Columbia University in the City of New York Top Questions

I believe my friend put it best when she said Columbia is a political, intellectual institution. Ideas and principles and names like the ones the façade of Butler Library (Homer, Ovid, Cervantes, ect.) are the things that knit you and your 1,500 starry-eyed peers together in your four years here. It's not a normal undergraduate community in any sense of the word; no one is going to hold your hand. But keep in mind, because you're in NY, you are going to be handed a thousand opportunities here you couldn't anywhere else.

Being at Columbia is overall, awesome. You have to work really hard, but you'll have plenty of good times. In my first year I experienced the Amhadinejad protest and got on national TV briefly talking to Geraldo when Fox came to visit, spoke to Natalie Portman, and got to speak to and hear John Legend live. I find myself flipping throughout the year between "this is so great" and "I can't stand all this work", but the overall experience is positive. For instance, I'm spending this summer up in New York City working for a professor who is paying for my housing. Like any college experience you'll have your good and bad though. Not being too much into the party scene I had a difficult time meeting people in the beginning, but managed just fine in the end. The academics are, of course, rigorous, but I found that through help rooms and office hours the resources are definitely there to help you if you take advantage of them. But when the year is finished, you won't find yourself thinking about all the work, but that time your and your friends sneaked onto the roofs of several buildings or explored the tunnels, the crazy day that Amhadinejad came to visit full of crazy protesters, people dancing (yes, dancing), singing and laughing, debating socio-politics till five in the morning, and the simple times just sitting around and talking with some great new friends.

the core: a lot of hit or miss classes taught largely by grad students, some great and some awful. i hated many of these classes, but in the end, i'm really glad that i went through some kind of core-like program (more on that later). the campus: 97{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} of students (or something like that) in the undergrad programs live on campus all 4 years. campus is beautiful, walled off from the city, and pretty far from any really 'cool' parts of town. there is less campus social life than anywhere else i've been (i've visited friends at a lot of other similarly expensive colleges). the social world near campus is basically about 5 bars that accept fake ID with varying levels of skepticism...it can be weird and alienating as an 18 year old to know that you are supposed to get a fake or make your own fun. i went to a lot of concerts at the beginning, which was great but didn't contribute at all to feeling like i knew people in school.

The best thing about Columbia is opportunity. From Nobel-prize winning and world reknowned professors to award winning institutions (not just for the Grad students), a once-in-a-lifetime experience is common place here. Don't get me wrong, there are many things I would change at Columbia, especially some of their policies (both academic and social) which are excessive and only serve to make a student's life harder. The school size, just speaking for the undergraduate schools of Columbia College and SEAS, is just right. Its large enough to get lost in the crowd and meet new people all the time, but its small enough to create a strong community where you know or know of a lot of people (especially within classes). Its also the perfect size for our campus, which probably couldn't hold any more and would feel empty if it held any less. The campus is also gorgeous and well planned with buildings close together and almost all available in one section cut out of the grid-locked streets of Manhattan. I get many different reactions when I tell people I go to Columbia. The most popuar is the "Ooooh" response, where people seem to automatically think negatively about me and assume I'm pretentious. There's also the "Wow" response, where people are genuinely impressed and think positively of me. Another common one is a simple "Okay" response, which can be a toss up between indifferent and thinking I mean Columbia college in Chicago or University of Colombia in South America or have never heard of it. I tend to spend most of my time in the dorms, its where I sleep, where I cook, where my friends are, and where I study, which is basically all I have time for. I try to get out into THE BEST COLLEGE TOWN, the lovely city of New York on Manhattan, as much as possible, which is always fun and exciting. I've lived here for more than two years now and I still amazed that I live here, right on Broadway, and can hop a subway anytime I want to go explore the best city in the world. When I think of school pride, I tend to think of sports. Unfortunately, Columbia students, except for the athletes themselves, don't care about sports here. There are three reasonable explanations for this: (1) Our sports teams aren't considered very good among students, even though a handful of them are the best in the League, (2) They have too much else to worry about and don't have time or interest in going to a sporting event or joining athletics themselves, and (3) Many students resent the athletes who were recruited to come here because they feel Columbia has lowered their standards for them, which is rediculous because the athletes perform just as well academically as non athletes. I wish more people went to football games and basketball games and made it a big deal, but its the fault of the students for not caring and the administration for not doing enough to advertise or make them care about their school. Other than pride for sports teams, students feel great pride for the school itself, but probably only for its esteemed stature. Columbia is jam packed with news-making controversy every year. My freshmen year the big event was the Minute Men protest which made Bill O'Reilly officially hate us. My sophomore year brought one of the current most hated men in the world to speak on campus, Irani President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. If Bill O'Reilly was thinking of giving Columbia another chance, this even definitely sealed his hatred for us. This event was history making and important to everyone in the world. I am extremely glad I was here to experience and was able to sit on a packed South Lawn with every other student and watch the "discussion" from a giant screen TV, I will absolutely never forget it. Ahmadinejad was definitely not the first controversial speaker Columbia as had and certainly won't be the last. I can't wait to see what boils up during my junior year!

Columbia is the Ivy with it all: big city life and a great education. Because of the city, it is not the place for someone who wants a strong sense of school pride. In your first years, it may be more difficult to explore the city, but there is plenty of time for that- and it's always there. Because almost all freshman are in two dorms on campus, you see at least twenty faces you know on any given day walking around campus. Also, the dining plan ensures that you always have a dining hall full of people from your class to eat with. If you want nothing to do with anything political, then Columbia is not for you. Whether it be the arrival of the President of Iran or a student-staged hunger strike in protest of Columbia's expansion into Harlem, we are always stirring up political controversy. Though the first semester can be difficult (adjusting to college life and life in the Big Apple can be pretty unsettling, though awesome), Columbia is an amazing school.

Columbia is in New York City. It's what nobody says on the application, but what everybody's thinking - if you come here, you have to love the city! I love our campus (only school in Manhattan that has one), but if a super-campus feel is important to you, pick another school. Columbia likes to call NYC the extension of our small campus. Columbia doesn't have the name recognition of Harvard/Yale/Princeton and I like that - it definitely helps keep you grounded that not everybody knows Columbia. We've had, and continue to have, our fair share of controversies. Last fall Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to speak on campus as part of our annual World Leaders Forum. A lot of people were really angry (mainly Fox news and people unaffiliated with the university) and it really spurred a lot of activism on campus. In retrospect I think people are glad it happened because it definitely created a community feeling and showed that students are still capable of caring about things.

I love Columbia, but the administration is awful. As I mentioned, I spent my freshman year at Duke, where things ran smoothly, from housing to Flex/meal plans to financial aide and registration. At Columbia everything is a huge hassle and when you have a problem the people you deal with to fix it have not, in my experience, been helpful or pleasant, which seems to be a common complaint amongst students. On the whole though, going to school in New York is amazing, the housing is great, and the campus is beautiful and well-maintained.

Columbia is an absolutely top-tier institution with solid faculty, resources, and students. It is one of the most popular Ivies, and there's more to its appeal than New York City (honestly, if people just came for that, they could go to NYU). I've found that the University caters to a specific type of student: one who is fairly independent and will chart his own academic course. There's very little hand-holding after orientation, although advisers are fairly prompt about setting up meetings, and prospective students should know that this is not a communal liberal arts college. That being said, Columbia does have a self-contained, vibrant community for a mid-sized university.

I love Columbia and think it offers a college experience like no other university or college in the U.S.; that said, I realize that it's not for everyone. Here's what you should know before applying. The campus is beautiful and safe (lots of police), but it's not a traditional campus in the vein of Yale's or Princeton's. Architecturally, most buildings have a beautiful Beaux Arts look (there are a few post-60s eyesores, as at any school), and I think Columbia's campus is more majestic than most. However, it won't offer total seclusion from the city (nor should it), and you definitely have to like urban environments to appreciate it. The dorms range from okay to pretty good (nothing too amazing, but the upperclass suites are nice), the libraries are outstanding, and the adjacent neighborhood has an academic feel that renders it a little quieter than downtown. (There are a lot of fun bars and restaurants right by campus that are perfect for college students.) All these factors make Columbia a wonderful hybrid of a more traditional campus and a stimulating urban environment. I'd say it's in the middle of a continuum that has Princeton on one end and NYU on the other.

Big school. Bigger than I'm used to. And there's a swim test. It seems like there's always something going on at Columbia, which I appreciate. No matter what you're into, there's an event, club, or party available. This could be largely due to the fact that Columbia has such a diverse student body (at least that's what I'm told), and that everyone is so ambitious. The thing that I'm most conscious of is that I'm completely on my own here. Getting anything done--whether it's homework, schedule planning, a trip to the nurse--requires personal effort. The advisors here generally do not help you, if you need an answer you need to hound them. People told me before I came here that no one was going to hold my hand, but at times it feels less like freedom and more like neglect.