Which college at Cornell have you heard from? Arts and Sciences, Hum Ec, ILR, Ag, Engineering, Hotel?
They are all very different and range from very hard to very easy to get into.
@rjkofnovi: Fair point. That seems to be a Columbia thing.
Columbia GS is specifically geared to nontraditional students – it does not accept freshman matriculating directly from high school. Thus the “stats” would not be relevant – many of its incoming freshmen are young people coming out of the military. The school administers its own exam (“General Studies Admissions Exam”) for students whose SAT/ACT scores are more than 8 years old.
I’d also add that even though GS students take the Columbia core courses, they are assigned to separate sections for the primary core sequence courses. So they don’t have to sit in a discussion group with a bunch of 18 and 19 year olds.
Given the fact that most applicants to CC or SEAS would not be eligible to apply to GS - coupled with the frequent changes to the SAT & ACT over recent years – it really wouldn’t make sense to include their data on the CDS.
“I’d also add that even though GS students take the Columbia core courses, they are assigned to separate sections for the primary core sequence courses. So they don’t have to sit in a discussion group with a bunch of 18 and 19 year olds.”
Oh my! The horror of older people having to sit in discussion groups with 18 and 19 year olds who actually qualified to get in as freshman! Who would want to hang out with young brilliant minds? Seriously, if I were an employer and were aware of this process, I would discount the GS program and its students as comparable to those at the other colleges at Columbia. It is a degree that says Columbia, but with a difference. If Columbia feels these students are just as qualified as the others, then why do they put them in a separate school and not incorporate them as transfer students in the same three colleges? The way it is set up now, the GS program has the essence of an extension school.
The people who are admitted to GS are fully qualified, or Columbia wouldn’t accept them.
Administrative and andragogical reasons for creating separate class sections, and different graduation requirements, for older, and/or part-time students, would be a discussion for a whole new thread.
“Administrative and andragogical reasons for creating separate class sections, and different graduation requirements, for older, and/or part-time students, would be a discussion for a whole new thread.”
I completely disagree. The OP is looking to transfer to perhaps this school from his/her current one. This area of concern is absolutely germane to the inquiry.
The OP seems to have left the room.
The OP might well be a viable candidate for admission to a different division of Columbia. However, the division that has contacted the OP is GS, and GS is specifically designed for the kind of student that is the most common CC graduate: non-traditional age, and in need of part-time study. This looks to me like carefully targeted marketing on the part of GS.
Whether or not GS has a place in the world at all, or at Columbia in particular, is a different question.
The issue the OP might face would be the weaker financial aid offered to GS students; U Florida may wellbe the only financially feasible option.
However, the reality on campus is that the GS students tend to be more capable students than the traditional (younger) students. Probably as a function of a greater breadth of life experience and maturity. My daughter reported to me early on that in her classes, the GS students were noticeably the most capable in the classroom and quicker to catch onto new concepts. When my son transferred into a different university as an older student, after a 3 year hiatus during which he was gainfully employed and living independently, he had to take some introductory coursework for his major and commented to me on the big gulf the 7-year age difference created in class discussions, simply because of direct life experience and cultural and recent historical references. Beloit College’s “Mindset” lists give a good illustration as to how this plays out – (example, for 2017: https://www.beloit.edu/mindset/previouslists/2017/ )
So while the presence of GS students in a Lit/Hum discussion group might truly benefit the younger students — given the broader range of experience the GS students bring to the table – I think that the students themselves might find that the level of discussion to be more rewarding when they have the benefit of the breadth of life experience of their same-school classmates.
But that is of course based on the average age of the GS students (27) – whereas the OP did not state how old he is – he could be someone who has lived at home while attending CC and is only age 20 – in which case he would be closer in age and experience to the traditional students than to the GS cohort.