Hello all,
I am planning on applying to the General Studies school at Columbia University. I’m supposed to get out of the military in Summer of 2020, so I’m trying to plan ahead to reduce the amount of stress/unpreparedness when it comes time to apply. Since I’m getting out in the summer of 2020, I will be applying in Fall of 2019 or Spring of 2020. The thing is that I already have credits from when I went to Ohio State for a year before joining. I was originally majoring in aerospace engineering but after about a semester and a half, I decided it wasn’t what I really wanted to do. I ended up joining the Marines because it turns out I didn’t have enough money to pay for college, and I wanted to take advantage of the powerful Post 9-11 GI Bill. I’ve decided that I want to pursue an Economics degree at Columbia GS and possibly apply for law school later.
Now on to my problem. I have 30 credit hours from OSU (this is back in 2015-2016 school year) which should be plenty to transfer. I also had 32 credits from APs in high school but I don’t think those will be valid by the time I am applying again. I also just retook the ACT in December and got a 33 on it. Now, going into the beginning of 2018, I’m trying to figure out if I will need to take classes at a community college or if I can just apply as is. I would honestly just take the classes if Columbia accepted online courses, but they don’t. If I took them at a local community college it would be very difficult/impossible to be sure that I would complete said classes, due to the chance that I may deploy in the near future. I am already going somewhere mid-January, as well as from about March-July, so I already can’t take classes for the Spring or Summer semesters. Not to mention it would be pretty strenuous on my schedule since I’m usually working >12 hrs a day. At max I could probably take 2-3 actual in-class courses before it is time to apply. I am, however, planning on attending the Warrior-Scholar program in 2019 which is very highly praised by everyone who attends, as well as taking advantage of the Service-to-Scholar program when applying. Essentially I’m wondering if that, combined with my 33 ACT, will be enough to get me in? Would you recommend that I take Fall 2020/ Spring 2021 to beef up my application with actual community college classes/GPA or will I be competitive when applying in Fall 2019/ Spring 2020? All answers are appreciated.