Columbia College Chicago Top Questions

It is so expensive! I love Columbia, but they need to change the whole financial aid department.

They can be slow in responding to problems especially the admissions and housing departments.

The lack of financial opprotunites to continue my education.

There are to many activities/performances happening at once and wish that you can attend all of them.

Really, I cannot say I find anything frustrating about Columbia. The atmosphere is awamzing, the city is beautiful, the people are great, the casses are awesome. I love my schoo more than I have ever loved a school. The only thing that I find even remotely frustrating is the Chicago weather and I can easily get used to it.

The only frustrating thing about my school at this point is the commute to and from classes during the winter, it's so cold!

It is very far from home.

The process you have to take before you register for the next semester. Also the financial aid, becuase they are not very detailed in what you can and cannot take etc.

Getting around Columbia is a challenge. The campus is spread out across many blocks, and combined with the cold weather and limited parking, going back and forth to class and residency can be a struggle.

My advisors don't have their offices open long enough, and communicating through email is frustrating because they often seem to want questions framed in a certain format, which you need to guess, and they won't answer you properly without that format. Because of their office hours you'll be lucky to get one response per day. That wouldn't be a big deal if I didn't need the advisor to waive certain classes and answer questions about my degree requirements. Often I skip the advisors and go straight to my department head.

The only frustrating part about Columbia College Chicago is paying for tuition, even though it's the cheapest art school in the country.

In all honesty, I have not found anything frustrating except for maybe that it is impossible to attend everything as events/lectures/groups sometimes overlap with eachother and class times occasionally.

Sometimes they are not to keen on getting forms or information to students in a timely manner and it feels like the school is too focused on using online resources to get information to students and needs to a try a more personable approach.

The only thing I do not like about my school is that every teacher does not use oasis. Oasis is a site where your professors put up your grades, and tell you assignments. Everyone does not use it and it is frustrating because i would like to know my grades and I think it is a good idea for those who forgot what the assignment was.

The financial aid. They offer limited scholarships and no financial aid for most students and the students who qualify receive no more than 4,000 in aid, and I might not be able to come back next year despite my good grades in highschool and at my college last year.

Before you enroll, you're given the typical 'this school is so awesome' perspective. In reality, if you're an art & design major, the number of credits you have to take is impossible to complete in four years, which I recently had to find out on my own! There are many courses that are basically repeats of what I took in high school. The financial aid office is a mess, and no one seems to know what they're doing. Basically, you have to do a lot for yourself and make the most of it.

No Sports

Financial aid and support isn;t always helped by the school for most situations. It feels like things learned can be learned on one's own time.

The most frustrating thing about my school is that there are too many classes to take to complete one degree.

The only thing i can say is frustrating at my school is that our campus at Columbia College in Chicago consist of the whole south loop. The south loop is no less than 5 miles, so sometimes you will get a class that is on one end of the loop and have the next class on the other. Depending on how you make your schedule, you can have only a ten minute gap between classes, so you may need to Run all the way to your next class so you wont be late.