How is each school perceived within Columbia? Is there a prestige hierarchy where students believe that some schools are better than others? For example, would a student attending the law school be considered more impressive than say, SIPA? What about P&S vs Mailman vs SPS? I noticed that the college, law school and med school are usually considered more prestigious than the rest. However, master’s students, from certain schools like SPS in particular always get sneezed at on various posts. Can anyone explain the internal prestige hierarchy to me?
Pointless question. Nobody cares. Prestige whores at Columbia are a small minority.
If a person chooses to go to Columbia (or anywhere) for graduate study it should be to study an area he/she is interested in and hopes to make a career in, not because that particular school/program is more prestigious than another one.
FWIW my D went to Columbia for grad school and lived with friends who were in other schools/programs and I can say without a doubt that the idea of which program was “more or less prestigious” never came up once.
^^this.
Plus it’s irrelevant if random person A thinks that X is more prestigious than Y: especially for grad school, if you want to be a Y your comparisons are other Ys, not Xs and Ys in the same university.
I cannot answer your question with respect to “within Columbia” , but since you included grad schools in your question:
Columbia School of Law is very prestigious in the world of law.
Masters degree in journalism is also a very highly respected program within that industry.