<p>There have been a lot of threads lately about Columbia Engineering. As a current undergraduate at the school, I think it's my duty to provide you with the information I didn't have when I made my decision 2 years ago. So here's a quick take on that.</p>
<p>Columbia is a great place to study engineering. You can choose whether you want to be a traditional engineer or change career paths and move into finance, consulting, etc. New York City is a hotbed of technology (though it's second by a large margin to Silicon Valley). There are some pretty big startups downtown and they are hungry for talented CS kids. Plenty of alums go to Google, Facebook, Microsoft or start their own companies too. If you are interested in civil, mech, EE, etc, we get plenty of recruiting from Boeing, NASA, etc. Columbia also has dedicated startup and Engineering career fairs. Opportunities to get a job are the least of your worries when you're in NYC. Also, many students go into finance, including top bulge bracket firms like GS. Consulting recruiting is decent, but not the best.</p>
<p>The professors in the engineering school are all excellent at what they do in terms of research. However, only some of them are good at teaching. It's the same situation at most large research universities, so this doesn't matter in your decision.</p>
<p>Columbia's Engineering Core consists of several pointless classes like Chemistry, Physics, Math, CS and 7 non-technical classes. Unless you take the honors sequence of any of these classes (which are lots of work, trust me) you will not likely learn anything from the core and will waste your time taking classes to fulfill requirements. This is why many Columbia engineers take 6 classes a semester to study what they want while completing the core. The non-tech classes are hit or miss and really depend on your teacher. I personally don't like having to take these core classes, but it's not a deal breaker. Supposedly, all this helps you later on in life, so I'm not qualified to comment on their use at the moment.</p>
<p>52% of Columbia's undergrads last year were STEM majors, so we are a majority (by the smallest amount). Columbia acknowledges the importance of science and technology and is investing a lot of money in these departments (New engineering facilities in the upcoming Manhattanville campus, $200 million towards a neuroscience center, etc). Don't worry about being a minority as an engineer in a liberal arts school.</p>
<p>If you got into MIT, Stanford or Princeton, go there unless you have a non-quantifiable reason to come here. They have better undergraduate engineering programs and slightly better name recognition and will offer similar opportunities. Caltech depends on whether you are strongly committed to doing a PhD in your field. There isn't too much to try outside pure science and engineering there. Please don't got to Harvard or Yale for engineering. They have small programs and you will feel out of place in a largely liberal arts school. I know kids who have turned down all these schools for Columbia, but they are only anecdotes. There are crazy smart people here too, not just at MIT. So don't be afraid of coming here to find out that you're the best - you're most likely not.</p>
<p>If you come to Days on Campus, don't get scared by all the non-engineering people who tour you around. It doesn't accurately reflect Columbia. The engineers are too busy working on a fine Spring day to show you around (because we have more pressing matters to attend to).</p>
<p>Columbia Engineering is good, really good, just not the very best - which doesn't really matter in terms of opportunities you can utilize. If you don't have clearly better choices, come here. Honestly, in the end, once you've been accepted to several top schools, where you go to college doesn't matter. Just pick one and get on with life. Once you start school, you will realize how insignificant all these college worries are, and how pointless this forum is.</p>
<p>I have been exceedingly blunt about my views. Here's the truth from a SEAS student. Make what you want of it. Hope you come to Columbia. If not, enjoy wherever it is that you're going.</p>