Down to the Wire - the Hard Sell on Columbia

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
1

<p>So in about a week everyone has to click the final submit, and my guess is that a lot of you have not just yet (maybe cause you're nervous, lazy, or just not sure). But as a big fan of Columbia, I thought I would usher in some nostalgia of my own and of the veteran members on here to encourage you to not just apply to Columbia, but to feel that if admitted it is the school for you. Most of you might not take my finely crafted bait, but hopefully someone who was previously skeptical feels a sense of pride in applying to Columbia.</p>

<p>So it would be nice if the thread would go like this:
1) I will write random musings about Columbia.
2) Veterans feel free to chime in with your own stories.
3) Applicants, feel free to ask questions</p>

<p>My perspective</p>

<p>I came to Columbia from a place of skepticism, which is why I think I can appreciate the fact that many of you are not bona fide lions as of yet. I was heavily influenced by the chatter in my high school of students that dismissed columbia on many fronts - it was in a city ('do you really want to be in a city, that is so not college'), it had a core curriculum ('you have to be crazy to go to such a structured school' as said by a friend of mine that chose to go to Boston College, the irony astounds), and my favorite was the argument that if I was going to go Ivy, I shouldn't go for lower tier Ivy. Other arguments abounded: it was too big, it was too bureaucratic. Coming from a conservative town, I also heard musings about how Columbia was too liberal, coming from public school it was too elitist. In a sense Columbia was everything I was not - so why bother.</p>

<p>Like the impressionable youth that I was, I never fully allowed myself to become attached to Columbia and fully anticipated going elsewhere. I submitted my application to Columbia mostly as a test of curiosity than a sincere desire to attend. I would say in the first hand this was a mistake, knowing college admissions from my vantage now, sincerity in the application is incredibly critical, so to those of you in the 11th hour, don't just click submit and give your fate away, give yourself the best chance and work on the application until you think you cannot add anything more productive.</p>

<p>My conversion to a Columbian occurred after I submitted my application and in the run-up to and after the decisions were announced. It began with a very close examination at some of those arguments against Columbia, ones that I could not just dismiss as unfounded, but in fact invert into reasons to attend. I'll make three more posts with some of these issues expounded upon. Hopefully it encourages you to see Columbia in a unique light.</p>

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<p>The City</p>

<p>I think it is hard to conceive of college in a city when every image you see is of some university in some small town. It is not to say that conceptualization is impossible, but our expectations are often controlled by what society presents. I think it is funny to read schools compare themselves to hogwarts - that is the visual stimuli that they believe will attract students nowadays.</p>

<p>Columbia is often cited because it is in a city and yet has a campus, which in itself is supposed to make innocuous the argument that schools that don’t have campuses, don’t have community. You see, we make these wild-leaps of judgment so quickly though most schools have some form of community (however visible or porous). The idea of a university unless it is the University of Phoenix is that they will have some kind of community - I will muse on the kind Columbia has in a sec - so it is utterly ridiculous to conclude that it is a city school therefore it is not a college.</p>

<p>In any case - as true it is that columbia does have a community and does have a campus, it is also in a city.</p>

<p>A city that is very manageable through public transportation, a city that is truly inundating with opportunity and seething for free/cheap labor eager to become the next titan in whatever field you would choose. It is a place of unparalleled opportunity, and a social and economic space that has no limitations. So why give up the sleepy town in Virginia for the hustle of a city? 3 reasons. 1) Being in college is the last time you can be carefree, and the first time you are probably old enough and independent enough to try things, being in a city therefore is like a candy store (you can do everything and anything and not get bored). Choosing the traditional college environment is more of selling yourself to the lowest common denominator, sure you will have your parties, but at a certain point as it was in high school it becomes sterile, boring and quotidian. NYC is such a jungle that you will spend 4 years and leave most of it unconquered, but that is the exciting part, it is impossible to be bored unless you lack the imagination. 2) A city education better prepares you for the real world - it means you are well versed in the problems of urban society (their wonders and their pitfalls), and capable of addressing them through service work as an undergraduate. As the world increasingly urbanizes, it is not in some town, detached from the world that you will learn the tricks of how to manage yourself and your relationship to the world, it will be in a city. 3) A city education, especially one in New York, brings you into closer proximity to your future career and life, letting you through concurrent internships gain the realistic perspective of what you want to do in life (or not). It is not something that is saved for the summer (when those kids from Harvard and Princeton fill in to the city), but rather it is your domain year round, and your peers at other schools will seek your expertise that as they adjust to the leviathan that is NYC.</p>

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<p>The Core</p>

<p>Something like 5% of you will end up going on to further academic study. I mention this because so many of you are concerned with wanting to multi-major. So I want to use the long-perspective here - most of you will major in something that may have relevance to your first job, but may have zero relevance to your fifth job. So one of the hardest things to do is to get out of the very neat boxes our parents, friends or even we expect of ourselves. Being a doctor does not mean majoring in biology. Working in business does not mean doing a business major. Being a journalist does not mean majoring in journalism…etc., etc.,</p>

<p>College is firstly a rite of passage. Something you must do to do something further. It can be an expensive rite, particularly for the less passionate, but if you are thinking about Columbia, you are doing so because you want something more than just that BA in Philosophy as your stand alone identity.</p>

<p>College is about acquiring certain identifiable skills. Your major is of course the most obvious skill, but also the most obvious one to sell. Whenever someone asks you what you majored in, they can figure out something about what your interests are, your abilities are, etc. But in college you learn so much more than your major, and that is where the ‘liberal arts’ model of education both is realistic about how superficial a BA/BS really is, but is also concrete in developing further skills to supplement your major interests.</p>

<p>The Core not only engages into this liberal arts mindframe, but within the specter of Columbia and New York City, it inflects some sanity to the madness. Being in Providence, where not much happens, the idea of open education is alluring and plausible. Brown as a physical space becomes the grounding point for students. In New York, the idea of open education could be debilitating for some, and especially at Columbia that has twice as many majors as Brown it would lead to balkanization of any intellectual community. The Core is not just a good liberal arts model, it is a necessary existence for Columbia because you will be already inundated with opportunities (far more than our fair haven friends) and the Core becomes your sanity. I appreciated this, and I did the best in my core classes because I didn’t feel I was skating out there by myself, I had people I could turn to, and also I was able to think as philosophically as possible without having to worry about being partial to one field or another. It fostered a true sense of interdisciplinarity.</p>

<p>It does one thing further and better than most general education requirements. It is about conversation, about forming a singular intellectual dialogue in which all can participate. Through the core classes you bond above their necessity (both fervent supporters and critics), over their content and surreptitiously you bond as an intellectual cohort in a way that is exciting. I can find a Columbia alumna and have a great conversation about the core even if we weren’t the same year, because we share this common identity, language and essence. Sure we may have nothing else in common in terms of what we do, or where we have been, but we remain connected by what we have learned. </p>

<p>I think realizing that the Core is not just a great concept, but in the most interesting way it is a necessary concept for a school like Columbia, you do not see it in a denigrating view, but rather as its own form of liberation. In the anarchy that can be New York, Columbia becomes an intellectual oasis. Sure you are at first forced to take these classes, but you quickly relish the fact that you have these courses you can rely on - something you can share.</p>

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<p>Community and Campus Life</p>

<p>I think it is best to explain Columbia as a series of dualities. On the one hand you have a completely self-contained campus life, on the other you have the city. On the one hand you have the structure of a Core, on the other you have the spread of academic, social and career opportunities.</p>

<p>The first idea I like to harp on for you ‘traditionalists’ out there, is that you can spend 4 years at Columbia and never leave Morningside Heights. As far as a collegiate environment goes, it is a pretty good mirror. You have 3 all-night supermarkets within walking distances, some 10 bars, some 40 restaurants, places open really late. You have fraternities and frat parties. You have hundreds of student groups, and tons of free food (cufreefood.com was my lifesaver), speakers on campus, a really great art gallery (have you guys been to either Buell or the Wallach Gallery). A lot of research opportunities, your professors live in the neighborhood. It is astonishing how much you have at your ready disposal on campus. And how ‘traditional’ you can make your life at Columbia seem. There are some kids I hung out with that painted their face every basketball game, and every game a good 400-1000 students show up at the games. Sure Columbia is no Duke, but for those of you desiring or expecting some shelter from the city and wanting a full-immersion life, it is possible.</p>

<p>Columbia, and we never give her credit for it as we often decry all the problems, has made great strides to create this relatively traditional feel to a campus (sure we can nitpick, but it is remarkable just how possible it is at Columbia as compared to NYU to have the cake and eat it too). </p>

<p>But what sets Columbia apart from traditional places, is that it is just as much about the community as it is about the individual. I hinted before that there are a lot of opportunities out there - and I mean A LOT. I guess an example is warranted. One day I left my dorm around noon with my friends to grab some food across the brooklyn bridge, we went to Grimaldis, then went to the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory with a great view of the city, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge and grabbed some Chinese dumplings at a small hole in the wall on Mott Street. As the night crept in, we posted up at this small cafe in Soho until the night got long, headed out to meet some friends at SOBs where they had a bhangra tutorial dancing night, ventured across to the East Village for hookah, and ended the night with a long subway train home that as we crept across College Walk at 6:30 in the morning, the sun was out and no one was around. I mean there is nothing that can match that diversity in terms of experience. And though certainly we spent more than I usually do on such an epic night, it still fills me with memories. </p>

<p>This is the perhaps ‘independent’ quality of Columbia, the fact that students do not completely and exclusively buy into the university as the sole harbinger of fun. You will find a group of friends and can end up going anywhere, do about anything, and come back with a story to share. Your conception of what is fun radically changes because it is no longer based on quotidian, but on the very real things that are available to you - “i know someone at this art gallery, i know someone who works at this small wine and cheese shop, i want to try this place i read about in nymag.” The so called independence is more so in relation to a shared interest in exploration, in refusing the limitations of the neighborhood and seeking out something. But rarely do you do it alone, and rarely do you do something without having the urge to share the story with someone, or to recreate it with a new gaggle of friends. </p>

<p>The fact that you can live in this duality, is in my mind, what makes Columbia special. That you are not beholden to either identity (a campus girl or a city boy), but rather can balance between the two extremes and find a mixture that works well for you.</p>

<hr>

<p>So in a sense these are three primary arguments for Columbia, that at first may have been reasons you didn’t think to apply or were worried about applying. I think they are all reasons to apply. There are details missing - how safe is it, how good are classes - but I can follow up with this information. Needless to say, unless you have a desire to live in the woods for 4 years, there is something for everybody at your disposal at Columbia (including monies to spend your summer in the woods if you so choose).</p>

<p>I hope this thread is helpful and sparks questions and further anecdotes, stories, and musings on why Columbia is worth clicking submit.</p>

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<p>I’m not sure why anyone needs to hard sell Columbia. It is what it is. Applicants should be focused on trying to sell themselves to Columbia, not the other way around.</p>

<p>I’m sure your prose is dandy, but I don’t much feel like reading 7 screens worth of it.</p>

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<p>Things that I was worried about before columbia:</p>

<p>1) Is campus and the neighborhood going to be safe?
2) What if there’s no school spirit?
3) Will I be surrounded by a bunch of liberal hipster activists who chant in unison?</p>

<p>Things that bothered me about Columbia once I came in:
4) Columbia college kids have to do a core, stupid system, anti-freedom
5) these kids are individualistic, selfish and insecure, they make fun of me because I’m hungry and foolish, what do I do
6) why is my adviser a moron, why are there all these bureaucratic hurdles to get stuff funded for a club or to book space on campus</p>

<p>Answers:</p>

<p>the first three questions had easy answers, because I was just going on stereotypes and heuristics:</p>

<p>1)nyc is the safest big city in the us, and columbia is in one of the safest precints, it shows. We hear about muggings close by all the time, but that’s because there is massive density of people. On a per capita basis, crime is still very low. I still don’t personally know of anyone who’s been mugged. Violent crime is a lot less frequent. I’ve walked around off campus late at night all the time, alone, haven’t seen or heard anything happen.in 3.5 years.</p>

<p>2) there is school spirit, I sing the fight song all the time. Most people are actually very happy with their college experience. Most of the happy people have been the ones to take initiative to get what they want. Most of the unhappy ones, have been people who expected opportunity to drop into their laps. Leave your comfort zone a little, and you’ll be very proud of what your school has to offer, weaker personalities are unhappier, and I say ■■■ 'em.</p>

<p>3) To some extent this was true my freshman year. there I was in John Jay dining hall fending off crazy liberals as I attempted to propagate my conservative/moderate/libertarian views. They would usually wish me good bye with a smile walk away together and make friends over how much of a misinformed idiot I was. Over the years many of my friends who were moderate/conservative came out of the political closet, and others became more rational / hard assed / learned some economics and moderated their views. Overall, Columbia only looks radical, because the tiny radical minority is vocal, but the actual student body make up is about 60% liberal, which is in line with any other top university. 20% are moderate, 10-15% are conservative and 5-10% are libertarian-ish. And to be fair, while most crazy liberal hipster activists might uniformly disagree with my views, they often heatedly disagree among themselves as well. It’s been a pleasant surprise to find actual political tension on campus between large groups of students.</p>

7

<p>Wow, these 3 post of yours admissionsgeek really struck into my heart. I live in Brooklyn and visit manhattan often for broadway shows or MSG. However, I honestly have never really explored every aspect of NYC itself, ironic that I reside here. Now I really want to experience everything that one can possibly experience at Columbia and explore all aspects (Thats if I’m admitted of course).</p>

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<p>concoll, don’t hate the core (too much), i love it, and i think i did a sufficient job defending it as a realm of sanity amid chaos. plus - you SEASers have 4 years of your life planned out for you before you start, lol, so how’s that for anti-freedom. i’m sure you wouldn’t term your education as such. the core is unique, and fits columbia’s personality.</p>

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<p>now the tougher sells:</p>

<p>4) The core doesn’t take up that much of your time, for most it’s about 1/4th of your classes at columbia. it’s built in a very inclusive way so that students from any major can find something to contribute. it’s easy to do well in lithum and contemporary civilization with a mild interest in learning about literature or philosophy. Importantly you are not put at competitive disadvantage by taking core classes. At brown when you want to learn art history on the side, you take a course largely with art history majors who will likely do better than you. At Columbia you take art humanities with students from every major, so you aren’t disadvantaged because haven’t specialized in art history. The common dialogue on campus helps, the common experience builds lasting friendships, hopefully you’ve opened up a few extra gears in your head, and you have a solid grounding for future humanity courses.</p>

<p>5) freshmen are annoying, I hated them and still dislike freshmen in general, high school gets beaten out of everyone sometime at the end of freshman / beginning of soph year, everyone grows up and wishes they had a durable personality and real sincere friends. It took until the end of sophomore year for me to realize that being a little hungry and a lot foolish served me well in the long run. friends I made freshman year have stayed friends throughout college, and now it’s my friends who ridicule me, because they know I’m not made of glass, I’ve loved these years so far, and it’s largely because of my peers.</p>

<p>6) My frosh-soph adviser was a moron, I had to resort to asking upperclassmen for advice on classes and majors (including people on this forum). I hear advising has improved in the last couple of years. My junior/senior adviser is a brilliant, knowledgeable and approachable man, so things did turn around. I also spent a little time mastering the bureaucracy and now navigating it is a breeze, things get done quickly. You’ve gotta just keep asking students and administrators whom you can talk to, and remain polite and professional throughout. Today, I find it easy to harness campus resources to get whatever I want, from a peer counselor for a depressed friend at 2am to a room with a projector that will fit 150 for wednesday night, to someone to fix a leaky shower head etc.</p>

<p>Columbia is not for the faint hearted or the immature, it is quite an uphill battle at first, but if you are someone who’s willing to be uncomfortable for a little while and take initiative to see things turn out the way you want, you’ll thrive, accomplish whatever you set your heart on and make lasting friends and memories on the way.</p>

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<p>Admissionsgeek and confidentialcoll, thank you for giving prospective Lions a picture of life at Columbia! Your colorful commentary is greatly appreciated!</p>

<p>I have a few questions:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Is there a lot of school spirit? Obviously, as admissionsgeek said, Columbia is no Duke. But, I’ve read that because of multiple factors (NYC, not much excitement about varsity sports, etc.), there isn’t a lot of campus unity and school spirit, which, in turn, leads to an alumni network that sometimes is not as strong as other Ivy’s?</p></li>
<li><p>Is there grade inflation in the core classes?</p></li>
<li><p>How often did you leave campus? And, how does having NYC as your backyard affect the social scene at Columbia?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Thanks!</p>

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<p>I agree with sdunkle- I like this thread. It gives excellent insights and personal perspectives.</p>

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<p>sdunkle - good questions.</p>

<p>1) i think that school spirit is very strong at columbia, but it is probably more geeky than at your big time sports schools. i mean, bonding will probably include a physics joke or something to that extent. but as i mentioned there is a strong contingent at columbia that is very rah-rah, and a big alumni base that is rah-rah.</p>

<p>what you have at columbia that is confusing compared to lets say duke is the fact that the majority of the graduates of the university spent their undergrad years elsewhere. this is further proliferated by the fact that if you a go to grad at a place like columbia you may not be as partial to your grad program because frankly you will have an alumni base of your ugrad school in new york city. </p>

<p>so if you look at the data - columbia ugrad alumni base and participation is not significantly behind its peers. though its broader alumni numbers are not as ‘loyal.’ i think this will subside in a few years as columbia’s broad alumni group gets bigger and some of the internal politics and division between schools are lessened. though because folks who graduate from Teacher’s College are not donating their lifestock to Columbia, it creates this perception that columbia does not have a loyal alumni base.</p>

<p>but when it comes to dealing with the college or engineering alumni groups, the first thing of note is they are very present, particularly at athletic games (as most of the boys in the old columbia were athletes of some kind) and do a lot of things to help out undergraduates.</p>

<p>so i wouldn’t say this belief is a lie, but rather it is looking at the broader base and not the narrow ugrad alumni base. could columbia use even more alumni participation, of course. and if you look at the more recent classes since like 2000 you notice a huge sea-change. for the past 4 years columbia has outranked its Ivy peers in senior giving percentage, and we just got an email for us alumni interviewers that the last 5 classes are some of the most involved in that process.</p>

<p>re: unity as a whole, i think it is very present though perhaps in more subtle ways. you wont see folks cheering in droves, but they will wear their hats and hoodies. you hear on campus a lot of pride and certainly a great deal of smack talked about their peers. you quickly see yourself as a ‘columbian’ and a ‘lion.’ not everyone fits the mantra, of course, but almost every columbian i know regardless of how die-hard they are, on the issue of princeton we are united - it sucks.</p>

<p>2) well there is a difference between grade inflation and also having a lot of work - i think at columbia you get both. on average you take 5 more classes than your ivy peers in a given 4 year academic experience. and within those classes just from hearing grumblings, i would say columbia has some of the toughest work out there. but i found most of the classes to grade easily, including the core classes.</p>

<p>it was hard to get a straight A, but it was probably harder to get a C. you really had to try to get that. </p>

<p>so i think it is nice a balance. you will learn a lot, even in core classes, but so long as you complete the assignments you aren’t going to fail.</p>

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<p>leaving campus went with my classwork of course. usually at the beginning of school year i would go twice a week downtown. by finals or paper time it might be once every other week.</p>

<p>as i have said before, i ended up doing a lot of student activities, so i found staying on campus to be fun and really easy supply of a good time.</p>

<p>but on the other hand, i would sometimes just go out for the sake of it - take a train somewhere and walk back, go to the MOMA for free and stare at a painting, gather some friends and put on our best and try to get into some nice place. things off the cuff - it is good to have that as an escape and those outings (whether it was because i didn’t want to work on a paper, or needed to see people who weren’t in college) were some of the best i had. spontaneous.</p>

<p>so i would usually say the NYC becomes your ‘escape’ at least for most people and not necessarily is it a direct competition to your everyday. so i would say it makes your time at columbia better, it gives you a release (as concoll would say, the childish high school antics of frosh can be a bit much) and lets you experience something you honestly could not anywhere but in new york. it enhances your experience. </p>

<p>because you are not in downtown, i wouldn’t ever say it detracts from your experience because it does require some degree of choice and motivation to go out - which means you will probably do something on campus first before thinking about going off campus. that is the good thing about being at columbia and having that detachment from the party areas. and of my friends i can of course name some that would only do things in brooklyn or when MPD was hot they would go there, but they were more exceptions than the rule. and though i know some folks that got too attracted to the glitz of the city, most people kept a good balance and harnessed the city as a resource and didn’t get consumed by it.</p>

<p>your first place for fun will be on campus, unless you choose to not want to be on campus for your nights and self-select to spend most of your time elsewhere.</p>

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<p>sdunkle:</p>

<p>1) Adgeek touched on this well. We have a 99% freshman retention, higher than nearly every school in the country. I think only Yale might beat us on this measure. We’re not screaming our love for Columbia, but that’s a pretty telling number. The reason people aren’t vocally in love, is because our football team has been pathetic over the years, and our basketball team has been middling. Both are getting better, but “school spirit” is tightly connected to our football and basketball team success. There was a spurt of school spirit this year when we trounced princeton 38-0 at our opening game, it subdued after we lost homecoming to penn</p>

<p>2) core classes are graded better than most normal classes, depends on the section but most have an average grade of ~B+. some will have an average grade of B and some will have an average grade of B+/A-</p>

<p>3)I leave campus once every two weeks and sometimes twice a week if I’m visiting family or if high school friends are in town. It doesn’t really hurt campus life. Campus is still a small place by area, so there is very high density of your friends and of activities for you to run into. Most times I head down to an NYC location with friends, whether it be a jazz bar, the MOMA, new york’s famous chicken and rice cart, haloween parade etc. Thus “going into the city” is a bonding activity, not usually something that separates you from friends.</p>

<p>Columbia wouldn’t be a top 10 university if it had such debilitating problems like “no campus community” or “very dangerous area”. These were more true in the 80s and at that time it showed in the rankings. I would not have come to Columbia had I been accepted in the late 80s, early 90s.</p>

15

<p>bump… great read for prospective students</p>

16

<p>Excellent post. Anyone considering Columbia should read this. Right about now I would like to copy and paste this url for my “Why Columbia?” question.</p>

17

<p>

</p>

<p>Damn right we do. Who else eats two Chipotle burritos a day, comes into your room and then proceeds to ruin your peace of mind by stuffing their face with your food and making a mess on the floor?</p>

18

<p>^Hahahahaha, I meant hungry for success / ambitious / enthusiastic, and hopefully foolish =/= clumsy. But yeah, deal with it karot. karot’s dad got her in, by personally donating money to one of Bollinger’s trusts, she’s not good at selling hard, but she’ll buy if you’re hard ;).</p>

19

<p>Okay I feel that i should ask a couple questions here :]
(Sorry if these were covered, in advance)

  1. Student atmosphere. Was it really pretentious? Were students out there just for their own thing or is everyone willing to look out for each other?</p>

<p>2) Workload. I understand everything about grade inflation, but about how much homework do you get on average per day? Is it manageable to still live your own life?</p>

<p>3) Has anyone done intramural/club basketball? Its an activity i’m really interested in-- just wondering what peoples opinions/experiences with it are.</p>

<p>4) What’s your advice regarding freshman meal plan?</p>

<p>5) Rate it for its social life! Are the parties fun? Are the girls cute? Is there a lot of bonding going on? THanks.</p>

20

<p>Thank you admissionsgeek for posting this. It’s really helped me with my college search. I’m really starting to consider Columbia now…</p>