@Whitesilver You will be allowed to submit letters of recommendations from language teachers for your Dual BA application. I’m a current student in the program, and one of my recommendation letters that I submitted when I applied was from a language teacher.
@GSTourGuides Hello! I’m so glad there is finally a forum for this year’s program. I have a question, what is the difference between the 1A and 2A programs. Does that have anything to do with the Dual BA program?
@Soccerninja So 1A and 2A just means “première année” and “deuxième année” or first year and second year. Within the Dual BA program, your first two years (1A and 2A) follow the same structure as every other Sciences Po student (ie you won’t have separate course requirements or take courses separately from non Columbia Dual BA students).
Your first year (1A) is made up of fundamentals (introductory classes like political science, history, sociology, etc.), language courses, and electives. Your second year (2A) will be similar to 1A, except in addition to fundamentals, language courses, and electives you will also take courses specific to your major. At each campus, the courses will relate to the region of focus: for example, 19th century history of Europe and Asia at the Euro-Asian Program in Le Havre.
You can find more information on the academics at Sciences Po here: https://sciencespo.gs.columbia.edu/sciences-po-academics
Thank you very much for the all the information! I’m interested in attending Sciences Po Menton. Which Sciences Po campus do/did you attend?
@Soccerninja I was a student at the Le Havre campus! However I have friends from each campus, so I can give information specific to the different campuses if you like 
@GSTourGuides hello! Thank you so much for starting this forum.
My daughter has had an unusual high school education: her first year was at a private high school in London that gave qualitative evaluations rather than letter / number grades; her 1st semester of sophomore year was all done online at a US-based high school while she still lived in London to transition to the US curriculum; and her remaining time has been with a “normal” public US high school, from which she will graduate in June 2020.
Her current school district translated her performance from the London school to US grades and created a consolidated course history covering her entire time in high school across the three schools.
The Dual BA application seems to require official transcripts from all schools that she attended, but it would seem more appropriate to provide this consolidated course history with consistent grading. Does she need to contact each school or can she send the single consolidated view from her current school, including the translated performance from London? (Or does she need to send both?)
Many thanks!
@GSTourGuides My kid is applying to Reims and is a musician. She’d love to continue playing music for fun. What kinds of opportunities might she have?
@db2020 Credit is due to @adwin17 for starting the thread!
This would be a good question to ask the admissions office. They would want to see the official transcripts from all of the schools and maybe some supplementary information if needed. However, you should contact the admissions office directly to ask questions about your daughter’s specific case.
Hello,
I have a question about the Columbia component. What does it mean that it is the College of General studies? Will it say that on the diploma? Is it different than a different columbia degree?
@2020TwinsMom There will definitely be opportunities for her to continue playing music! Sciences Po campuses may be small, but all of the campuses offer many extracurricular opportunities for students.
For Reims, there are a variety of different music groups. Some are specific to the Euro-American Program (Euram) or to the Euro-African (Euraf) Program, but others are open to students from either program. For example, there is Chill Beenz, which is a Euram band that takes singers and musicians. Elefunk is the Euraf equivalent of Chill Beenz. There are other groups where she can audition to perform as a musician. But even if she is not part of any of the official groups, there are lots of open mic events organized by the Bureau des Arts that she can participate in.
In short, musicians will have plenty of opportunities in Reims (the same is true for Le Havre and to a lesser extent Menton).
@NYC2018nyc The School of General Studies is one of the four undergraduate colleges of Columbia University (the others being Columbia College, the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Barnard College which is all girls and semi-autonomous compared to the other colleges). When people think of “typical” undergraduate students at Columbia, they are probably thinking of Columbia College.
But in general, all undergrads at Columbia take the same classes together and fulfill the same requirements to graduate. There aren’t really many cases where you would ONLY take a class with students from your own college. So this means that GS students are integrated academically with all other undergrads.
All of us earn the same degree from Columbia University, but the degree will say which undergraduate school you attended. So your degree will have Columbia University and School of General Studies on it.
What sets GS apart is that it is the school for all “non-traditional” students, so students come from many different backgrounds. For example, we have many military veterans who are starting their undergraduate degree, ballerinas, models, people changing their industry later in life, etc. These non-traditional students also include those pursuing an international dual-degree (Sciences Po program, City University of Hong Kong program, and Trinity College Dublin program) or other dual-degree (Jewish Theological Seminary program). So while you will take classes with everybody else at Columbia, you will be in the same cohort with all of these diverse, talented, extra special students with a lot of life experience!
Often each school will have their own social events and resources (although many events and resources are available for all students), so for example you would be attending bar nights or the annual gala as well as ice cream events with the Dean with your fellow GS classmates.
@NYC2018nyc CORRECTION: The degree will only say Columbia University on it; it will not say School of General Studies.
Thanks so much for all the information! My Son is actually looking at the Trinity program. Seems like such a great opportunity.
@NYC2018nyc That’s great! The Trinity program is fast-growing and already well-established. I’ll do my best to answer any questions you might have - there doesn’t seem to be a discussion thread yet for Trinity, but I’ll point you in the right direction once it pops up.
@db2020 The admissions office encourages to send an email to spo-dualba@columbia.edu if you have a question to which you can’t find the answer online.
Regarding your question, the admissions office says that if your daughter’s current transcript has all the grades from her previous schools, then one transcript is enough. In the application portal, though, if she fills out all the high schools she attended, our system will automatically request these transcripts or they will be considered “missing” because of the way it is automated. So she could either list all her high schools and email spo-dualba@columbia.edu to explain the situation and we can manually correct it, or she can just list her current school and mention elsewhere (her essay or her résumé/CV) that she attended other schools that are already included on her transcript.
Hope this helps!
I have a question - some schools want an official SAT score. Others are fine with the self reported one and only want the official one after acceptance. Does the dual BA program want official scores? Would it be a different code than regular Columbia? Thanks!
@NYC2018nyc Standardized testing requirements depend on applicants’ high school programs and which program they are applying to.
Students from Anglophone high schools have to submit their OFFICIAL SAT or ACT scores with their applications. You would submit these scores to the Dual BA Program, care of the School of General Studies. For SAT, the school code is 2095.
See this page for more information: https://sciencespo.gs.columbia.edu/standardized-testing-language-proficiency
Thank you! We just attended a very helpful information session in Palo Alto and got guidance about how to proceed. Basically, the advice was to submit the single consolidated transcript from my daughter’s current school, then to send an email explaining how her old grades had been translated / verified by the school district before being added to her current transcript.
We’re very excited about this program so keen for all advice and insight about admissions and the experience for those who attend.
Thanks again!
Thank you! That aligns perfectly with what we learned at the Palo Alto information session.
I’m curious about why the colleges do these dual degree programs? I get why the student would like it (my S20 is very excited to apply!) But I am not sure what Columbia gets out of it? Or Sciences Po? Or the other dual degree programs out there? What do you guys think?