<p>Ok, so I have received likely letters from Yale, Dartmouth, Penn, and just recently Columbia, and I am trying to rank them to decide which to visit (I probably won't be able to visit them all unfortunately). I love Columbia (not to mention its location), but I have quite a few reservations about the core curriculum, and I really don't want to completely eliminate such an otherwise amazing school because of this. </p>
<p>I will be a pre-med science major (and I'm pretty sure I'll actually stick to this, the last two summers I've participated in programs specifically related to the medical field and I'm fairly set on it, so...lets just assume I won't get there and change my mind like most people do :) ).</p>
<p>From what I've gathered, throughout the core you basically read a ton of great books going from ancient times to present day, and...I'm assuming write tons of papers about them as well. My problem is, I REALLY REALLY do not enjoy writing analytical papers, etc. about works of literature. Like in AP English, I love actually reading/discussing the books, but I can't stand the inevitable papers in which you have to analyze how the author uses rhetorical devices to convey his/her point, symbolism, mood/theme stuff, blah blah blah, so on and so forth. It's just not my thing, I'm very much a math/science type. </p>
<p>My question is, given the extensive core, will I be miserable at Columbia? I picture myself having boring papers due every week that I won't enjoy doing, and I feel like I would be miserable as a result. If you are not a humanities person, is Columbia the wrong place for you?? Also, any comments about pre-med/undergraduate science research in general would be greatly appreciated.</p>
<p>Thank you in advance, and sorry for the lengthy post.</p>
<p>Well, it’s really your call. There’s no faking your way thru it. You’ll find that most Columbia grads speak very highly of their core experience including many that fell the way you do. My advice to you is DON’T GET SEDUCED by NYC. If you really dispise writing lit papers then don’t go to Columbia because their core is one of the most extensive there is among top schools. If NYC attracts you, there’s always grad /med school.</p>
<p>its pretty easy to get from new haven to nyc. so you could probably visit columbia and yale on the same day without too much difficulty. i don’t know about penn though.</p>
<p>Contemporary Civilization is focused much more on philosophical ideas than literary or rhetorical devices, and even Literature Humanities is more about the themes of the texts than specific rhetorical devices (though this will depend to some degree on who’s teaching your specific section). The pre-med people I’ve spoken to at Columbia have tended to enjoy the Core—though it wasn’t necessarily their favorite class—and not really shy away from the humanities. They seem fairly well-rounded.</p>
<p>If you want to Yale, on the other hand, you’d still have the option of partaking in great humanities and social sciences classes, but it wouldn’t be forced.</p>
<p>That said, if you really hate the humanities, you should not come to Columbia College. The Core Curriculum consists of a year-long philosophy class and literature class and semester-long classes in art history, music history, analytical and argumentative writing, and scientific/logical analysis. While I doubt you’d be miserable at Columbia, it sounds like it might not be an ideal fit for you.</p>
<p>Ok, thanks for the answers everyone. And thanks pwoods, that’s what I was looking for. I think I’d enjoy the philosophy class actually, but art/music, not so much. I think I’m at Yale > Penn > Columbia > Dartmouth, but then I really won’t know until actual decisions come out march 29th.</p>
<p>I’m not sure you really want to to be pre-med at Columbia. In your second year, you will have a class with this woman :[CULPA</a> - Deborah Mowshowitz](<a href=“http://www.culpa.info/professors/2673]CULPA”>http://www.culpa.info/professors/2673)
You will always be stressed. Class averages in chemistry courses tend to be about 60-65. Even more, you will not actually get to take any of the science classes you want until the end of 2nd year, maybe. Oh, and your AP Bio credit: doesn’t count. Your AP chem credit might count if you pass a placement test in the first week. Be warned, college chemistry and biology are nothing like high school chemistry and biology.
I might change my mind, as I am still a freshman. Who knows, as a senior I may start crying when I leave campus. But, from what I’ve seen here Columbia is insane. I advise you to go to Yale, it’s low stress, a nice quiet environment, a small college and there are no issues with housing. Don’t get me started on housing!</p>
<p>Okay, if you want my advice, housing isn’t a great situation. Recently, Columbia got a huge surge of applicants. In order to keep the admission rate high (so it wasn’t like 3%), Columbia had to accept more students and increase class sizes faster than they could build new dorms. So graduate students, who don’t have guaranteed housing, have been kicked out of their apartments so that undergrads have a place to live. That said, first year is the best year for housing. I advise living in John Jay in a single because a new student needs the quite space. The second year, one should try to be an RA, which means you will get your own room and sometimes an extra room in which a friend can live. The other option one has as a rising sophomore is to live in special interest housing. I recommend applying for as many SIC’s as you can. You can also live in the LLC, but it’s a competitive application process in sophomore year. Anyway, as a sophomore, you have to go through a lottery to get into a place to live. Sophomores have the least point values and typically get small, crammed doubles in McBain. That said, if you follow my above instructions you can decrease the chances of being stuck in a blind double sophomore year.</p>
<p>Oh, I missed OP’s point about hating analytic essays. In that case, Columbia may not be for you. In my Lit Hum class we write two-three essays per semester. The essay are 5 pages long( this is the average paper length). Our essays have almost nothing to do with foreshadowing and all that nonsense. My professor frankly stated he didn’t care about foreshadowing. Instead, our essays require close reading. This means you have to read a small section of the text and analyze everything in it, the words the author uses, his style, his ideas, what he’s trying to convey and then create an essay around it.
After Lit Hum, we have university Writing in which we write 5-10 pages of analytic essays about , sometimes obscure academic essays. I haven’t even taken CC or Music/artHUm which both require papers.</p>