<p>My daughter is accepted by SEAS at Columbia. She got a lot of negative comments from StudentReview.com. Some are about how bad the security is at Columbia. Some are about how students cheated in test etc. Could anyone from Columbia post some comments? Thanks.</p>
<p>If people are cheating on tests, you just… make sure you cheat harder.</p>
<p>hcheng-</p>
<p>both claims are wrong.</p>
<p>columbia is extremely safe and goes to great lengths to protect students. a survey by the unversity of pennsylvania in 2000 (when the campus area was not even as safe as it is today) said that columbia had the lowest number of violent crimes than ANY Ivy League school. that being said it is not as if there is no crime, just like there is crime at dartmouth and cornell, which are located in rural places. columbia is located in a major urban area, and so students should be smart about things. i will say one thing - i was never afraid to walk alone at night. between the lights on campus and the security guards everywhere, it felt very safe.</p>
<p>As for cheating - it is not a columbia problem only. it is something i notice as being an issue everywhere, but i will say from my perspective, i never felt the need to cheat in order to do well in school. i graduated with a good gpa, got into a great grad school program. nor did any of my friends as far as i know cheat. but please do not presume that cheating is a columbia issue, i see it on a daily basis at the institution i attend now, and a quick look at every school will say the same.</p>
<p>lastly, don’t trust studentreviews.com, i know the site and it is not really a legitimate place. there are a lot of great sites that have student opinions, where the opinions are not anonymous. the reviews on there are honestly disturbing.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot</p>
<p>Columbia and the areas around it, by pretty much all statistical measures, is extremely safe. You will hear about robberies, muggings and sometimes assaults but there are so many people in the area that it happens at a very low rate per person per year. NYC is america’s safest big city, manhattan is the safest borough in nyc, and columbia is in one of the safest precincts in manhattan. Needless to say, not much happens on campus, but even the columbia vicinity is well lit, well policed, safe and these days quite gentrified and actually becoming an expensive area to rent in (i looked into it post college). </p>
<p>Cheating is not more prevalent at Columbia than at other places, it happens everywhere. You definitely do not need to cheat to do well in classes. I’d say the vast majority of people with high gpas do no cheat.</p>