<p>i am not here to convince bzva - in fact hopeless is a better word for him/her.</p>
<p>but i would like to dispel the rumor that columbia does not coddle students. sure it doesn’t baby them the way you are in LACs and such. but like any top flight school it has tons of resources geared toward making you adjust to life, feel like you are part of a campus etc.</p>
<p>how about you visit and then cross off columbia? that is the more ‘rational’ manner to go about college choice.</p>
<p>and ultimately anyone going to college has to ask themselves the question - why? what is the purpose in going to college? what am i hoping to get out of it? especially an education that begins to cost upwards of 200,000$ for a family. at times we must sacrifice immediate goals and desires for long term ones and vice versa. in this regard seeking something that is different, unfamiliar or nontraditional might be an advantage. unless you seriously engage with the question of what you want your experience to be like, and seek to truly learn as much as you can about things, you are just going to make an uninformed decision. perhaps you will get lucky and things will work out, but my experience is that is not the case.</p>
<p>the most prepared tend to be the most able to understand and contextualize their experience.</p>