<p>"He will have perfect 4.0 average in college, studying is easy and natural for him. "</p>
<p>such a statement is dangerous. it means that you have expectations which you might be imposing upon your son. the way you speak of your son only leads me to speculate that there is a chance you might be placing undue pressure upon him to maintain a 4.0 at columbia - a feat which is very rarely accomplished by anyone.</p>
<p>i know that you will reply and say that you are just thinking through contingencies, and that you have a very high assessment of your son's capabilities but always let him choose his own path without influence from you.</p>
<p>the fact of the matter is, your state of mind clearly conveys your demanding expectations (or hopes), and I would wager that these desires of yours are almost certainly manifested in your conversations with your son...and that he knows what you want of him. you really should conside what type of pressure this places on him, and whether or not this is what he wants, or if he is just doing it to please you.</p>
<p>I guess, in the end, I would simply tell your son to try his best academically and find a number of extracurriculars which he's actually passionate about. Other than that, there's really nothing he needs to consider at this point in terms of a transfer. It will still be about one or, more realistically, two years away. During that time he may find that he actually loves it at Columbia. But if he should have legitimate reasons for a transfer, he'll need no assistance from us in discerning them.</p>
<p>transferapp, my day job is psychologist, so please I don't want to engage in a discussion about how my needs affect daily conversations at home ,etc. Yes, I have put pressure on him and will continue to do so, pressure to excel not to trade up etc. I perhaps know when the pressure is too much, perhaps I study him carefully, perhaps I seek consultation. Maybe I did exaggerate in that he may not get that 4.0 but I did not mean it to be taken so concretely, it was a way of saying he is an excellent student. The Everest analogy did not mean he was going to climb it or that Columbia has such climbers, it was about attempting challenges, again someone took it literally. I appeal to all of you to be more abstract, more into thought experiments, etc. Maybe one person alone mentioned race but I am confident there is a certain perception of Indian parents, and this perception is largely accurate. yes, I will make prelim judgments about people based on where they live and am willing to bet my house that adjusted for population more people in the big cities use CC than rural folks. Stereotyping is very useful, and often accurate and I don't mind being stereotyped as an Indian until I start explaining when you guys should pay attention to the individual and not the representative of a community speaking. Thanks for your help but I did not enjoy some of your comments.</p>
<p>CX3, thanks for your recent post. My son is not thinking of transfer. I do not want him to. There is more to be learned by sticking to Columbia or your wife or the boss whom you don't like. Frustration tolerance, loyalty, thankfulness for having what you have, persistence amidst adversity, rising above petty deficiencies and annoyances, dealing with imperfect situations, stickitiveness, maximizing the current situation, extracting maximum value from what you have, a host of lessons that will be lost if he were to transfer. Thanks.</p>
<p>ok the everest think was a joke. I thought a pretty obvious one.
and as a girl, I don't know that I would want a husband to "stick to me" when he didn't like me. and just b/c you are a psychologist it doesn't mean you aren't blind to certain things, we all have our issues and faults.</p>
<p>good luck to your son. no matter what happens he has columbia which is an amazing opportunity.</p>
<p>addy189, thank you for a considerate response. Of course, if one is a psychologist does not mean one doesn't have blind spots. I was trying to say that the more obvious issues and concerns have occurred to me in that if a parent or student came to me with the kind of issues and language I used, much of my advice would be similar to what has been offered to me except I respectfully suggest I will be more nuanced and less pejorative. The young are more certain, it seems and Blake said somewhere that one must know more than enough to know what is enough. At some faintly conscious level, I do have an obsession with prestige, Indian chip on the shoulder, so to speak, and perhaps this dialog has brought me face to face with my own insecurities. I don't know much about the USNew Colleges except what has been said on CC and a few books so I will accept your statement that Columbia is excellent. May I ask, where do you study (assume you are a student). My best to all of you , you have all been helpful.</p>
<p>Right now I'm at UCB but I'll be transferring this year. You really don't have to take my word on Columbia. If you don't trust the CC Columbia forum than I suggest looking at all the successful alumni who have graduated from the school, talking to your son's college counselor, looking at the caliber of recruiters that conduct on campus interviews, grad school placement, professor qualifications, class size, student body profile, the princeton review site, etc. Or you could just ask anyone who works in higher education. Where in CT are you that Columbia is not recognized as prestigious? In terms of your son's final profession, you would be hard put to find someone who thought HYP would give him a significant advantage, if any over Columbia in achieving his goals.</p>
<p>Let me come clean! S wants to be engineer but wanted Princeton, to study in a liberal arts atmosphere. College counselor at school insisted on MIT, S protested saying he didn't want such an Asian techie place, but did not want to overrule her, also told her his junior year courses have mostly been humanities (that's the way scheduling worked out) with the strong AP sciences coming up senior year so told her he won't get into MIT. But yielded to her, got rejected by MIT, in regular round got waitlisted at Pton, got in most other places. We did a lot of research on Princeton and MIT not much on other schools, foolishly confident he would make it to either, got a real awakening, when Columbia, Brown, Cornell, Duke etc came thru, he picked Columbia because of humanities strength, particularly Core curriculum. We are educating ourselves about Columbia but we are finding out that most Ivy engineers end up iin consulting/IB. The true engineers perhaps go to Purdue or UMichigan. It also seems that engineering recruiters are going to those school and given up on MIT or Ivies since the kids don't stay on the job or accept offers. I admit that with Princeton prestige was a factor. Thanks, addy you are sanest in this bunch!</p>
<p>Well the EECS program at Berkeley is extremely prestigious and very competitive so its grads are very respected. But I would never go there over Columbia so it's all a matter of personal preference. I'm really sorry your son's counselor did that to him, you should have talked to some other people I think. Especially if he was waitlisted, applying ED would have given him a real advantage.</p>
<p>"It also seems that engineering recruiters are going to those school and given up on MIT or Ivies since the kids don't stay on the job or accept offers."</p>
<p>I really doubt this is true, where did you hear this? I think you need to examine the engineering department at Columbia and talk to current students/grads. I really think this will ease your fears.</p>
<p>addy189, I am surprised you would choose Columbia over Berkeley's EE/CS which is highly regarded? Why so? What are you studying at UCB, if you don't mind my asking? And why would you want to transfer? sorry for these queries, if I am too personal, please forgive me.</p>
<p>I spoke to two companies a while back, Boeing and NASA, they both said when they recruited Purdue and UMichigan grads they got midwest work ethic, no self importance, they found MIT grads and Ivy grads too conscious of their own superiority, lacking work ethic, wanting the CEO job right away, lot of attrition. Granted, just two aerospace recruiters, maybe a biased sample. In any case, it seems the Ivy engineers all end up in non-engineering jobs (this does not mean same is not true of non-Ivy engineers) but I feel at Columbia my S won't become an engineer, will be surrounded by kids wanting Ibanking job and that would color his approach maybe. Same would have happened at Pton I guess. To really want to stay in engineering and be one perhaps one should go to Michigan or UIUC etc.</p>
<p>I am not at all informed about engineering but I really doubt anyone turns down MIT or Columbia for that reason. Those recruiters could be biased b/c they didn't attend schools such as Columbia or Penn. I'm sorry I can't help you but there should be some way to find out about engineering job placement at Columbia. Look at the engineering internship list, a lot of internships are offered by Columbia grads. And being surrounded by future Ibankers shouldn't really affect someone passionate about engineering as they are completely different fields. And don't worry, I'm sure your son has a soul ;)</p>
<p>My friend chose Columbia engineering over EECS due to the campus, class size, job placement, and resources. Berkeley as a whole does not have a very selective admissions process and many students do not deserve to be there. I wanted a more academic atmosphere and to be on a campus that has an actual undergraduate community. The social atmosphere was not for me and I hated my huge classes with pointless discussion sections run by TAs.</p>
<p>addy189, I also spoke last fall with profs at Michigan, Cornell, Pton, MIT etc. It seems engineering recruiters recruit more at Purdue, Michigan, Georgia Tech etc than they do at MIT/Pton. That's probably due to sheer nos. They also do not retain MIT engineers who leave after a few years. Also, Pton MIT engineers have more options in banking, consulting etc than a Michigan engineer on average. All this is not to say that a passionate engineer from Columbia won't find an engineering job, quite the contrary being humanistically well rounded he will have an excellent chance. Also if he has a soul he won't be swayed by others but more 20 yr olds are impressionable than not. I am glad he will be reading the Core. Actually, I do not want him to transfer; people on this blog misread me. I was educated in India, and long before I knew of the Great Books program I was reading them in India, Aeschylus and Dante and Marcus Aurelius so I am glad he will read my now tattered Everyman's Library hardcovers that have marginal notes from my father and myself, stretching back to the 1940s!</p>