Columbia vs. Harvard

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
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<p>One last tiny thing on the GS program size. From the [2011</a> report](<a href=“Columbia OPIR”>Columbia OPIR) GS has 1501 students getting bachelors degrees, 929 are full time. 150-200 of those students are traditionally aged in the GS/JTS joint program. An additional 60-120 traditionally aged students are in the dual degree program with Sciences Po in France. </p>

<p>An additional 447 are in the Post Bac/PreMed program to prepare for medical school. There are another 90 in non-degree programs, but I’m not sure who they are.</p>

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<p>Harvard is Harvard after all. Though Columbia is my favorite. Go to Harvard, man!</p>

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<p>One of our sons went to Columbia (turning down Harvard) and another to Harvard w/o applying to Columbia- each school was the better fit for the respective kid. One thing that hasn’t been mentioned is how you feel about the “gen ed” (non-major-requirements) at each school; the Columbia kid really liked Western Civ etc but I don’t think his brother would have.</p>

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<p>Beard Tax,</p>

<p>Firstly, I’m going to apologize right now to anyone that reads this. My response my come off as strong and unrefined: after reading a few of these comments, on top of my pretty hectic class schedule, the feeling of being academically discounted set me off in a way that hasn’t happened since I was in junior high school.</p>

<p>As I’m sure you know Beard, all GS students earn our degrees in the same environment, while being held to the same standards, as traditionally admitted students like yourself. Granted, you mention the notion that there are more students qualified to handle the Ivy League than are allowed to experience it - and I don’t deny that for a second. The question then becomes who deserves that opportunity?</p>

<p>I was diagnosed with some serious learning disabilities as a child. My mother suffered from mental issues which effectively made her my child and at a young age I assumed the role of a parent in many ways. This forced me to become uninterested in school and when given the opportunity to actually relax I found myself drinking alcohol at a young age and hanging with the wrong crowd. I was depressed and frustrated by my forced maturity and, as a person of extremes, when given the opportunity I dived into the opposite realm of the spectrum: immaturity, bad decision making skills and short-terminism.</p>

<p>My father, however, lived in one of the most expensive cities in the country (think beverly hills, new york city, etc) all the while my mother barely survived financially, as he decided for numerous reasons to make her life a financial hell. My mother, who I lived with 75% of the time, lived in a ghetto (think Bed-sty Brooklyn or Inglewood). Thus, I was a parent and survivor with my mother in the ghetto and when visiting my father (every other weekend and 2 days a week) in a luxurious home - weird scenario to say the least.</p>

<p>Because of my odd upbringing and lack of mature parental figures, I barely graduated high school. In fact, I essentially cheated my way through Algebra 2 (no geometry or trig) and found out the day of the graduation ceremony I was actually able to walk.</p>

<p>After being homeless basically for a summer upon my high school graduation (I mentioned earlier i drank alcohol at a young age but i’ve never touched drugs) I had a business idea and ran with it. Being isolated from my parents and their issues, I became obsessed with my business and in one year had three dozen employees producing seven figures in revenue. I’d never taken an accounting or finance course in my life - but bought 15 textbooks on the subjects during this period and read them all in a 2 month period.</p>

<p>My second year out of high school, as I was running this business, came across an extremely egotistical yet highly educated (harvard) guy who seemed reluctant to do business with me because of my age and lack of “formal” education. He, to be perfectly honest, was not very bright (you can’t teach bright, sorry folks) and made a terrible business decision going with someone else which materialized itself quickly. Regardless, this made me extremely mad (as mad as i am right now probably) and i decided it was time to show people like him up.</p>

<p>After a year and a half at community college, while working 75 hours a week and taking 15 units a semester, I effectively taught myself (through youtube videos because i couldn’t attend class) all levels of math up to calculus 3 (imagine doing related rates without geometry, or calculus without trig). I attained a 3.85 GPA (which, as a columbia student now, is not easy if your taking the right courses at community college) and was admitted into Columbia.</p>

<p>My business is now run by my father and I’ve decided to peruse finance as a “career” for a little to build some relationships and then branch out my prior business in different sectors. I have signed an offer and will be joining a private equity fund within a publicly traded company (figure out how many of those exist and list their names if your interested because there aren’t many). My base salary as of now is around $120,000 with most likely a signing bonus of 10k, and a performance based bonus that can range from 20k-80k. </p>

<p>During recruiting also (I was not rejected from one single firm upon submitting my resume by the way) I noticed that out of every 10 students waiting with me to be interviewed, at least half if not more were GS students (figure out the math of how many GS vs CC/SEAS students there are applying for internships in finance in terms of a ratio) and I can also confirm that almost all of those GS students successfully landed some of the most competitive internships out there (Goldman sachs, morgan stanley, consulting, private equity/hedge funds, you name it). Oh yeah, and some of those GS students were old enough to where the interviewer absolutely knew what was up.</p>

<p>I’m sounding very cocky right now and if you met me in person you’d never guess I’m writing this - but I’m letting you know that outside of this college board world filled with SAT obsessed students who tack on a list of their artificially incentivized extra circulars as merits that warrant a “traditional” ivy league education, there are people who are just as talented, if not more, who had a different educational path but deserve a second shot. Ask yourself, which student group has the highest GPA at columbia? Which student group fills the halls of butler at odd hours repeatedly practicing their problem sets in order to insure they set the curve in their class?</p>

<p>I am in NO WAY trying to project one group of students being superior to the other here by the way, but i’ll be damned if some kid who’s yet to pay a bill or deal with any hardship outside of possibly being racially profiled claims that people like myself within GS are admitted because of the ability to pay. CC/CEAS/GS students are all, in their own right, hard working and full of interesting talents/histories. </p>

<p>If you’re seriously going to judge a group of people with such a wide blanket and ignorant thesis I seriously question not only why you’ve been admitted into college, but whether or not the core is doing its job. My suggestion is do your homework: meet some GS students, talk to them about their backgrounds and I’d be surprised if you come back with the same statements as before – because last I checked not all CC/CEAS students are prep school/WASP/entitled people like stereotypes would make them out to be.</p>

<p>[GS</a> Class Day speaker swapped computers for classics](<a href=“http://www.columbiaspectator.com/2012/04/20/gs-class-day-speaker-swapped-computers-classics]GS”>GS Class Day speaker swapped computers for classics - Columbia Spectator)</p>

<p>(apologies for grammatical/spelling errors, this was written on my iPad)</p>

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<p>Bravo phillyman123! You truly make me proud to be a Columbian!</p>

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<p>To phillyman123: your post was extraordinarily moving and powerful! Opening the doors of academic opportunity to exceptional students with different life paths is PRECISELY the point of GS. Anyone who does NOT get this, and who CANNOT get this, is NOT worth arguing with. </p>

<p>I was deeply touched by your story and by your willingness to share it with us. Thank you. And this is also why I have such DEEP respect for Columbia University, say whatever else you will about it: because through the means of GS it does not withhold its remarkable academic resources from people who did not have the opportunity to spend their first eighteen years of life being eased along to the Ivy League. Many of these eighteen year olds seem to presume, because they didn’t have to fight life to achieve their dream, that anyone who did is undeserving of the same kind of dreams and the opportunities to achieve them. Meaning, some of these kids are not really learning ALL that Columbia is offering them, by having GS students in some of the same classes. They are, in short, WASTING many of their own intellectual opportunities by refusing to get to know GS students. Now, how smart is that?</p>

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<p>Personally, I’d choose Columbia. It’d be a lot easier to find your spaghetti in NYC if it fell out of your pockets.</p>

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<p>Since I posted this on other threads, I might as well do it here too:</p>

<p>Hi all,</p>

<p>I wanted to post all the information I could to help educate people who are considering GS, but are having second thoughts due to the negative posts throughout the majority of these [ivy league] college forums. I was recently admitted into Columbia GS, a fact that I take tremendous pride in, and the decision to apply to Columbia was not a hard one to make. *(A little side note about myself: I do not rush into decisions that will have a tremendous impact on my life both mentally and financially). I wanted to be as thorough as possible after considering Columbia GS, so I read and researched just about everything I could that had to do, or mentioned, Columbia GS and this is what I have found:</p>

<p>Brief Overview:
Columbia GS is one of the official three undergraduate schools at Columbia University, dedicated to non-traditional students. The other two undergraduate schools that make up Columbia University are Columbia College and Columbia Engineering (formerly known as SEAS), which are dedicated to traditional students. You must apply to GS if you have taken at least a one year break in your education, and you cannot apply to either CC/CE if you have taken more than two semester course loads at another school. In addition, you are automatically ineligible to apply to CC if you have taken over a year break from school. Also, you cannot apply to more than one school during the same cycle. </p>

<p>Being that all three schools are official undergraduate schools of Columbia University, they are all considered to be in the “Ivy League”. Some have questioned the prestige of Columbia GS because the admissions process and criteria differs from that of CC, but it should also be mentioned that CE too has a completely different admission process and criteria from either schools. This is because all three schools have different admission committees that review their own applicants for each specific school, thus the different admission rates for each school. The rankings are based on the combined average CC/CE admission rates. GS rates are excluded in the overall admission rates, because (from what I’ve gathered):
1.) Most applicants for GS are transfers opposed to first year students (the nature of the path a non-traditional student)
2.) GS applicants are non-traditional - it would not make sense to lump them into the admission rates with the other traditional applicants considering there are different criteria that are examined. Nearly all the other schools in the nation only record traditional students admission rates, it only makes sense for Columbia to do the same.
*if there are more logical reasons I’m sure someone else with add to this section.</p>

<p>Now, I have no idea what life is like at Columbia nor after graduation, but the fact of the matter is that GS is a part of Columbia U, regardless of how the other students or peers throughout academia view GS students. Prestige has become synonymous with admission rates, but I would not be too worried about GS admission rates considering there is only a fraction of qualified applicants able to apply to GS (about 1500-2000 transfer apps) compared to the 34,000 first year apps CC/CE had this past year. Not to mention CE had admission rates varying between 23-31% prior to 2006. If you took CC/CE admissions rate for 2005(I believe this is the correct year) CC had a rate of 12% and CE had a rate of 31% making their combined rate about 21.5%, similar to the rate of what GS posted recently. Their marks have come down dramatically in recent years, but this is because of the substantial increase in applicants (more applicants for the same amount of spots = lower admission rates). With the introduction of the common app, CC’s admission rate dropped 3 points in a one year period (2010-2011) due to the increase of about 9,000 more applicants. As the years pass, GS will continue to have lower acceptance rates as it becomes more well known (if you want to look at it in that light).</p>

<p>As for the classes, there are only a few that GS students can’t automatically register for (I believe they can petition for registration into these courses however), but they have the same equivalent courses in the GS sections. The rest of the classes, including the core requirements are the same and integrated. You learn side by side with the other students of the college as well as from the same professors, and graduate with the same Columbia University degree, with only minor adjustments:</p>

<p>GS diploma:
Regarding the School of General Studies Diploma | General Studies
This is an image of the diploma, posted on the GS website</p>

<p>CE diploma:
File:SEASdiploma2003.jpg - WikiCU, the Columbia University wiki encyclopedia
As you can see this is nearly identical to the GS diploma (along with 13 graduate school diploma)</p>

<p>CC diploma:
File:Ccdiploma2007.jpg - WikiCU, the Columbia University wiki encyclopedia
Diplomas - WikiCU, the Columbia University wiki encyclopedia
Only CC and Columbia Law have diplomas in Latin, but are worded the same as the other diplomas (including the GS diploma)</p>

<p>The only real difference you will find with these diplomas are the dean’s signature line. They will correspond to the specific school in which you attended (ie: General Studies, Columbia College, etc…)</p>

<p>One last this I wanted to reiterate, is that GS is a unique school within the “Ivy League”. There is no other “Ivy League” school that houses a specific undergraduate college for non-traditional students. Yale and Brown have programs within their college, but they are not schools of either institution. Yale only accepts about 5-10 transfers (and usually they are extreme cases such as Mike Richter - former NY Rangers Goaltender) into their Eli Whitney program, who graduate with a degree from Yale College, because there is no other undergraduate school at Yale. The same goes for Brown’s RUE program; however, you must be away from school for at least 5 years. The other programs mentioned on this board that were compared to GS were Harvard extension and UPenn LPS. Harvard extension is similar to Columbia’s School of Continued Education, but is open enrollment. You can take courses at Harvard under certain contingencies, and you will not be fully integrated as some people alluded to. UPenn’s LPS is not a school, it is actually a program housed within another college (School of Arts & Sciences) at UPenn.</p>

<p>I hope this helps. It is late so please forgive any misspellings or shortcomings. If I left out any information, I will add it another time.</p>

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<p>An excellent example of bureaucracy at Columbia. The official name of the engineering school is Columbia Engineering, but the official acronym is still [SEAS</a> and NOT CE](<a href=“http://bwog.com/2011/09/20/seas-it-and-never-let-it-go/]SEAS”>http://bwog.com/2011/09/20/seas-it-and-never-let-it-go/).</p>

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<p>I, like Curiou5, was also just admitted to GS as a transfer student. To share a bit of my story, though I’m 21 and therefore a college-age transfer student, I have a very nontraditional background. Nearly everyone in my family struggled with mental illnesses from schizophrenia to depression, and because of these familial distractions I ended up leaving high school when I was sixteen with a proficiency certificate (California’s legal equivalent of the high school diploma.) Before I left high school I had a 3.5, so I wasn’t a horrible student but I certainly did not apply myself, and I never took the SATs. Going straight into a four-year college was therefore not an option for me.</p>

<p>Like phillyman, I was forced from a young age to “parent” many of my family members – I was always the responsible one. That came at the expense of being able to focus on academics and realize my potential. I ended up taking several years off after I left high school, and then returned to community college, where I’ve earned a 3.87 (representing 90 units), participated in clubs, taken honors courses, and taken on internships and volunteer work. </p>

<p>I applied to Columbia GS because my major is Art History, and I thought Columbia would offer me unparalleled resources, both academically and because of its proximity to museums and galleries. I am excited by the idea of being academically challenged at Columbia, and by the idea of being at a school with so many bright students. </p>

<p>This discussion board is therefore very troubling to me. I was also accepted to UC Berkeley and UCLA, which both have quite good AH programs, and when I see this sort of intense bickering over the merits of GS I begin to wonder whether I shouldn’t just go to one of the UC schools, where there is no differentiation between transferring nontraditional students and regular undergrads. But then I think about the types of courses and opportunities that would be available to me at GS… Really, the only reason I have yet to decide is due to the stigma that some CC people seem to have for GS… It’s very disappointing that supposedly intelligent people would object so strongly to those who have nontraditional paths finding their way to Columbia University. If I don’t see you there in the fall, then I may very well see you there for grad school after completing my studies at a top-ranking public school.</p>

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<p>Olivia724, please do take these discussions with a grain of salt. Most of these posters do not actually attend the school. As someone who has taken multiple classes with GS students, I can confidently say that I am honored to be in their presence. Most of them are far more interesting than my College friends and have much deeper insight. </p>

<p>One of my GS friends already got his masters and climbed the corporate ladder multiple times at multiple different companies, and is simply starting a new journey at Columbia. Another one went to Iraq for quite some time and therefore took time off of school. GS students are interesting, accomplished, delightful people who are a pleasure to have in class. In no way do I feel as though they are undeserving of having the Columbia name attached to them. We literally take the same classes! How could they not?</p>

<p>I don’t understand this discussion, but I am moderately confident that this would not be happening if the people talking knew what they were saying. GS students are respected on campus, as they should be.</p>

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<p>I agree. Just look at all the support GS students are receiving over their class day change. If anything there is much more hate towards Barnard. </p>

<p>[Breaking:</a> Columbia Councils Call for Formal Apology, Accommodations – Bwog](<a href=“http://bwog.com/2012/04/25/breaking-columbia-councils-call-for-formal-apology-accommodations/]Breaking:”>Breaking: Columbia Councils Call for Formal Apology, Accommodations - Bwog)</p>

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<p>For what it’s worth, starting this Fall, GS students will be required to take the same Core Curriculum as Columbia College students. This is further evidence that GS is intended to be “Columbia College for non-traditional students,” rather than an extension school. Columbia does have an extension school, but it’s the School of Continuing Education, not GS.
[GS</a> Gets a Core Workout – Bwog](<a href=“http://bwog.com/2012/05/02/gs-gets-a-core-workout/]GS”>GS Gets a Core Workout - Bwog)</p>