<p>like, be for real tho</p>
<p>i heard the "treat it like a 9-5 job 40hrs/week" line..Yeah, okay.</p>
<p>more like 40 hours browsing college confidential; you don't study that much</p>
<p>right?</p>
<p>right???</p>
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<p>If there’s no exams that week… maybe 30… maybe…</p>
<p>Exams get…
…60? 70 hours a week? More for midterms / finals…</p>
<p>iggs I adore you…
yeah it depends on the proximity of the next exam…or if there’s going to be discussion on material in class, or if I have a paper I’m trying to get researched with a close due date.
I work part time, maybe 10-25 hours a week, do marketing for one club and I’m president of another so…time is limited I try to get it in when I can.
On breaks I play pretty hard, and travel doing little day-trips, love discovering old/natural Florida. 
kind of a local history nut. (read: florida history geek)</p>
<p>I easily work much more than I did when I was doing ~50 hours a week working as an analyst.</p>
<p>Depends on your major, and whether you are a good writer/reader. Liberal arts schools demand plenty of reading and writing. I am double majoring in Econ and Computer Science, and I literally live in Butler/Avery/Noco/Asian Library</p>
<p>One thing I noticed is that the work load here at Columbia has already conditioned me to effortlessly work harder on any endeavor outside of school.</p>
<p>Double major, that sounds ouch. How would you say the work is for a single science major taking four courses a semester?</p>
<p>@random Take me as a nutter, but the romantic aesthetics of camping in an old library like Butler sounds kind of nice…hope the chairs are comfy. :)<br>
A question though, I’m up to three honors classes, two theatre electives and 1 credit half-sem AA capstone class next semester (16 credits total on our system where most regular classes are 3 hours a piece). Is this comparable to the typical GS load, or is that a laughable question? (5-6 classes)</p>
<p>@Afazchas and @iggs99988 Not only does everyone here learn differently, but students obviously come from different academic backgrounds. So its really difficult to whip out the academic ruler and quantify the level of instruction at your institution compared to Columbia. There is obviously hoops to jump at every institution. </p>
<p>I took four courses this semester. Double major or not, courses are challenging, and are designed to challenge a room of stellar students. Like any other school, students at Columbia compete against each other. But I would like to point out that the population of competitors here is comprised of prep-school educated students, with a small percentage that are prodigies in their field. </p>
<p>So what does this mean for you? The good side is that your peers will provide an environment that encourages you to do your very best beyond your expectations, and you will be a better person because of it. Having said this, as a transfer, you will may feel insufficient at times in your courses compared to your classmates, and find the work daunting because every class is like an honors class where everyone is capable of getting A’s so the curve can be situated in a way where people with B’s can get C’s or D’s. </p>
<p>A given course can also be designed to be ridiculously hard, where the average grade on a mid term would be 30-40, and professors do this because they want to challenge you, knowing that you are a Columbian, “the cream of the crop”. Your professors will almost teasingly tell you this from time to time.</p>
<p>For example, in my music humanities course, there where several students with almost “perfect pitch”, and who already knew about the history of music, musicians, and opera before the course had begun. This is your competition, enjoy.</p>
<p>As far as writing is concerned. Your instructors almost always demand material of publishable quality every single time. Your professor, who graduated from Harvard will give you a “B” for exemplary work that would otherwise be an A at another institution. In their eyes, getting A’s on writing demands work on a higher, more god-like level. Even the most polished of writers have an issue. Your papers are almost always 5-10 pages every week, with several re-writes in which time would be prohibitive due to your other demanding courses. Again, as a Columbia student, you will be challenged on a day-to-day basis, your professors will assign work accordingly and grading the written paper is highly subjective, even if you have placed all of the necessary elements. So far, I have written my best work at Columbia, only to to receive a “B” in undergraduate writing, the entry level writing course for undergrads. My classmate, who’s mother is a journalist, got a B+.</p>
<p>In terms of reading, hope you like it, because you will get plenty of that here. Its common practice that core courses that involve heavy reading give you a dizzying array of books ( think Novels, Bibles, the Koran… ) and because you are a Grade A overachieving Columbia student, instructors have no problem assigning boatloads of reading as if their class was the only one you were taking. You will have no choice but to skim between the passages as if your life depended on it, and be forced to skip several chapters, or even skipping an entire book ( because there are several BOOKS to read per week ) just to keep yourself up to par. Am I only talking about the worst case scenario in terms of classes? I wish…</p>
<p>I speak from my own, humbling, experience from observations of my first semester at Columbia. Additionally, easy courses do exist, but not in the sense that you think easy courses should be at your institution. Having said this, there are definitely some people that don’t belong at Columbia. For example, there was a Columbia College student that missed almost every day of one of my core classes, which I thought was amusing. I have also recently found out that GS has a high attrition rate for first semester students. Part of the reason why GS is capable of accepting students for both Fall and Spring may be due to a fair amount of students coming to Columbia and realizing that Columbia may be too much, both academically, and financially. Something to consider.</p>
<p>I have no idea of your academic background, or work ethic, but coming here demands A LOT of work ethic. You have straight A’s before coming to Columbia? Join the club, everyone else here has also. If you’re the type, like I was, who can procrastinate until finals, cram, and then get an A afterwords, kiss those days goodbye here.</p>
<p>Welcome to Columbia, where your best hasn’t been good enough since 1754</p>