<p>Alright, I must face a huge decision. I am not into the "Arts" (especially literature) so I do not know how much I will like the Core Curriculum (oh, but I don't mind Philisophy). Another trend that I see is that I may not enjoy campus life around radical liberals (I like to think of myself as conservative). In fact, even if I was accepted into MIT or Harvard, I would still not attend them because of their location-Boston (and I hate the Red Sox, go Yankees!) Anyways, for the past year and a half I have had an almost firm commitment into applying ED Columbia, and I liked my experience at the Columbia summer program. Even more important, I absolutely want to attend a college near or in NYC. However, I did not like my dorm experience at John Jay and the food was HORRIBLE. Last, I do not want to experience late-nighters with excessive work load!</p>
<p>So, do you guys still think it is worth applying ED? My parents do not want to spend too much money for my college education...but...I don't think they would mind as much if they spent their money on an elite college. And I have made up my mind that I want to attend college in or near NYC.</p>
<p>Here are some questions I would like answered...(thanks in advance)
1. What is the typical workload like at Columbia? Do you find yourself working as hard as you did in high school, pulling all nighters and facing unrealistic deadlines?
2. How are the dorms besides the horrendous John Jay dorm (which is an absolute mess!)
3. How is the food? I heard that Cornell's wonderful food selection makes Columbia's John Jay cafeteria look like something to laugh at. This question is especially important to me because I am a skinny vegetation and can't afford to lose anymore weight.</p>
<p>Please give me some honest answers...I need to figure out if I will apply ED or not to Columbia. Maybe NYU is not that bad or maybe there are some other top 75 or top 50 schools near NYC that I would feel more comfortable in. I plan to apply to Rutgers for a safety school anyways. Well, there you have it...I need some advice before tomorrow, because my counselor recommendation form is due for early decision. Thanks for your help and I look forward to hearing from Columbia students.</p>
<ol>
<li>Workload is heavy for most. I have quizzes every day in Japanese, which I spend every morning studying for in addition to the written assignments for Japanese that I do the night before. My Lit Hum class had reading responses due every class, regardless of whether or not an essay is also due that class. There is a lot of reading for the class, but all the selections are classics that you should read and enjoy. Lit Hum is meant as a broad introduction to reading classic literature and writing about it. For this reason, it is fast-paced. My intensive chemistry class is a ridiculous amount of work. I also have a smaller section meeting of chemistry and a japanese lab. I'm doing orchestra here, which feels like a break in my day to do some music, meeting once a week. I'm doing chamber music here and at Juilliard and taking lessons and a weekly master class at Juilliard, and that's a lot of work. Think of my music stuff as a school sport, so if you're planning on doing sports or a lot of music or something else, plan on being busy. I'm always up after midnight, but I get enough sleep because I usually wake up between 9 and 10, except on Fridays when I have morning music lessons. Most people don't have class on Friday and have a three-day weekend.
2.My dorm is great. I fully support the LLC. We have a kitchen, a lounge, the double per suite is massive with good campus views, though I live in a single. The dorm situation depends on YOU not on the room. My room is nice because I live in it, and I like the way I have it set up. It is absolutely necessary that you bring some lamps and never use your ceiling light, because the ceiling lights are ugly. The phones are ugly, too, but people use their cell phones. My room phone is hibernating in a corner under my bed. On the first two days I woke up early with noise on the street, but now in the morning I don't even hear it, and my window has been open from the minute I moved in and is still open, and I'm only two floors above Amsterdam.</li>
<li><p>The food is sufficient. But I have a kitchen in my suite for the nice snacks and for eating-in. There is a salad bar and also veggie burgers and a vegan section and tofu and things. I'm not vegetarian, though, so if I get anything from those sections it's usually pasta salad or soup or something like that. There is vegetarian soup every day, as far as I can tell. Two soup selections. There is ice cream and cereal every day at both meals, and there are make-your-own waffles at brunch, which are always good. As for eating outside of John Jay, there are places that are very good, with good pizza and sushi and sandwiches and other things. Sometimes I treat myself to those options. I eat a lot, even though I'm thin. I've managed to keep myself full every day until around 1 or 2 in the morning, when I often find it necessary to have some more to eat, so I eat again. Options are JJ's Place or make your own food.</p></li>
<li><p>The unasked question. Socially I am loving it here. I can take the subway to so many places, which is really practical for me with all my music stuff going on. But you can take the subway to MoMa and get in free and in the same trip see a show and eat dinner. You can walk through central park to get to the Met Museum, and you can get in there for free, too. There are things to do here, too, good places to eat on Broadway, riverside park, whatever. Most of my time in on campus, of course, but you've got to love how easy it is to go someplace in the city when you have some time without spending two hours and money in the commute. My brother goes to school in CT and was going to see a concert two weekends ago, but the day of he and his friends decided not to come because it was too complicated. I will never have that problem.</p></li>
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<p>I'm a Columbia first-year writing this from my room in John Jay</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The workload is not too bad. I'm only taking four classes, and the workload is similar to high school. I haven't pulled any all-nighters yet, but it's college, I probably will eventually. If you don't want to have a heavy workload, you may want to consider not going to college, or at least not going to any type of prestigious university. Work is a large part of any college, and Columbia is certainly not an exception. </p></li>
<li><p>The dorms are fine. But then again I love John Jay and you think it's a mess. I have a single and I really enjoy that. You can keep your room as clean as you want, and our lounge and floor are quite clean considering it's college. I've seen other colleges' dorms and they're comparable. Considering the price of New York real estate, I think the dorms are amazing. </p></li>
<li><p>The food is fine. If you don't like John Jay food, don't eat there. There's other really good food on campus and you're in New York. There's no lack of restaurants/food. </p></li>
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<p>Finally, you mentioned that you didn't want to go to school around "radical-liberals." As a fellow conservative, this was a consideration of mine. Columbia is liberal, but you find plenty of conservatives around. So, don't worry about it. Columbia is a great school and I can't imagine being anywhere else. If you like New York, this is the place to be. If you don't like New York, this is not the place to be. Nevertheless, it's a great school in its own right and is not defined by New York. Although I did not, I recommend applying ED.</p>
<p>Thanks for the nice detailed responses! Now I have somewhat of a better idea. I feel better that there is a conservative population at Columbia. However, I'm not sure if I would want to deal with the stress of an ivy-league workload. I'm alread sick of my IB workload. However, I agree that all worthwile colleges will have some stress involved in them more or less. I still feel that maybe there are some other top 50 or top 75 decent or top-notch colleges where the workload may be a little more "slack" and where there will be better housing and dining. Hopefully, this criteria will fit the profile of another NYC area school. I will think about my ED dilemma over the weekend. Honestly, some of the main reasons for my consideration for Columbia are its location, its elite quality, small class sizes, and supposedly "awesome" and "exceptional" faculty. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I am seriously considering accerated MD/BA programs at UMDNJ, Temple, Penn State, Stony Brook, and Drexel. Columbia only offers an accelerated engineering school program and my parents may feel that they are wasting their money for an undergraduate education which will be followed by an equally expensive medical school tuition. However, if I did have the choice, I would apply ED to the accelerated MD/BA program at Rutgers (associated w/UMDNJ). As you can see, I am using the shot-gun approach; apply to as many colleges in the NYC area with the hope of being accepted to at least a few great colleges; and apply ED to the most lenient ivy-league school (which I heard is Columbia from the director of admissions at a college selection conference during the Columbia summer program, at least that's what I thought I heard).</p>
<p>My last question...Another reason I may not apply ED to Columbia is because I am beginning to think that the ED pool of applicants is even more competitive than the RD pool of applicants. In addition, I read a post from someone else saying that Columbia RD emphasizes an applicant's stats more as opposed to Columbia ED's over-emphasis on extra-cirriculars. As a strong candidate with good stats, recommendations, essay, interview...but a rather modest candidate with EC's and few if any awards...I believe I may have a better shot at Columbia RD. What do you guys think?</p>
<p>Thanks so much for your responses...you could be doing something else, yet you're lending advice to the lost and desperate!</p>
<p>If I were you I'd apply RD. It seems like all of your factors point that way. Just the fact that you are not sure about it a month and a half before the deadline means you should not bind the next four years of your life; especially, like you said, because it is not a huge statistical advantage to applying ED.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I probably worked less in college than I did in HS, since you're not in class for that long (15hrs/week vs. 40ish in HS) and have much more time to study. All of my all nighters were by choice, i.e., a dreadful paper that I didn't want to do and started at 3am the day it was due. If you're not horrible at managing your time, you'll be fine. Columbia is no easier or harder than what you'd find at peer schools.</p></li>
<li><p>The dorms range from horrible to great. As an upperclassman, you'll probably get great housing. The good thing about Columbia is that you can get a single every single year. A John Jay room beats a small double with a bad roommate at some other school.</p></li>
<li><p>The dining hall is gross. I got food poisoning the first day I ate there, and ended up at St. Luke's Hospital. Needless to say, I ended up eating out every day freshman year (and wasted a ton of money on the rip-off dining plan). Cornell's dining halls are awesome--that and the pretty campus were my two favorite things about my visit there.</p></li>
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<p>Based upon the comments below extracted from your original post, don't you think you've answered your own question? Clearly there are more reasons for you not to attend Columbia than to attend (do you think that being a Yankee fan and your parents wanting you to attend an "elite" college make up for all the reasons you wouldn't want to attend, i.e., (1) you're not into the arts (that's New York); (2) you wouldn't be into the Core Curriculum (that's at the heart of Columbia and will take up a large porportion of your undergrad studies there); (3) you're concerned about being surrounded by "radical liberals" (you won't escape those as a large proportion of the student and teaching make-up of Columbia) etc. In fact, it sounds as if you are averse to most of the aspects of life at Columbia which indeed defines a Columbia undergrad education. Perhaps you should consider focusing elsewhere, where there won't be so many ifs, ands, buts and ors for you -- frankly, you really don't sound like Columbia is a good fit for you. Here are your comments: "I am not into the "Arts" (especially literature) so I do not know how much I will like the Core Curriculum (oh, but I don't mind Philisophy). Another trend that I see is that I may not enjoy campus life around radical liberals (I like to think of myself as conservative). In fact, even if I was accepted into MIT or Harvard"...
Anyways, for the past year and a half I have had an almost firm commitment into applying ED Columbia, and I liked my experience at the Columbia summer program. Even more important, I absolutely want to attend a college near or in NYC. However, I did not like my dorm experience at John Jay and the food was HORRIBLE. Last, I do not want to experience late-nighters with excessive work load!"</p>
<p>So, do you guys still think it is worth applying ED? My parents do not want to spend too much money for my college education...but..I don't think they would mind as much if they spent their money on an elite college." </p>
<p>I'd like to echo the sentiments directly above. What you're saying is the equivalent of someone saying, "Berkeley is my 1st choice but I really don't want to be around a bunch of liberals all day." Your interests seem diametrically opposed to what Columbia College emphasizes in their curriculum. It's no secret that the Core curriculum is completely humanities-based and you said that you're particularly not fond of literature. In addition, Columbia College isn't really known for its stellar science programs. If you want to be a molecular biology major, you're much better off at MIT or CalTech. Stanford also offers great undergraduate majors in biology and chemistry. You mentioned you're looking at joint BA/MD programs. However, you're restricting yourself to the NYC area which means ALL the best joint BA/MD programs are closed off to you. The best BA/MD joint programs are the PLME program at Brown and the HPME (Honors Program of Medical Education) program at Northwestern. UCSD and University of Southern California also have decent combined BA/MD programs. However, I can't think one decent joint BA/MD program in or around NYC. Also, you seem to have a strong aversion to both the John Jay dorm and the food within it. You should really evaluate whether Columbia is really a good "fit" for you because from the looks of it, it seems like you'll be miserable there even if you are admitted and choose to matriculate.</p>
<p>for the same reasons that the 2 posters above stated :not to sound mean or anything, but dont apply ED unless you are 100% certain that you love the school and wouldnt be happier anywhere else.</p>