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<li>Columbia undergraduates are way ahead of the undergraduates at my past college. I loved my undergraduate LAC - it’s a small LAC in the top 100 of the U.S. News list, but it’s certainly no Amherst or Swarthmore or anything. Anyway, the women at my undergrad college were very engaged in education and wanted to learn; no one was there because they were forced, and everyone was willing to learn. I had an amazing experience there. However, they can’t compare to the Columbia undergrads. I’ve had the pleasure of interacting with many undergrads since being here, and my colleagues teach them. These students are the best-prepared students in the country; they are uniquely engaged in the subject matter. I took a mixed undergrad/grad class and the class discussions these undergrads were able to engage in was just fascinating.</li>
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<p>Did they seem smarter? Yes, in the sense that I think they are better prepared for college. That has a lot to do with different populations. My undergrad school is a historically black women’s college that is very economically diverse; many students were the first person in their family to attend college. Most Columbia students are upper middle-class and the majority of them are not FGCS. I don’t think their overall intelligence level is higher than the students at my LAC, as far as ability to learn goes. I just think that they were exposed to different, better things than the students at my undergraduate LAC were, and that made them more prepared to discuss issues.</p>
<p>They are not, however, more connected to the real world. My LAC wins in that category. When I say “connected” I mean grounded, and involved in the community around them. My undergraduate school (and the students) were big on community service and everyone I knew there volunteered and worked with the community. I also think that far more of my undergraduate peers lived off campus, and worked part-time jobs (because they had to) so they grew an awareness of what the world outside of their college was like early.</p>
<p>Professors are a different story. The professors here at Columbia are researchers; they know their research and they will expose you to it, if you want it. But they are generally speaking bad teachers. The professors in my department teach both undergrad and grad classes. I’ve had three, maybe four professors in the psych department who are really good teachers, but the rest of them are kind of bad. They also make silly jokes about the undergrads to us graduate students which indicates that they have a hierarchy of work and undergrads are near the bottom of it. For example, I expressed a wish to TA a class so I could learn how to teach so when I become a professor, I wouldn’t suck, and my advisor told me that it was going to take time away from my research. Um, yeah, I know, but…</p>
<p>The professors I had at my small LAC were amazing teachers, and they were always available and their number one priority was students. However, they all did research as well, and I got involved in a number of research projects as an undergraduate. I had incredible, involved mentors at my LAC, and they were great. But that may be more due to the university/LAC divide than anything else. They have to care about the undergrads here beacause that’s their jobs. Professors at neither school seemed “smarter,” but the professors at my old school did seem more connected to students’ after-college desires and able to advise on those kinds of issues. Professors here are kind of absorbed in their research.</p>
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<li>Networking is phenomenal here but it was great at my old school, too. Explanation: my school is the #1 ranked HBCU in the country, and many fancy employers came to the school to recruit diversity candidates for their companies. That means at our law school fair, we had top law schools like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford; top medical schools recruited on campus; we had top firms like Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, and McKinsey and Company come to visit and do interviews on-campus; and Teach for America was always there. I was exposed to the big Wall Street companies from day one, and I developed a sense that I could definitely work there with a degree from my school. Not to mention that a lot of my alumni friends actually <em>are</em> working at some of these big-name companies and going to these top law/medical schools.</li>
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<p>Those same people come here to Columbia, but of course the Columbia name is worth more.</p>
<p>The difference is the professors - there are far more big-name professors here than at my old college, of course, and those professors have networks that extend beyond my old college’s.</p>
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<li>I haven’t interviewed for jobs because I’m still getting my PhD here, but of course the effect is different when you tell people that you go to Columbia v. my alma mater. I usually have to explain where my alma mater is, and people sometimes don’t know it’s a women’s college, etc. I never have to clarify what Columbia is.</li>
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<p>Of course, I will say that one of the great small perks is making people wig out when you tell them where you go. I had convinced myself I didn’t care about prestige, but people’s eyes always bug out when I tell them I’m getting my PhD at Columbia, and it’s a nice feeling. For example, most of the people in my fiance’s Air Force squadron know I go to Columbia for a PhD because a colonel once asked me and when I told him, he started blurting it out to everyone he could, haha. People (in all four categories you mentioned) are impressed, and they tend to make the automatic assumption that you are intelligent.</p>
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<li><p>If we’re comparing undergrad to undergrad: No, not really. I think the things I learned would be different, but not more.</p></li>
<li><p>Yes, it was always my plan to go to an upper-tier graduate school. This is sort of why I saved the money on my undergrad - I originally wanted to go to law school, and a top 15 law school is expensive, but that’s what I wanted. The good news is, I’m not incurring that much debt at Columbia 
PhD programs are funded, so I’m actually coming here with tuition remission, health insurance, and a $30,000 a year stipend. So I’ve taken out about an extra $10,000 here at Columbia (the costs of moving and getting a new apartment set up, and equipment/school supplies) and that’s probably all I’ll borrow until the end, because I get paid enough to live on, so I’ll probably have like $20K of debt when I graduate. Can’t beat that with a stick :)</p></li>
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<p>But I would’ve been willing to incur the debt of an Ivy League law school, had I done that instead. It’s really worth it at that level.</p>
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<li>I’m getting my PhD in sociomedical sciences - it is a joint degree program in psychology and public health. My admission here was based on a variety of factors. For PhD programs the most important things are research experience, letters of recommendation, and your research fit with the department. I had more experience than most undergrads get with a couple of presentations; I had excellent letters of recommendation from professors who knew me well; and I was a very close fit with the professors here. My advisor is like tailor-made for me, lol. My solid major GPA (~3.6) and my high GRE scores (790 verbal, 740 math, scored on the same scale as the SAT) were also a strong factor.</li>
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<p>I hope this helps - obviously I’m not in business, but feel free to PM me if you have any more questions or just ask on this thread.</p>