I decide to stroll around campus (it’s 11 pm). A bunch of (sophomores, it turns out) are playing ultimate on one of the two south lawns. I ask if I can join in. They get really excited about the fact that I’m a “prospie.” We play for a few hours with more of their friends joining until I slip on the grass and pull something in my leg. At this point the game winds down, and two of them support me as we head down to JJs Place, the on-campus late night fried food spot. They buy me a gatorade and we sit down and spend the next hour and a half discussing sports (turns out a bunch of them do play-by-play for the radio station and write for the paper). They had welcomed me into their group and I’d had a blast. It’s around 2am when all is said and done and I head back to the dorm I’m staying at for the night.</p>
<p>After those 2-3 hours, I knew I was coming back to Columbia.</p>
<p>/nostalgic, but true, anecdote</p>
<p>Maybe if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t want to go to undergrad in NYC (which is a valid reason) or if you’re the sort of person who doesn’t want to do the Core (which I consider an invalid reason; I wish more schools had the Core).</p>
<p>Core can be overwhelming for some, others might find it enjoyable. The whole NYC experience might not result in a very cohesive student body.</p>
<p>Columbia sounds like it’s good for people who don’t necessarily want to go to college in order to live in a bubble.</p>
<p>Columbia dealbreakers are NYC and the core. They are also the reason that many (most?) of the students apply. As long as you’re into NYC and the core, everything else can be negotiated. And even with those two, if you don’t like the core, you can grin and bear it (although I’d honestly encourage you to seriously consider other schools in that case). Oh, and there are also departmental things to consider, like, if you want to be a linguist, maybe Columbia shouldn’t be your first choice as we don’t have a linguistics major. </p>
<p>Besides that, Columbia does less “coddling” of its students than other schools (or so I hear), less checking up on you. Depending on your personality, this either feels like being abandoned by your school or being blissfully free from having programs shoved down your throat. There’s NSOP, of course, but after that, the attitude is clearly “the resources are available; go get them yourself.” If you like that, you’ll probably like Columbia. If you’re expecting more support from your school itself (as opposed to support from your peers, which you can find if you get with the right group of people), that might give you pause about Columbia.</p>
<p>If you want a campus-centric experience, I think you can have it. I’m not much of a party-er, but it seems like there are parties frequently enough, and there are clubs and activities and all that. That said, if you want something else, you can do something else. I guess the central theme is that everything you want is available at Columbia, insane amounts of opportunity, but you have to work to get it, perhaps more than you might at other schools.</p>