I just received my letter of acceptance for Columbia GS and now faced with having to decide between my safety school and Columbia. It makes no sense…I should be leaping at the GS school but I am worried about the tuition.
Are there any students out there who were able to get a full ride. How much should I expect to be paying out of pocket?
Any help would be great.
@Myopic when did you receive your acceptance letter? Today by email?
I got accepted to GS with only a 8500$ scholarship. But I was told it goes up if you do well. You get any scholarship?
Yes. They emailed me last week as the committee had a couple of things to ask me. Then I got the email today.
What do you plan on studying? If your studying something with the potential of making 150k+ a year then it would be worth it as you can pay your tuition back in 2-3 years. Plus I assume your only going for two years correct? And you get any scholarships?
Im going to be premed. So my plans will include grad school. Im not sure how many credits they will take at this point. My safety school took all. At this point. No scholarships.
@Myopic I have never heard of a case in which a student received a full ride to Columbia GS. As I have mentioned in various threads throughout the past, the lack of financial aid is one of the major drawbacks of this program. My theory, of course, is that it compensates for the higher acceptance rate - this is, of course, Columbia University. I believe most students receive scholarships that range from 4,000 to 6,000 per semester, with the potential, as jackcolumbia123 mentioned, for these to increase based on merit. I did, however, read in a BWOG article that a student maintaining a 4.0 GPA only received a $500.00 increase in merit-based scholarship money. So to answer your question, I’d expect to be paying a whole lot out of pocket, unfortunately. And it also makes perfect sense that you’re not leaping at this opportunity. In fact, since you’re premed, I’m really not sure how much of an advantage Columbia GS will give you over other schools regarding med-school admissions. Though I am not too familiar with the med-school admissions process, I’d do a fair amount of research on the weight that the reputation of your undergraduate school carries with admissions committees–this should lead you to a more conclusive decision.
Nikdrake is correct that medical schools care a lot more about your grades than they do about your college. You would be better of going to a CUNY school and excelling than going to GS and doing okay. With that said if you decide not to go into medicine GS will offer you career paths you never even imagined. So you have to see how sure you are that you want to do medicine. If you’ve done research and job shadowing and your convinced, then the extra money to go to GS may not be worth it. But if your unsure, then going to GS would give you slot more options.
Thanks to both of you. Both of you have really summed up how I feel. I would say that I am very sure that medicine is the way that I want to go and both schools are stepping stones to that goal.
I wish I could sit on a Columbia class to get a feel for the place but yea at this point, I have no scholarship and going into debt at this time makes no sense when Im going to be in debt in medical school.
Thank you for your advice.