SGS is for older students and the College is the ivy undergraduate institution. But do graduate schools perceive and value their degrees differently ?
Depends on the type of graduate school. Law schools won’t care. Some PhD programs might.
Financial aid for GS is very limited not generous like the College too.
^ ^
While I don’t see why some PhD programs or any grad school/employer would care considering GS students can and do take the vast majority of the same courses as their College/SEAS counterparts and are graded to the same standards, the perception of GS students being “of a lower standard” than the college/SEAS exists.
And it’s not only limited to those in some areas of academia, but also among some College/SEAS undergrads* and some employers(especially if they’re College/SEAS alums and snob against GS students/graduates).
- I've overheard a few College/SEAS undergrads refer to GS as "Columbia's Community College" while taking grad classes on the campus. While they are in the great minority, there's enough of them who are vocal about it that they can put a damper on things unless the GS student concerned and others in the Columbia community who don't care for such snobbery ignore/put that snob in his/her place.
GS and Columbia College are virtually the same educations. This topic has been covered several times on this forum
columbia has four undergraduate schools. 1) Columbia college; 2) Barnard; 3) GS; 4) Engineering. They have different admissions offices but can take the same classes (basically–very few exceptions).
- Employers and grad schools do not see them differently in terms of quality probably because they attend the same classes.
- GS students tend to hold a higher GPA than Columbia College students.
- Columbi College students tend to get their knickers in wads about whether they are the best students or not because of test scores and grades required for admissions.
- The GS diploma is in English rather than Latin
- FA for GS is different than for Col College
- GS can take classes as they have time
- The site for GS says they need to have taken a break from school In reality the break can be as little as 6 months.
- GS often take community college transfer students.
- The core requirements among the four colleges is runs from slightly to vastly different.
- Housing for GS is (I'm guessing here) the lowest priority on campus.
From what I have seen, GS admissions is dramatically less competitive than Columbia College.
From what I know, Columbia College is seen as more prestigious. I think it’s the same at NYU. Graduating from Stern business school is different than graduating from the Gallatin division. Not that you won’t get into grad school or get a job. We’re just talking about prestige here, if that matters.
Not quite. NYU-Stern students have different majors and take a totally different set of classes not freely accessible to NYU undergrads in other divisions. Likewise, NYU-Stern students aren’t likely to have free access to special seminars offered at Gallatin.
In contrast, GS students have free access to the vast majority of undergrad/grad classes as their College/SEAS counterparts.
Looks like GS is essentially College for non-traditional students. Non-traditional students who want to study engineering will find those majors in SEAS, not GS.
Whatever the outside perception, my daughter told me her first year of college that the GS students were by far the smartest students she encountered in her classes. She said they were quicker all around to grasp concepts and had more to contribute in class discussions.
When I thought about it, I wasn’t surprised - I think the age difference and maturity level is enough to account for the difference. In addition to being several years older on average, the GS students probably are more serious and focused about their studies – they aren’t coming to college for the social life.
So while I can’t speak to the possible biases of others… if I was an employer or handling grad school admissions, I’d view GS status as a positive.
From sitting in a few undergrad classes at the invitation of TA friends and my own observations from taking a few summer classes, this is largely true, especially of most military vets.
However, there were a few exceptions. One which really shocked me was a classmate in a summer econ course who was a Marine Sergeant and veteran of OIF. He initially seemed very confident and talked a lot about how his experience as a Marine and NCO gave him great preparation for returning to college.
He ended up feeling overwhelmed within the first week of the 6 week term and after panicking from failing grades on his first econ quiz and problem sets and complaining to our instructor ended up dropping the course by the middle of the second week. Was really shocking to see him fall apart that quickly for an intro econ class, especially considering every other military veteran I’ve had as a classmate/friend tended to excel and ended up serving as academic tutors/exemplars to the rest of us traditionally aged undergrads.
Like all generalizations, there are always exceptions. I didn’t interpret my daughter’s statement to be universal - for one thing, except for the students she became friends with, there would be no way to discern which student were GS unless they identified themselves as such… so the ones who stood out as being GS were also likely noticeably older-- or else perhaps in discussion settings they may have referenced some past experience, like military service. And it’s anecdotal… my daughter would have noticed if students distinguished themselves in some way in the classroom… but there would have been no reason for her to notice one way or another all the students in the middle.
But I’m wondering if that Marine vet you encountered may have had other problems, possibly related to his military experience? Sometimes transition to civilian life can be particularly difficult for vets, particularly those who have been in combat. It sounds to me like he had other issues going on in his life, not that he was in any way less capable intellectually.
Anyway, my main point is that the GS students in general are respected by their teachers and fellow students (whatever the school) – no matter that what the path to admission or the language the degree is printed in. I’d hope grad schools would perceive things the same way, and look at their GPA and other educational accomplishments, not the admission stats of their entering class. For the most part, the GS students have more to bring to the table when they do apply to grad programs, because of a greater breadth of experience and more maturity than a student applying to grad school directly from undergrad. (For students who started college at age 18 straight out of high school, but had a gap of a few years between undergrad and grad school, then probably not much of a difference-- it’s just that many graduate programs do like to see students who have spent some time outside of school.)
That’s possible. He had been working a steady job without issue for a couple of years and his academic issues shocked some fellow vets who knew him on campus.
I’m also not unsympathetic to this possibility I’ve had relatives who served and died in combat as well as a father who saw some things no child should have seen during the wars of the 30’s and 40’s in wartorn China.
While what you say regarding professional schools…especially MBA and law is on the mark, that’s not necessarily the case with some academic PhD programs or certain Profs who are sought as potential advisors.
Some of the academic PhD programs not only don’t value time spent away from school unless it is work directly related to the academic research/subfield one aspires to pursue as a PhD student, some may feel such an individual may not be “serious” enough as their mentality is “If s/he’s serious, s/he would have applied and entered the PhD program right away”.
There are also some departments/Profs who tend to be wary of older PhD applicants as they perceive them as being “less malleable” to their mentoring/influence as advisors as opposed to someone fresh out of college at 21-24.
While this is very YMMV depending on individual department and Prof and hopefully becoming less of an issue nowadays, it was an issue with some academic departments friends/relatives applied to within the last 3 decades and some college classmates have encountered some resistance within the last few years partly due to this very issue.
Well, the OP didn’t specify what was meant by “graduate schools” – and my guess is that GS students are more likely to be pre-professional (law, medicine, MBA, etc.)-- but I will readily admit that I know nothing of PhD programs. My DD had profs trying to encourage her to seek a PhD and she toyed with the idea somewhere along the line for about 5 minutes… but it’s a very long haul without much of a reward at the end. Google tells me that the average postdoc salary in the US is $45K - my kids were earning that in post-college jobs they held before applying to and attending grad school. Obviously the future PhD’s aren’t in it for the money… but I can see why profs might be wary of students who have enough experience outside of academia to appreciate their own earning capacities.
That wasn’t the main reason my former engineering Prof cousin cited.
He emphasized the perception by some departments/Profs that older PhD applicants may not be as malleable/willing to be deeply influenced by potential advisors.
Especially those with the mentality all PhD students they graduate should be their “mini-mes” in terms of academic interests and interpretation of their field/subfield.
I knew that the school had an interesting history, and so I looked up the Wikipedia page on it for kicks.
According to that source, the school started in 1947 to help GIs get into school, but the roots are far earlier in Brooklyn. It sound like the Harvard extension program a little in this way, although at Harvard you don’t take the same classes. You’re off to the side in a separate set.
Several alumni of GS are amazing, and worth looking down the list (scroll down)–
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_University_School_of_General_Studies
Amelia Earhart
Jacque Pepin
Ira Gershwin
Leonard Cohen
Hunter S Thompson
JD Salinger
Eh. If you look hard enough, you’ll see that admissions difficulty may differ a lot for all sorts of different groups of students at various schools. It’s far easier for in-state kids to get in to UNC (and UMich, and many other publics) as freshmen than for OOS kids to do so. It’s far easier for kids who are hooked to get in than for kids who are not hooked. And at some schools, it’s easier to get in as a transfer than as a freshman.
I agree that admissions difficulty may differ a lot for all sorts of different groups of students at various schools.
However, IMO, in at least some case, with respect to the major schools feeding them applicants, graduate school admissions committees may be well aware of these distinctions.
Still I think they are likely to pay significantly more attention to what a student has done once they were admitted.
After all, there is a distribution of talent at virtually all programs. Not everyone admitted to the tougher admit program is a star, and not everyone admitted to the easier-admit program is a dud…
SGS students take virtually the same program as students at the College, with the same faculty & courses, so if they’ve done well there it should make no difference. So the argument goes. On the other hand, there are sections of at least some of the courses that are in the evening, or have SGS course prefixes or otherwise are constructed so there will likely be majority SGS students in that section of the course. In which case they will be competing mostly with other SGS students, rather than students in the College, in those sections. But I don’t know how many/what proportion of a typical SGS student’s course load is actually like that. And even if this is a valid concern, it is a rather subtle point to those not intimately acquainted with the schools. It would still look to anyone evaluating transcripts/grades like the identical courses.
My guess is that if an SGS students has had great grades, appropriate test scores, done an undergrad thesis with advisers who will give them great recommendation letters, etc, the fact that they got in through SGS rather than the College will make little difference to PhD programs.
But that’s just my guess.
Furthermore, based on my D1s experience, it would likely make no difference at all for law school admissions. (Save for no opinion about Harvard or Yale, D1 didn’t apply to those two).
That’s what should be in an ideal world considering SGS students mostly take the very same courses and graded the same as their College/SEAS counterparts.
Unfortunately, there’s still a few quarters of academia, employers, and even some College/SEAS students/alums who are likely to view SGS students as “lesser than” in comparison to their College/SEAS* counterparts. Fortunately, that’s not an impediment for most employers and certainly not professional schools who would actually value the greater maturity and life experiences SGS students bring to the table.
- Not including Barnard as while it's technically affiliated with Columbia U, it's administration and institutional identity is far more independent than the college/SEAS/SGS.
Part of this is also due to the fact that through the late '90’s, Barnard was actually MORE difficult to gain admission to than SEAS from my STEM-centered public magnet…especially GPA-wise so long as the applicant’s SAT score was heavily lopsided in favor of math**. Knew many lopsided in favor of math HS classmates who gained admission to SEAS with B/B+ level GPAs. There’s no way a B/B+ level GPAed student would have had a prayer of gaining admission to Barnard in the same time period.
** This was a bit of an open secret to students from STEM public magnets like TJSST, Stuy, BxSci, etc from that period.
GPA has always been very important for Barnard admissions, but your experience with a STEM-centered magnet might not give an accurate picture overall of admissions. It’s possible that the strong reputation of your school gave the SEAS applicants something of a leg up for admissions, and at the same time create something of a disadvantage for students hoping to attend the more liberal-arts focused Barnard— whereas perhaps students coming from different high school environments would have observed different trends. The two schools have very different goals, expectations and admissions criteria. So what is perceived as difficult may also be a product of your magnet h.s.not being structured to produce the type of students Barnard was looking for – in the same way that my D’s very well-regarded performing arts focused public magnet wasn’t producing the sort of candidates that would have appealed to SEAS.
So honestly, I wouldn’t draw conclusions either way. It’s a fallacy to equate admission stats with educational quality – the respective undergrad schools each have very different applicant pools and institutional priorities. With GS, the ad com may pay a lot more attention to outside, non academic factors with the expectation of bringing in a more diverse and mature set of students. GS is not at all transparent about their admissions process, however… so that leaves a lot to speculation.