Overall Impression of Columbia

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
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<p>I am considering applying to Columbia as a transfer student next year and I was wondering how current students and alumni have felt about their time there. I have a few questions regarding your personal opinions of Columbia. Feel free to answer any or all of the questions, or come up with some other insight regarding Columbia. Thanks!</p>

<p>How good are the classes? How difficult are they? How good are the professors? I'm a little worried about the humanities core curriculum. Would it be terribly difficult to maintain a GPA above a 3.8?</p>

<p>How is the social life? Is Greek life prominent? Is there a big party scene? How do most students spend their time outside the classroom when not studying? How is the area around Columbia? I know it is located in New York, but I am not entirely sure where.</p>

<p>Finally, would you recommend going to Columbia? Why or why not? Feel free to list any pros and cons that might stand out.</p>

<p>You might see this same thread in other forums. This is because I am considering a good number of schools.</p>

<p>Thanks for your time.</p>

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<p>a) how good are the classes - i think this is a hard question to answer always because it is so subjective. what i think is good isnā€™t what you might think. iā€™d say there were 2 experiences of the 40 classes i took at columbia that i would say were ā€˜bad,ā€™ another 10 that were ok, another 15 that were good, 8 that were great and 5 that were excellent. and those excellent ones far exceed anything i have experienced in graduate school, and two of them were part of the humanities core.</p>

<p>b) it is easy to maintain a 3.5, iā€™d say, with minimal work and maximum return. a 3.8 requires prioritizing things or being a genius. how hard you work usually means you have to give something up - social life, outside activities - and ultimately youā€™ll figure out the balance. </p>

<p>c) profs were the reason i went to columbia, and the reason iā€™d go back in a heart beat. approachable, intelligent, but not in that kind of arrogant way. and it was easy to form good relationships with professors. at least i found it easy. just donā€™t think too much about it, ask the questions you want to ask, take advantage of office hours. and you can land some pretty great opportunities out of those interactions.</p>

<p>d) read my previous posts for more on social life. i liked it, it was my speed. it was geeky meets chic, which meant it was funny seeing how folks tried to be cool. people were at once pretentious, but also self-conscious about it, smart, but aware of their flaws. i really loved the diversity and the fact that you didnā€™t do the same thing twice. i liked the neighborhood and seeing it grow even since iā€™ve been out makes me jealous (five guys, chipotle, etc. now are in the neighborhood). its located in a quaint residential neighborhood adjoining parts of Harlem and parts of the UWS. neighbors range in socioeconomic backgrounds, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and so it takes someone who is keen on diversity to see why it is such a valuable intellectual/social experience to be around such diverse people. but ultimately the campus itself is really safe. greek life is not prominent at all, and maybe less so based on the recent rulings. but it is something there for you if you want it. iā€™d say there is a really big small party scene. and folks knock that about columbia - no 1000 kid ragers. but i was more fond of the 10 person dinner party or the 40 person suite party than the 1k no-name fest. plus there is a way in which you get used to what you got. and every so often the thing to do was to head downtown to a club, sneak in with a fake, enjoy your time, laugh it up, and go back home with the sun jumping out in the east knowing that you are able to experience things most students could only dream about.</p>

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<p>Wow, Columbia sounds like a very good place to live and study. Thank you for your contribution, Iā€™ll definitely keep it in my top 3.</p>

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<p>Iā€™m also an alum and in retrospect it was not the right fit for me - and I think many others I know feel the same way. Also I would not envy transfers at all - the social life is very fragmented to begin with and people tend to bond freshman year so its hard to assimilate. There isnā€™t a big community scene so that makes it tough. I think, as a transfer, I would be much more disposed to look for a more campus based school, or one with more infrastructure for transfers. </p>

<p>I, however, place a lot of importance on social events and like being a known entity on campus. Iā€™m envious of students who had big house parties and more loyal alumni. If you arenā€™t concerned with this, and are fine with a few friends, then Columbia could be fine for you.</p>

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<p>i will offer that i had quite a few friends that were transfers - and the first thing i noticed was that they became very good friends with each other. columbiaā€™s transfer population is large enough that this certainly happens. you have a built in base of friends.</p>

<p>i guess i have never understood almamaterā€™s notion of being a ā€˜known entityā€™ on campus because i was a known entity, in fact people knew about me well after i graduated. am i somehow not related to his schema or might it need more explicating. but the larger point being that not everyone a) has that desire, b) can become known, it is an impossibility for a lot of people to become known, it would ruin the entire idea, c) believes there is a connection between knownness and loyalty as an alum. some of the most loyal alums i know were folks that you wondered - you really loved your time in college, i always saw you in the library. but folks choose to remember their experiences differently and form different bonds.</p>

<p>to the OP. i will highly recommend columbia to you on its merits. but without knowing more about you, i canā€™t comment on columbia being a good fit or not. in general, i would say, columbia doesnā€™t work great for folks that are not at the least bit open to having a non-small town college world. your world and the real world interconnect at columbia, it is what makes it different and, in the way i view the world, it is what makes it better.</p>

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<p>^yeah I agree, I was known on campus, but I donā€™t think I ever needed to be known to enjoy my time. I also made a ton of friends, both close and those that are useful for a future network. When I go back to campus I bump into as many friends as I did when I was there. Iā€™ve also seen the Columbia connection already play out in my career, within a year of working in finance, Iā€™ve had columbia alums interview me and offer me other positions.</p>

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<p>I agree with alma mater. I think that you shouldnā€™t look at a couple cases on an anonymous forum as indicative of the school. At any school, there will be those who have fun and are social and those who sit in the library studying. My opinion is that the average at Columbia is shifted towards being less social. Itā€™s an intense school, people want to go from A to B. Sure, there are parties on campus, but itā€™s NYC and so many graduate students, so people tend to close the events off to their group of friends. Columbia is like real life, itā€™s not much like the traditional college experience where there are ragers that all students are invited to.</p>

<p>I think my view towards Columbia are formed by my not being in a fraternity or sports organization. Iā€™d also caution you as a transfer coming to Columbia. If you donā€™t join a fraternity or sports organization, then youā€™ll be at a severe handicap when it comes to meeting new people. The area is so densely populated itā€™s not like youā€™ll be running into students all the time, especially when so many are intense about school and work.</p>

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<p>Also, just as a caution, this is an anonymous forum. For all you know, I could be some student at Princeton ā– ā– ā– ā– ā– ā– ā– ā–  around at Columbia. Of course, if you look at my post history, it would be safe to assume that I either attend Columbia or have done too much due diligence.</p>

<p>On the flip side, would you expect the admissions committee at Columbia not to have a couple students/administrators on this board to drum up support? This forum is anonymous and no one would know the better if one of the regional directors were copying and pasting excerpts from the brochures when advertising to students. </p>

<p>Just to let you know, buyer beware.</p>

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<p>what are you implying beard? what an odd post. </p>

<p>also i was in a fraternity, but i donā€™t think my experience was made because of being in one, in fact i pulled away from the fraternity the longer i was there. i met folks through being involved on campus. that and i liked to socialize and introduce myself to people. it really was not that hard.</p>

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<p>beard, disagree - I was not in a sports organization or in a fraternity. If you look at my post history Iā€™ve been on here for a few years now and Iā€™ve definitely been open to criticize Columbia. While you say my experience is an outlier, I do not see it that way at all because I had college friends with similar experiences, I see yours as much of an outlier.</p>

<p>My real problem is that you create rules, when there is evidence undermining your rules. rules such as ā€œmake all your friends freshman yearā€ or ā€œmust be in frat or athletic organizationā€ or ā€œbe happy with a few friendsā€. Thus you narrow the scope in which Columbia is beneficial, and attempt to put off pretty much any applicant. Noone wants to, or enjoys going to a school where everyone is getting from Aā€“>B or studying all the time in the library, or getting by with a very small group of friends. </p>

<p>Yet you have people at Columbia who are proud to go there, who make great friends, have an incredibly fun 4 years. it seems like your anger at being stuck in IEOR / engineering (legitimate anger) colors your judgment of Columbia as a whole. I still visit campus about twice a month and meet friends who are still there, in general people seem to enjoy Columbia. My fellow alumni friends all look back fondly on their 4 years, and we always remiss on our college times, very few of my close friends were involved with greek life or with athletics and we had a great time. There were kids trying to get from Aā€“>B who spent their time studying and didnā€™t enjoy college all that much. I can tell you though that most of my friends got to point B, we studied, but we also partied, did extra-curricular activities and enjoyed college.</p>

<p>If point B is a job in consulting, finance, a tech company, huge non-profit, government organization etc. then the owners of point B want kids who are fun, who do much more than just study, who can connect with and manage people and are smart and diligent at the same time. Why do you think Dartmouth and Wharton place well on wall street, even though they are far from the most academic places. In many ways you need to enjoy college and take a holistic approach to get to point B.</p>

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<p>Well, I guess we can agree to disagree on this point. However, please donā€™t make the argument that my experience is an outlier and that there are an insignificant number of unhappy people at Columbia. Thatā€™s what I meant by looking at averages and not taking my experience or your experience as indicative of what Columbia has to offer. Students come into college with different expectations, and that may explain how weā€™ve viewed our experience. </p>

<p>Also, Iā€™m not the stickler whoā€™s trying to get to point B with all my energy. If anything, Iā€™m much more a slacker (copy homework, cram for exams) and I try to have as much fun as possible. confidentialcoll and admissionsgeek, I think the dichotomy in our experiences is indicative of the hit or miss social experience at Columbia. Either you know people, get invited to a ton of parties and have the network to make a lot of friends, or you just get left behind unless you put in a huge effort. Once again, Iā€™m saying that Columbia is like real life; I imagine starting in a new city where I have a small network of friends. The school isnā€™t providing you a campus or even that much space. </p>

<p>I honestly believe, as do a few other alumni who post, that Columbia lacks a campus community. Besides our empirical observations, I really feel that it makes logical sense as to why Columbia doesnā€™t have a vibrant community. Iā€™ll jot down a few ideas and please feel free to refute them. Look, I"m not looking to whine about Columbia. I am trying to counter the misinformation spread by the admissions committee about a campus community combined with NYC. The two ideas are a bit mutually exclusive, that there are only a finite number of hours in a day and it heavily depends on what you do with it.</p>

<p>1) There is no space on campus. Try to host a couple friends over to your crappy single in Schapiro. Lounges, good luck. 30-50 people share a lounge in Schaprio/Broadway and try to relax with a beer in it. Thatā€™s right, war on fun.</p>

<p>2) The area is quite dense. Itā€™s not that common to run into undergraduates on campus, considering there are 14,000+ graduate students. Sure, you can go to Heights or 1020 but really itā€™s a bar scene and not too many parties that youā€™ll get invited to unless you know the right people.</p>

<p>3) Itā€™s NYC. Thereā€™s always a sense of getting from point A to point B. Itā€™s an intense school and thereā€™s quite a bit of energy. </p>

<p>Columbia isnā€™t the small liberal arts college in the middle of nowhere where you have to make friends and interact with the community to have fun. Therein lies the problem, there are so many options in NYC that the campus doesnā€™t need to be on the top of your list, especially when there arenā€™t that many open parties or that much space. Iā€™ve had better parties in my basement; itā€™s nothing against the people, itā€™s just that what normally would comfortably fit 30 people in the suburbs now would fit twice that number, and even then the party isnā€™t open.</p>

<p>Honestly, my advice is not to use college confidential as your number 1 source for information. I wish I went to a HS in which students actually gained admission to top universities so I could ask questions. My friends are now resources to high schoolers trying to make informed decisions, and word of mouth is much stronger than any brochure or rant on college confidential.</p>

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<p>confidentialcoll - I donā€™t create rules as much as guidelines with chances. </p>

<p>1) Given that you go to a state school in Wyoming, youā€™re not going to break into Wall Street.
2) If you get below a 2000 on the SAT and youā€™re not a URM/athlete, youā€™re not getting into Columbia.</p>

<p>Nothingā€™s impossible, but things become much less likely. Your social life will not be great at Columbia if:</p>

<p>1) Youā€™re not a part of a fraternity
2) Youā€™re not a part of a sports organization
3) Youā€™re not a part of an extremely active student group (i.e. CIRCA)
4) You didnā€™t make friends with your floor or another floor freshman year</p>

<p>Once again, there are always outliers but it gets more difficult if you didnā€™t do these above things. You can argue that only anti-social people didnā€™t do these things freshman year. Iā€™m not sure, I wouldnā€™t consider myself anti-social but I donā€™t fall into these buckets and really have not enjoyed the social experience at Columbia.</p>

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<p>beard - how many people do you reckon fit into your categories.</p>

<p>1) Frats and Sororities make up about 10% of the student body
2) Athletes are another 10% (letā€™s say 50% are overlaps with frats)
3) As for being part of a very active group, there are cultural groups, the spec, groups like CIRCA, Hillel, student government and more niche things - i mean there are 350+ groups on campus with quite a few falling into the ā€˜extremely active student groupā€™ category. Letā€™s say that 50% of all students in the class are part of this, which is actually in my opinion a low number. But we are talking about at this point at least more than half of a class in social settings. You could also add the contrarians who purposefully were not involved in student groups and therefore created unofficial groups around not being in groups. (like the potluck house.)
4) Then there is the obvious thing that most people do make friends with folks from their floor freshman year. This being just what happens at Columbia or anywhere. Proximity is a main requirement for making friends.</p>

<p>So in the end your ā€˜formulaā€™ pretty much covers EVERYONE. </p>

<p>The other things I would add would be - </p>

<p>5) You didnā€™t work on problem sets with other people
6) You never went to a review session</p>

<p>Because in both spaces I ended up making friends that really made my experience better in college.</p>

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<p>I wouldnā€™t say that most student organizations on campus are active. I think most student organizations donā€™t have much interaction beyond the board. I really donā€™t think the list covers everyone and how students interact with one another. There are people who donā€™t go to fraternities, play sports, or join really active clubs on campus and also just didnā€™t have a floor they clicked with. I think itā€™s presumptuous to say that > 80% of students do this and Iā€™m in a small minority of dissatisfied students.</p>

<p>My point is that the social experience is hit or miss. Sometimes one of these things works out and sometimes you just end up falling through the cracks and have a miserable social experience. Donā€™t generalize and say everyone falls into one of those categories. Iā€™m sure truazn didnā€™t, and a few other posters on the board werenā€™t satisfied with their social experience. </p>

<p>Iā€™m not going to generalize and say my experience is indicative of Columbia but please donā€™t go around and guarantee prospective students that they will have a community when they come. Thereā€™s a reason why alumni attendance to reunions is so low. Columbia students arenā€™t happy with some element of school. Personally, I think the people who like Columbia would rather go to an alumni event for a sports team, fraternity, or student organization and those who didnā€™t like the school arenā€™t stepping foot on campus. But cmon, 150-200 attendees out of 1400 CC/SEAS alumni? Thatā€™s pitiful and there are few reasons that is the case besides some dissatisfaction.</p>

<p>I think there are a lot of people at Columbia who are extremely happy. Iā€™m just arguing that the social experience is hit or miss and thereā€™s a higher chance that people will be socially dissatisfied here than other schools that have more space, are less intense, and less socially fractured.</p>

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<p>I could not agree more. I enjoyed my time at Columbia but I think it unfortunately didnā€™t come close to what I think a college experience should offer. Wow do I wish I had an off campus house (with house parties), places/ events all of campus attended on a regular basis, huge reunions, and other things that students at lots of other schools have. Bacchanal, the one time Columbia is out and about together, is how the undergrads at my current grad school seem to hang out almost every weekend.</p>

<p>Also totally agree that you need to join a smaller community at Columbia to be happy. I think for some people a frat, sports team, or ethnic group is enough to sustain a nice experience. For me it wasnā€™t enough. </p>

<p>LOL Beard Tax on the lonely Shapiro singleā€¦so true.</p>

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<p>Nah, I live in Broadway and Iā€™m trying to get a suite in EC next year. Not saying I have 0 friends, just a smaller group that doesnā€™t go out much. Hopefully, I get an EC suite, but thereā€™s never a guarantee of what you want for housing when youā€™re at Columbia. Youā€™re lucky you left after freshman year. Sophomore year housing was horrible and students have it even worse with the increase in class size. McBain is way smaller and EC exclusion suites are out.</p>

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<p>I try not to chime in too much on these things as a transfer who enjoyed another school, went back to columbia for grad school, and am now at another grad school doing a specialty degree but I think Columbia could offer a more cohesive experience.</p>

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<p>Many good points being made here. Your experience at Columbia, like other schools, is pretty much what you make of it. </p>

<p>People who suggest that the Columbia college experience is at a disadvantage because of the high number of grad students are not appreciating the benefit. I can tell you that this is an advantage, especially when it comes to networking. I personally benefited from attending a ā€œColumbiaā€ event last year where I met a graduate from the business school (he had attended a regional college), who happened to be the former president of a MAJOR corporation. Based on this ONE MEETING, he and I have developed a great relationship where he has offered me job opportunities, put me in contact with other influential business leaders, as well as the keys to his big house in Marthaā€™s Vineyard for a summer vacationā€“he wasnā€™t using it at the time. NO LIE. This is from that ONE meeting last yearā€¦ </p>

<p>Not many schools can offer these sort of connections and given Columbiaā€™s prominent grad programs, you have the ability to reach out to alumni in all facets of the business-legal-medical-government communities. Hence, going to a small college (without the grad programs) will not give you the same opportunities to tap into alumni from other divisions of the university.</p>

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<p>To me it sounds like not having huge huge parties is a GOOD thing. Iā€™m not really into that stuff; a 10-20 person dinner party or just hanging out sound better to me. And I mean there are bars and clubs, tooā€¦ For someone who would maybe want to experience a couple typical college parties but would not be devastated not to have these every weekend, is this really a negative?</p>

<p>I mean, is it that dissatisfied students donā€™t have ANY friends or that they donā€™t feel part of a ā€œcommunityā€? B/c IMO NYC w/ minimal community is better than crappy destitute town w/ a ton of community. How does not having much of an overall Columbia community affect the social experience?</p>

<p>Not trying to be antagonistic, and any alums/current students are welcome to chime in. I just would like to get more information on the social scene and for what kind of person it would work well.</p>

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<p>@College Grad</p>

<p>Sure graduate students can be a good thing in terms of networking, but also keep in mind that thereā€™s a huge age difference. Do you expect 18-22 year olds to share the same interests as someone who is in law or business school? Also, grad students rarely live on campus and theyā€™re out doing their own thing. Most undergraduates, including me, donā€™t take advantage of this resource, and I do think that I could improve on it. Itā€™s a big effort, and Iā€™d rather spend the time building community with my peers. </p>

<p>@quomodo</p>

<p>Itā€™s hard just to get space to hang out. Youā€™ll need to go out to dinner or go somewhere just to be able to do so. Itā€™s not just the party scene, itā€™s the fact that the entire social scene is so fragmented at Columbia. Itā€™s like real life. </p>

<p>Imagine yourself in a new town with few friends. How do you go about meeting people? How do you maintain those contacts? Itā€™s just a shocking transition from high school to college, where you barely see anyone unless you make an effort. Iā€™m sure this happens to an extant at all colleges, but imagine how this occurs in New York City versus a small liberal arts college. </p>

<p>Graduate students, local residents, and visitors are all around. Thereā€™s not much personal space as is so events become more private (who wants random strangers?), the social experience is taken downtown, and there are only several small venues in which you can actually meet more Columbia students. Thereā€™s almost no chilling on the lawn, no space outside, no student lounges, etc. There are essentially few things you can do on campus besides hang out in dormitories. Thereā€™s Hartley Lounge but there are 2 ping pong tables and 2 pool tables for 6000 undergrads.</p>