lvilleslacker

Hey, I'm just wondering what kind of social scene I can expect at Columbia next year. I've heard that people tend to just go to bars/clubs on weekends instead of having on campus parties, which is to me a little discouraging compared to say, Princeton's eating clubs. Does money become a significant factor in determining what you can do every weekend?

Haha, of course, this might be irrelevant to me. Do engineering students have a lot less free time compared to those in other majors?

Thanks a lot! This has been one of my bigger concerns over having committed to Columbia and then hearing from my friends the awesome social lives at places like penn and princeton.

Skraylor

1) this should be in the 2011 forum.

2) do a search for social life or something, there are a lot of threads about this already

3) no, not really (at least not freshman year)

s snack

Ew to the reference to Princeton's Eating Clubs. I despise those things and the culture they promote.

Columbia2002

Downtown NYC = Wall Street / Financial District. It's a ghosttown during non business hours.

Columbia kids don't know their Manhattan neighborhoods and tend to think everything else below Morningside is "downtown." If you're talking about the cool places in NYC, you mean the village / lower east side / meatpacking district / soho / etc.

Denzera

To answer the OP's question: not at all!

The vast majority of social outings I had at columbia were on-campus. Freshman year I did a lot with my floor; as an upperclassman there were always parties at EC or other dorms (or frat row if that's your thing) on the weekends. The bars in morningside heights are fine, and are crowded with students like ourselves. Trips to other neighborhoods were almost a special occasion for me, if i had tickets to a show or concert or a reason to go to a particular bar.

if you're looking to make friends on campus, you'll have plenty of opportunities. the Columbia difference is that off-campus opportunities aren't limited to big and occasional road trips, they can be spur-of-the-moment and very diverse. there's something special about being able to get a posse of friends, go to some random neighborhood, and just get lost in there, feeling the anonymity of the city and like you'd just discovered a secret together. it's hard to describe, but I wouldn't go knocking it.

Socially, Columbia has what you're looking for unless you're looking for A) huge football tailgate parties, or B) a dominant frat culture. other than that, it's all here.

columbia2007

No, that's "Lower Manhattan". "Downtown" in the New York context refers to anything below 14th Street, including the Villages, SoHo, LES, MePa Distr. etc.

As for the OP's question, no, the majority of Columbia social life is not downtown. It probably mostly splits three ways between relatively smallish dorm parties, neighborhood bars, and trips to the wider city, although everything has been trending toward more campus activity as the neighborhood bars are slowly shut down/become unaffordable.

karot

Like the Petula Clark song.

Columbia2002

It's semantics, but check out:

http://www.downtownny.com/?sid=323

columbia2007

It's really a rare exception. Check Google and see how often that term applies to the southern tip of the island exclusively, vis-a-vis Lower Manhattan.

When most Columbia people say "I'm going downtown," they usually mean the region between 14th and Canal.

Columbia2002

Yeah, that's why my first post on this thread indicated that most people at Columbia do exactly that because their frame of reference is skewed.