Columbia College vs, Columbia School of General Studies. (SGS)

re#18: “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.”

I agree about the last two groups, but they were not the subject of this thread. I just thought academia may be better acquainted about the nature of their major feeder schools, and given appropriate grades in same courses, undergrad thesis with rec letters from a professor with a significant profile in the field who they may know, they would be better equipped to look past the difference in admissions processes than many in the other two groups.

But I may be wrong.

[FWIW, I think there’s someone on CC who might have some actual insight on this- or at least a lot more informed guess than I might have- if she cared to weigh in.]

Also my guess is that a prior poster was correct in suggesting that relatively fewer SGS students choose to pursue graduate school. A relatively greater percentage of them probably lean towards professional schools and employment. They are older on average to start with, and, as I understand it, relatively more of them have paid full freight for their undergraduate education.

I doubt it considering this also applied to students I knew who graduated from non-STEM public magnets like Hunter College HS or even some neighborhood high schools. Overall, so long as one’s SAT scores and academic record was lopsided in favor of math/STEM, SEAS tended to accept lower GPAed students than Barnard up until the end of the '90s.

This was often used as a “backdoor” to transfer in and graduate from the more prestigious College back when internal transfers between SEAS and the COllege were not only available, but little more than filing pro-forma paperwork so long as one had one year in good academic standing(This wasn’t considered a hurdle).

That also would not account for how many other elite/respectable LACs dug deep into each of our graduating classes when offering acceptances.

TLDR: Up until the end of the '90s, SEAS had the lowest standards GPA-wise for admission among Columbia’s undergrad colleges other than SGS.

I guess the question is: why does this matter?

If you are eligible for admission into General Studies, you are likely ineligible for admission into Columbia College. And the converse is also true - if you are eligible for admission into CC, then you are likely ineligible for GS. The only exception is students who want or need to attend part-time, or the few students who do the dual program with Sciences Po, CHUK or JTS. So in most cases, it’s not like it’s a choice you get to ponder. If you’re a non-traditional student, in most cases you either go to GS or you don’t go to Columbia at all. And in those cases, Columbia is possibly a better choice than a lot of other places for non-traditional students, particularly veterans.

I doubt that there’s a big difference in perception from the employer side, because how would the employer even know? My husband went to GS. His resume says “BA, Columbia University,” the same as a SEAS or CC student. He’s not trying to hide his attendance at GS - that’s just the way you write it. Even I just put Columbia University on my resume, and not “Graduate School of Arts and Sciences,” because really, who cares?

The only way that anyone would surmise that he went to GS is that he has full-time military and professional service that predates his BA award date, and that’s only if the employer is familiar with the fact that there even IS a separate division that handles the administrative fluff for non-traditional students at Columbia. Again, why would anyone care? The coursework is the same. All his courses were taken alongside SEAS, CC and Barnard students.

re#22:

There are people who use college admissions selectivity as a first screening point to distinguish “raw talent”. Or to form pre-conceived notions about individuals they meet…

I’m not saying that they should do this, necessarily, just that it is done, there are people who do it.

Those people might give more significance to a member of a pool that survived an 8% admissions rate, with mandatory test scores and high school grades submitted and evaluated, vs. one that survived a 30% admissions rate, without submitting test scores. (just to make up some numbers & criteria).

There are “elite” employers who do it. Employers choose where to recruit based on where they are likely to yield qualified applicants. Relying in part on the screening process used by those schools in the first place.
Back when I was paying attention, some hedge funds went beyond this, they required applicants to put their SAT scores on their resume.

One group most certainly likely to do it is other college students. In a multi-college university with relatively high admissions standards, you can be sure that the students attending each college there are aware of the admissions stats of the people attending each of the other colleges there. Because that’s all they’ve done so far in life, is get into college. It is their big achievement, to date.

I imagine there are some employers who would feel hoodwinked if they hired a Columbia grad and later found out he/she went to SGS. Since they may have assumed that the person was part of the “8% admit rate with test scores” cohort, but that was not the case.

Many others may not care, and would just focus on what the student actually accomplished once admitted. But not everybody. IMO.

On the other hand, that such a graduate was a non-traditional student may be noticeable from the resume or otherwise, and may affect the employer’s decision (either positively or negatively) even without considering anything about College versus General Studies.

@monydad: In my experience, college kids do this more than actual hiring firms, who bottom-line, want the best talent, and almost all of whom think they have better screening systems in place for their purposes than what adcoms use (because whether someone was admitted due to their potential contribution to the arts scene at a college, as an example, simply may not be valued by certain employers).

They go to a place like Columbia because it is talent-rich, so worth the trip. Once there, almost all will apply their own screens. BTW, using the SAT as a screen actually is more “democratic” and cuts across the discrimination by college. If you have a high SAT score, you have a high SAT score regardless of whether you are in SGS or CC or whatever.

Looks like Columbia SGS requires SAT or ACT scores for those from English speaking backgrounds. However, not all schools require SAT or ACT scores for transfer applicants, so some who came in to those schools by the transfer pathway may not have any SAT or ACT scores at all.

But that’s an individual distinction, not a group qualifier. The employer who values and asks for SAT score will be given the number if it exists – and if not, then the number won’t be given, with or without an explanation.

This seems much more of an issue with some Columbia College undergrads and alums who perceive students attending less prestigious/competitive undergrad colleges of Columbia U including SGS are “cheating” and "riding the coattails of prestige which “belongs exclusively to them”.

They may not be the majority of the College undergrad/alums, but there’s enough of them who are out there and vocal about it that you can’t deny its existence.

Most everyone else…especially non-Columbia alums aren’t likely to know enough about the distinctions…or even care if they do.

@cobrat There is a lot of “urban myth” about Columbia College undergrads perceiving students from other constituent colleges as being their inferiors. There are some students that feel that way, but most don’t. A more common perception amongst Columbia College students is that they are “afterthoughts”, with the university caring more about its famous graduate and professional schools. It was the same when I was at Harvard College.

As for employers, I think they look at the “Columbia University” on the transcript. Even when I worked in investment banking, we didn’t care which “unit” you were from. An SGS student is graded the same in each course as every other student.

The biggest disadvantage SGS student have is financial aid. Unlike Columbia College, SEAS and Barnard students, SGS students are not guaranteed to have their full need met, and often must take out large loans.

I concede that there are likely some people out there that do this, although it seems quite silly to me since the point of recruiting at a top college presumably is because you believe in the education and resources that college provides in addition to the inputs. I think the vast majority of employers go to a place like Columbia because they believe in the university itself as a place to train young people - of which selectivity is one component but not the only one.

Regardless, the question still stands - to the OP. Since someone eligible for GS would be ineligible for CC and vice versa, why does the question matter? (Unless you are considering one of the joint programs.)

While the part about most/many Columbia College undergrads caring is overblown, the fact remains there’s a minority of such undergrads who are vocal enough so the existence of such attitudes cannot be dismissed as an “urban myth”.

However, the latter group’s perceptions of other undergrad colleges being their “inferiors” says much more about their character/attitudes than anything else.

Unfortunately, not all potential employers recruiting at elite colleges share that reasonable attitude.

There are some who hire at elite colleges precisely because the exceedingly selective admissions has served to ensure they can select among the “creme de la creme” as they perceive it.

I think more likely that those recruiters are focused on finding recruits from a certain social strata – the ones whose parents sent them to elite private prep schools that remain Ivy feeders. It would be interesting to see some demographic data on who actually gets hired by those recruiters, in relation to overall demographic data for the schools.

@calmom: I think your assumptions are misplaced. The elite finance and consulting firms want talent (in the case of the banks, competitive hungry talent).

@cobrat: They want the creme de la creme, but they care about the talent they may get, not so much about selectivity. UChicago and Northwestern were being recruited by these elite firms even back when their admit rate was >40%.

I’m not solely looking at selectivity percentages, especially considering some elites like UChicago and Northwestern had a high portion of self-selecting applicants who tend to come from the high performing/achieving students so even with the 40%+ admission rate, that was from a pool which was already pretty much creme de la creme. Especially with UChicago.

@julliet --my son actually became someone who might have gone either way. When he returned to CC after six years out, they could have shifted him to GS, as he was outside the normal CC age parameters. That would have not mattered to him academically, he’d have been happy for either degree. It only mattered because of FA–he got a considerable sum from CC when they fortunately decided to re-accept him which he wouldn’t have gotten from SGS.

This is purely anecdotal and not meant to make any arguments–just an interesting and odd case.

@cobrat: Well, the other parts were already covered by @juillet: “the point of recruiting at a top college presumably is because you believe in the education and resources that college provides in addition to the inputs”, so what are/were you disagreeing with?

Not necessarily disagreeing 100% as some employers are as reasonable as @julliet noted. However, there are others who do recruit solely on the basis of what they perceive as high quality input in the form of high performing/achieving students they perceive as the “creme de la creme” in their own biased estimations.

@PurpleTitan Agree 100%. Elite firms–and I’ve worked for the World Bank as well as some top investment banks–are not that concerned with the acceptance rate of the colleges they recruit from. We hired students from Ross (University of Michigan) and Chicago at numbers equal to Columbia. Universities have a vested interest in saying that their “name brand” matters but recruiters make little distinction between the top 40 or 50 universities. Indeed, a lot depends on the partner or SVP in charge. He’ll have his favorites.

UChicago is a top notch school. Ranked a notch higher recently than Columbia College.