Is Columbia school of general studies legit?

I saw an ad for Columbia school of general studies, so I had them send me info in the mail. Columbia says that it’s geared towards non-traditional(older) students, but it holds the same academic rigor and prestige. Everything about the education is supposedly the same, same classes, same professors, etc.
True?

It is primarily for part time evening students over 21. It is not a good “back door” into Columbia for an 18 year old.

@TomSrOfBoston For older students though, would it still be regarding as a columbia quality to admissions for grad schools? Since you’ll be taking the same classes along with the other students at campus. Does backdoor mean not valuable?
The packet Columbia sent me says that 77% of GS students are full-time, and the average age is 27. I’m 25.

Yes. This is not a back door, though. It’s a different door.

There are numerous threads about this on this forum. In a nutshell, it’s for the nontrad student. The website says you have to be out for awhile, like one-two years, but in practice that time can be as little as six months. Yes it’s virtually exactly the same as the Columbia College. Columbia has four undergrad schools: SEAS engineering, Barnard, GS, and Columbia College. For grad school and employment, everyone knows it’s a CU degree. Some people get bent out of shape because the admit percentage of GS is so much larger than that of the college. They say that the caliber of the students must therefore be less. But a few seconds of thinking helps you understand why a larger percentage of GS applicants are admitted while not washing out the caliber of the student body.

  • many schools with a niche have similar admissions rates as GS. GS is a niche school in that it's for nontrad students. Other schools with niches, also excellent, like some of the women's colleges, have similar acceptance rates. In other words a huge portion of the applicant pool self-selects out before applying.
  • GS has a few important differences that are not academic in nature, which also decreases the pool of applicants: the FA is not the same as for the other three colleges. Expect to pay more. Also, the housing for GS is last priority compared with the other schools--also which makes sense because they are older students, many of whom may be married, have served in the armed forces, are Olympic athletes, career firefighters, etc. They would find fitting into a dorm filled with freshmen maybe a little awkward

On average the GS students have a higher GPA than the Columbia College students, FYI.

Another difference is that the GS diploma is printed in English while that of the College is printed in Latin.

Otherwise the GS students share all of the same classes and facilities as the other undergraduate colleges on campus.

University of Pennsylvania has a similar program, FYI

It is sadly true that both at Penn and Columbia the students at these programs are usually treated as second-class citizens, people think they found an easier backdoor to get into an ivy and their programs are not really elite. During my time at Penn, however, I took classes with Penn LPS students and they were just as driven and smart as regular Penn students.

Columbia GS is legit - and it is same courses, same program, same profs. I personally think that GS students end up with a better education because of their maturity. When my daughter was at Barnard she told me that the GS students were always the smartest ones in her classes, picking up on concepts faster than others. I think that’s simply because at age 25, you are probably smarter (more knowledgeable) than you were at age 18, and that holds true for most people. But the other factor is that 25 year olds aren’t in college to party, so far more likely to take their studies seriously and keep up with required reading, etc. So you are in school to learn and are likely to appreciate and take full advantage of what is offered to you.

Columbia GS is NOT an evening program. There may be some evening classes offered – but I just checked the course directory and for the core Lit-Hum course (required of all Columbia undergrads) - this fall there are 3 sections for GS students, offered at 10 am, 2pm, and 4pm (each section meets for 2 hours). And that’s a mandatory course – so unless someone counts the 4pm course as “evening” – that student is going to be attending school during the day. Course listings are here - http://www.columbia.edu/cu/bulletin/uwb/subj/HUMA/_Fall2017.html - scroll down to see the schedule for “Humanities GS1001”.

Note: the core classes are the only ones where GS students are separated from CC students. For any other class, you would be simply enroll in whatever section you wanted, and the class would be potentially a mix of student from CC, SEAS, Barnard & GS.

There is one downside and it’s a big one: GS does not meet 100% of need. They do offer some financial aid, but you can expect to pay a lot more for your education than Columbia College undergrads. As you are a transfer, there is no impediment to applying directly to Columbia College – and you could face the problem of getting admitted to GS but not being able to afford it. So I don’t think it’s a good idea to apply to GS if your finances are limited.

Also, as a transfer you will still have to complete Columbia core coures (at either CC or GS) - whereas if you transfer to a college with a more open curriculum or more flexible distribution requirements, those basic requirements might already be met by your existing course work. So you will want to look carefully at requirements for your major at the transfer school and what courses you have completed so far, given that major requirements vary at different schools as well, and you might also have to catch up with some lower level prerequisites for the courses you need.

You’ve posted that you are a physics major – here are links to the requirements for CC and GS:

GS: http://bulletin.columbia.edu/general-studies/undergraduates/majors-concentrations/physics/
CC: http://bulletin.columbia.edu/columbia-college/departments-instruction/physics/#requirementstext