<p>Ok,</p>
<p>So I didn't get a perfect SAT OR ACT. I wrote that to get your attention. Sorry :)</p>
<p>I'm an undergrad student at NYU. I'm enjoying it here, but would prefer a school with more of a community feeling. I've been doing well here academically so far, and have been considering applying to Columbia as a transfer.</p>
<p>I'm wondering how much more difficult Columbia is academically? I've met several students here in Stern who've transferred that say Stern is about the same, and others say it depends on the classes your taking. I'm wondering how much harder I'm going to be working there to get an A. I want to go to grad school, so I may prefer to stay here if it helps my chances of graduating with a high GPA.</p>
<p>CC is notorious for people who don't know first hand spilling their "feelings" about one college being better, etc. I have no interest in such things. If you have FIRST HAND EXPERIENCE, and are willing to share your opinion KINDLY and RESPECTFULLY, in such a way as to NOT OFFEND an NYU or COLUMBIA undergraduate student, I'd be really interested in hearing what you have to say.</p>
<p>If your on this thread to boost your confidence by bashing a school because it wasn't as competitive to get in as the one you're attending or something, please don't post. </p>
<p>Thanks guys!</p>
<p>By the way, if it helps, I'm an economics major.</p>
<p>transferring will be tough if you’re an econ major, the bar is higher for folks studying extraordinarily overpopulated majors. by grad school do you mean professional school aka MBA, or do you mean phd in economics, because the two are different. if it is the latter, you want to have great research and awesome recs, and columbia will be marginally better here in that case because of the stronger department and obvious name recognition. if your goal is mba, then honestly it is where you work and your internships that matter far far far more. in either case gpa is important, but not the most important.</p>
<p>stern is pretty hard to get into.</p>
<p>i will refrain from trying to understand why you would deceive us with the title.</p>
<p>as for how much harder it is? i don’t know stern’s difficulty, i know columbia was about as hard as you wanted it to be. i did enough work, i formed great relationships, did a lot of outside activities, and got a gpa i was more than happy with. some folks freak out because if they aren’t at a 4.0 they can’t get into a good law school blah blah, i haven’t found the fact that I still had a high gpa, but not a perfect one to be a disadvantage. plus i wasn’t gonna work as much as necessary to get a perfect gpa, i had a social life to attend to.</p>
<p>First, I didn’t get a perfect SAT or ACT haha. I assumed that title would get some attention. I assumed my question, if stated in the subject, wouldn’t be of interest to most people.</p>
<p>Transferring to Columbia definitely won’t be easy in terms of admittance. It’s a long shot for anyone, and I’m fully aware. I’m going to throw a dart in the dark and hope it hits something. I’m trying to plan for the rare occasion it actually does. If it doesn’t, I’m still a happy guy.</p>
<p>I’m really interested in attending Columbia simply for the amount of classes offered in various subjects. Game theory, environmental sustainability, behavioral economics – There are simply a lot of classes offered there that aren’t offered here. </p>
<p>I’m definitely not going to freak out if I don’t have a straight 4.0 GPA, but I’d rather graduate from NYU with a near 4.0 GPA than from Columbia with a much lower GPA. </p>
<p>In terms of graduate school, I’m referring to an MBA. I’ve spoken with an admissions advisory service that I may use, and was told that without a high GPA it becomes VERY difficult to get into a great program. </p>
<p>I’ve also done some reading and it seems as though if your not admitted into a well known MBA program, its impact on your future earnings power becomes quite small.</p>
<p>a) you should realize you’ll have to take the full columbia core that is about 1/3 of your requirements, so yeah, don’t count on taking all those courses you wish to take.</p>
<p>b) this is a counterfactual that you will never know to be true, you can’t tell what you will or wont do when you transfer. therefore you must transfer with the full intention of doing well. columbia isn’t easy academically, but if you work hard, it shouldn’t be a problem.</p>
<p>c and d) you do realize these thoughts contradict each other. i think you meant to say that the impact on your future earnings is quite large. and i do apologize to your service, but the only reason to have a ‘very high’ gpa is that many firms that hire ugrads will want you to have a high gpa, but if you negotiate your way through internships and through the stuff that really count in interviews you can position yourself into a great job. the average age of entry for most top schools is around 28, which means you are gonna be about 6 years out in the work force, at that point a 3.6 or a 3.8 mean diddly compared to actual work experience, great personal statements and top notch recs. you are most likely not gonna apply to an MBA program straight out of ugrad. it isn’t to say a high gpa doesn’t correlate to a better chance at an MBA program, but it is more of an issue that is removed from what really gets you into top MBA programs because that high gpa will probably get you interviews at top firms.</p>
<p>AdmissionsGeek,</p>
<p>Though I completely agree with your response in terms of my GPA not being too important in getting a job in most cases, I’d unfortunately have to disagree ONLY because of the field I’m interested in: finance and investment banking.</p>
<p>I live 15 minutes from Wall Street, and to get a job at a great Hedge Fund, Private Equity Firm or investment bank, you have to have a HIGH GPA to stand out - period. Nearly all entry level jobs for undergraduates are applied to online, and ask for your GPA AND SAT SCORES!</p>
<p>I honestly think that asking for a students GPA and SAT score when interviewing is pretty useless. If you’re dealing with people in your business (which you are) then your social skills are nearly as important as quantitative. I’d rather have a good student with good social skills, than a great student with bad social skills. That being said, It’s unfortunately not the case.</p>
<p>In terms of GPA concerns, I’m getting the vibe that doing well academically is very possible at Columbia. Having never been at an ivy league institution before, my assumption was the course load was crazy hard, or homework was nearly impossible to complete.</p>
<p>You sound like a piece of work.</p>
<p>First you post a deceptive and misleading thread title to get everyone’s attention:</p>
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</p>
<p>Then you – someone who goes on CC to ask a question – proceed to trash CC and its posters:</p>
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</p>
<p>And if that isn’t enough, you have the chutzpah to declare which strangers should and should not reply to you:</p>
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</p>
<p>It would be fitting for this thread to be hijacked by some NYU-bashers.</p>
<p>imfricken</p>
<p>please re-read my post again. as your own post seems to not realize what i was saying. i said having a high gpa matters only insofar as it will impact what firms you can be hired into straight out of college, but you know what happens the further and further you are removed from college? your gpa and sat scores stop mattering as where you work and how good you are at climbing that ladder matters more. crazy, right? if you didn’t understand this point, then you missed my post entirely.</p>
<p>further, more top firms will recruit at columbia and not at stern or have more spots that they will take from columbia. which in itself means that you have more wiggle room for your gpa. and gpa does matter, but this goes toward your middle paragraph - it only matters for getting an interview at most places, it isn’t what gets you IN to the firm, your interview will matter substantially.</p>
<p>Admissions Geek,</p>
<p>I apologize for the misunderstanding. I was reading your reply on my iPhone, while walking on Broadway haha. Thank you for your response. This definitely answers my question.</p>
<p>Columbia 2002,</p>
<p>I hope I don’t come off as a piece of work. I posted that thread title because I assumed it would get more attention than if I had posted my actual question. If that offends you I apologize.</p>
<p>In terms of “trashing” CC I did not mean to do this as a generalization, and what I wrote certainly implies that. I simply meant, that in the past, I’ve asked questions like this and gotten responses that are quite discouraging, and or mean. I’ve been bashed on here before by people who were given the opportunity to attend institutions that I would have liked to attend, but did not get admittance. Because, unfortunately, that kind of bashing does have an impact on my academic confidence, I wish to avoid it as much as possible. Your last sentence within your post is absolutely true, which is why I stated those things. </p>
<p>I am in no way claiming that CC users in the aggregate are mean and or judgmental. However, it may just happen that quite often I ask a question, and instead of getting helpful answers I’m judged.</p>