<p>Hey Guys,</p>
<p>I was just wondering how many students become named scholars and what are the differences between these scholars and normal enrollees? Are we at a disadvantage if we arent named a scholar? do they get preferential treatment of some sort? I have no idea but was just wondering. Thanks </p>
<p>As far as my understanding goes, scholars are basically meaningless with the exception of Rabi, a very rare SEAS scholar designation. </p>
<p>So what’s the point of having scholars if it doesn’t mean anything?</p>
<p>It’s really unclear to me why these programs exist. They really do very little other than have a couple dinners and speakers every semester. Surprisingly, there’s quite a bit of information on them on the website:</p>
<p><a href=“Columbia Undergraduate Scholars Program | Columbia College and Columbia Engineering”>http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/scholars</a></p>
<p>I would venture to guess it might be a ploy to attract stronger applicants and win them in cross admit battles with peer schools, but maybe that’s cynical. At least in my time at Columbia, even though I knew people with scholar designations, it never seemed to greatly impact their experience, nor did anyone feel left out, (nor did anyone even care either way). It also anecdotally seems like scholar designations often go to minorities, or at least the scholar minority population is much higher than the normal minority population. </p>
<p>Overall I don’t recommend anyone making a college decision based off of whether they got a named scholar designation or not (I know the common ones like CP Davis and John Jay are pointless), except this one:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.college.columbia.edu/academics/rabi”>http://www.college.columbia.edu/academics/rabi</a></p>