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<p>That’s his or her story and s/he’s sticking to it.</p>
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<p>Is this Columbia’s new and improved motto?</p>
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<p>there we go with the 200 grand again</p>
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<p>no they’re paying for their child to be educated, they’re not paying for their child to deal or not to deal with a bureaucracy. If dealing with a bureaucracy teaches you some valuable life skills, then that’s part of an education.</p>
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<p>false dichotomy</p>
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<p>then how come you think waiting in line at a DMV shows you how to effectively navigate and negotiate a bureaucracy?</p>
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<p>while it isn’t as intricate or difficult as some real life bureaucracies, it exposes many students to dealing with a bureaucracy. I’ve dealt with many bureaucracies growing up, but merely dealing with them (like standing in line at the DMV) did not teach me how to negotiate my way through one. Things like figuring out whom to speak to, how to approach them, how to sell crazy ideas to risk-averse administrators and how to get them to do work for you while still keeping them on your side.</p>
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<p>coming from a low income / immigrant family does not mean you know how to effectively navigate a bureaucracy (read difference between dealing with and negotiating through). But as I said before, perhaps you are ahead of the curve, I never claimed all incoming students haven’t learned this.</p>
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<p>anyone who disagrees with you must be sheltered yes? you do not know who you are arguing with, and I’d rather my ideas stand for themselves than attempt to win sympathy points by bringing up my background.</p>
<p>also, were you rejected by Columbia by any chance? I haven’t seen such hostility and devotion to the columbia board in a long time, especially from someone who claims to be an incoming Stanford freshman. I’m sure if you do well your freshman year and apply to transfer you’ll have a good shot.</p>
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<p>These kinds of remarks show an immense lack of imagination and relevancy. Please try again.</p>
<p>Congratulations on officially jumping the shark. It’s painfully obvious that you can’t have a debate without getting personal. At this point, there’s really no reason to continue the discussion. Good day.</p>
<p>I just wanted to come on here and b*tch about the bureaucracy. Let me preface that by saying that most of the Columbia staff are nice and helpful, as long as you make an effort to be pleasant in the first place.</p>
<p>That said, whoever comes up with the POLICIES is a numbskull. I’m doing summer housing at Columbia, and I will have to move a grand total of 4 times before I get to my room for next year. The people at Housing have been very helpful in trying to minimize the inconvenience, but we wouldn’t have this problem if whoever was coming up with the policies would be more considerate.</p>
<p>All right. Rant over.</p>
<p>Edit: Before anyone jumps in with the whole “it builds character” BS, I would like to note that non-Columbia students can also participate in summer housing. They will evaluate this purely as a service, not some holistic education/life preparation. It doesn’t leave a very good impression.</p>
<p>I’ve been in the business world for some time and I can say that navigating a bureaucracy is not a good skill to have because frankly outside of the govt. that level of bureaucracy doesn’t exist in the real world. Rather knowing you can get things done and having confidence is what matters. In my life I’ve never experienced the amount of bureaucracy I did at Columbia. Rather it was the Dartmouth experience - anything is possible - that was more instrumental to my success.</p>
<p>it was also the spawn of your desire to post 8000 times on college confidential, so obviously there is a flaw in that design.</p>
<p>but let’s put the how a school treats you aside for a second, in the end it is the quality of the student body. indeed it is what you learn from your peers that will be more telling to your success than anything, they will be your colleagues into the future, and i think we can pretty much agree that columbia has a very strong, accomplished, inquisitive and intelligent student body.</p>
<p>re: dartmouth’s ‘anything’s possible’ mentality, i got that from columbia too - isn’t that wacky? in the end what is worth noting is that columbia is in a league of schools that really you can’t go wrong, we can nitpick all we want about details, but the student who enters and the student who exits columbia is pretty top notch and is given the tools, the network and the necessary paper to advance as far as he/she desires. it is why folks - despite the fact that columbia is imperfect - continue to apply and continue to attend columbia, and will well into the future. and do the same to dartmouth.</p>
<p>the rest is just the wissing contest we enjoy having here on occasion. i mean slipper, i would never attend dartmouth not because i don’t respect it as one of the schools in that league, but because i love cities and i dig the size of columbia, and the satisfaction derived when you can be a big fish in a big pond is pretty solid. it was an awesome experience, i am sorry you didn’t have that same take away, but whatever troubles you had, i am sure if you had stayed at columbia you’d still have been able to pursue your life in the business world to your hearts content. and you’d still be exceedingly privileged because so few people in the country let alone in the world are offered the chance to attend a school of columbia’s caliber - to have a relatively pain free educational opportunity that will open your eyes, its pretty close to a sure thing.</p>
<p>Personally, I don’t care about selling someone on Columbia. Let them decide for themselves. What would be more helpful is trying to improve the bureaucracy for the students that do decide to attend (and of course, those who already are here).</p>
<p>Put aside whether you think the Columbia bureaucracy is a good or useful learning experience. If you polled the students here, I’m guessing most of them would prefer to have an administration more like that of Princeton or Dartmouth.</p>
<p>and most students would want to live in a city like New York over Hanover.</p>
<p>and don’t worry about columbia’s bureaucracy, do you think folks like me just sit here and type things online and don’t lobby and chat amongst each other and with admins? as i’ve said before - things at columbia are getting better, a lot better, there are some structural things i’ve noted that make a full on Dartmouth model impossible at Columbia, just like there are certain structural things that make being at Columbia more exciting than Dartmouth (access to things New York, to folks that want to work in New York, etc.). but you’d be putting on a farce if you didn’t notice that Columbia has gotten a lot better in matters of administration, and in general is very conscious and aware of these issues. most things would require a budget expansion (try getting that through in this economy), so it will have to be incremental, but it is in the plans anyhow.</p>
<p>I’m the OP and now in my senior year at Columbia. Thanks to everyone who contributed their thoughts and anecdotes!</p>
<p>Suffice to say, I didn’t find the school’s bureaucracy so atrocious that I’ve regretted my decision to attend Columbia. Yes, there is a fair amount of bureaucracy when you want to deal with the registrar’s or when you’re trying to get a request approved for a club activity, but at the end of the day, it’s just a tiny blip in my entire college experience. It was both a nuisance and a life lesson. </p>
<p>Columbia is/was awesome and ended up a much better fit for me than I ever thought possible. Academics opened up new areas of interests, and NYC is just a baller place to live when you’re young. In the same way, I’m sure I would have found an equally good fit regardless of the school I ended up going. You find ways to adapt and find other things that you’d never thought you’d enjoy!</p>
<p>wow there seems to be a lot of columbia haters on this thread lol :(</p>
<p>Are all College Confidential college threads like this?</p>
<p>These ‘old’ threads reappearing conveniently timed with the RD deadline and lots of folks posting who don’t have long histories with Columbia equal ■■■■■■ to me. There always seems to be a few haters who come out to play this time of the year…</p>
<p>Like any school, there are certainly some folks who have constructive criticism about their institutions. However, with all of these threads, it’s worthy to note a few simple facts in response. I don’t wish them to take away from the previous feedback but merely to add another perspective to some of the posters as of late. </p>
<p>1) Columbia has the second highest retention rate in the country for the third year in a row (sort by that column in US News and check the past few years, match the university rates with the liberal arts colleges rates). </p>
<p>2) Columbia has one of the highest graduation rates in the country and higher than those places where ‘spirit is supposedly greater’ (sort by that column in US News and check the past few years).</p>
<p>3) Columbia’s senior fund and alum giving rates are among the highest in the country (check archived issues of Columbia College Today and Columbia Engineering News, most likely June of CCT and the fall issue of CE News). The senior fund has close to a 95% participation rate (both schools combined) and the alum giving rate is tied with Stanford (see US News for respective column and sort). </p>
<p>Columbia is an institution that prides itself on attracting and training critical thinkers. It’s a place without a lot of false praise. I do think we are as a group much more critical of ourselves than our peer university alums are with their respective institutions, but most Columbia alums I know follow up criticism with a lot of love (for Columbia). It’s the Columbia way.</p>
<p>^ haha, good stuff, I’m excited to be joining in the “columbia way” next fall :D</p>
<p>^hell yeah COLUMBIA FTW</p>
<p>beautifulday, moments before reading your post, I considered starting my own thread to address the issue so eloquently addressed in your post. I decided not to, in large part because I’m only a parent. My younger son is a sophomore ecstatic with his Columbia experience, but he’s never entered this website and, I suspect, never will. With my limited vicarious experience, I have no standing to speak about the “Columbia experience.” On the other hand, you do.</p>
<p>I cringe when I read posts from high school students who state, in essence, that they’ve decided not to apply to Columbia because they’ve read negative comments on this site about student life at Columbia, the bureaucracy of the administration, the emptying of the campus on weekends, etc. I suspect if my son had read all the negative posts, he also would have crossed Columbia off his list and would have missed out on what has been a great experience. No one knows whether he would have been as happy anywhere else, but I really doubt he could be happier.</p>
<p>beautifulday, I sincerely encourage you to start a new thread to state essentially what you said above. Perhaps your words will open the door for a student “on the fence” to experience the “Columbia way.”</p>
<p>It’s been a while since anybody has posted on here. Here’s the latest.</p>
<p>First, I’d like to say that I encourage students to apply. The faculty is, on average, amazing. They are generally brilliant individuals who will get excited when you want to speak to them about topics that they are absolutely passionate about. Research opportunities galore!</p>
<p>The bureaucracy does suck though, and some of the people that you will have to deal with are downright incompetent. There seems to be a problem with the school’s organization and distribution of responsibility. If you have a problem, you’ll often be sent in circles looking for the person who is able to get done what needs be done. This is not particularly pleasant when, for instance, you’ve payed for summer housing but were locked out of your room - possessions still inside - and are being told that you need to move into your new housing assignment that is still occupied by another equally confused student.</p>
<p>So, sometimes the school’s bureaucracy sucks, but I wouldn’t let that deter me. Columbia’s other resources and it’s location in NYC more than make up for the shtuff I’ve had to put up with.</p>
<p>It’s been a while since anybody has posted on here. Here’s the latest.</p>
<p>First, I’d like to say that I encourage students to apply. The faculty is, on average, amazing. They are generally brilliant individuals who will get excited when you want to speak to them about topics that they are absolutely passionate about. Research opportunities galore!</p>
<p>The bureaucracy does suck though, and some of the people that you will have to deal with are downright incompetent. There seems to be a problem with the school’s organization and distribution of responsibility. If you have a problem, you’ll often be sent in circles looking for the person who is able to get done what needs be done. This is not particularly pleasant when, for instance, you’ve payed for summer housing but were locked out of your room - possessions still inside - and are being told that you need to move into your new housing assignment that is still occupied by another equally confused student.</p>
<p>So, sometimes the school’s bureaucracy sucks, but I wouldn’t let that deter me. Columbia’s other resources and it’s location in NYC more than make up for the shtuff I’ve had to put up with.</p>