<p>Kind of surprised to find this subsection on College Confidential, but I'm glad to have found it.</p>
<p>I'm a 25 year old transfer recently accepted to Columbia GS for the coming fall. That said, I'm also a veteran who has some leadership experience and a deployment under my belt. My resume isn't amazing, but a lot of the work I did in Afghanistan revolved around Civil Affairs which included mentoring government officials and an active role in managing small scale projects to develop infrastructure and distribute micro grants to local business owners who needed assistance. Again, relatively small amounts of money being thrown around but we were doing it in a unique and demanding environment.</p>
<p>My question is this... what kind of hurdles will I face as a student at Columbia GS? I'm older, so I know some of my younger contemporaries probably won't like me and they'll probably have me beat with SAT scores or high school GPA. Would anyone recommend retaking the SATs for the sake of getting a competitive internship? What kind of internship should I look for as an incoming junior with no experience in the industry? Also, is there anywhere my age or experience can be used to my advantage or am I just indefinitely behind the power curve?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance for any insight.</p>
<p>Edit: Also, any thoughts on a major? Obviously I'm going with something under Economics, but there are tons of options beyond that. Financial Economics, Economics Philosophy, Economics Statistics etc. Does this even really matter? I'm sure down the road I probably want something that'll be more forgiving in terms of maintaining a high GPA for when I apply to an MBA program down the road.</p>