Columbia and Uchicago

amykins
Sun, 27 May 2007 02:15:43 +0000

Thanks sac also-- a lot of what I hear comes from my friends at respective colleges, and it’s not always correct. The A- curve, I heard, for example, from a student who was accepted, but hadn’t even gone to the school! That’s like me spouting information I obtained from prospective students :-)

I, too, refuse to believe that the school is pre-professional-- when I talk to Columbians about why they didn’t choose Chicago, they often cite that Columbia was more professionally oriented. I found that ironic, especially considering that Chicago’s most famous major is econ, but I figured that if they chose Columbia for their career first and academic quality second, maybe other students do the same. Chicago is best for students who are academics first and career second. In order to be happy here, you’re going to have to like school and want to be in it.

I’m also happy to hear that Columbia’s core does more than just plot summary, too-- that one came from one of my very intense friends, who is quick to criticize anything and everything. I will hold, however, that reading the Iliad in a week versus reading it over six weeks will create a very different experience. I don’t know if one is better than the other, but certainly there were lots of insights, moments, etc., that came from our intense excavation of the book. This isn’t about one school being intellectually superior to another-- it’s just about there’s only so much you can do with a book when you only have four hours to discuss it.

Somebody earlier asked about my fin. aid situation: my parents, while stingy in almost every other regard, told me that I could go to school wherever I wanted and they would find a way to pay for it. They are keeping me in the dark in terms of how it’s being paid for, and I’m eternally grateful to them for the chance to go to school here. That said, there are at least ten or eleven other schools that I would also love to go to and that I would (possibly?) get merit money at. They include:

SUNY Binghamton (state school! yay!), U. Rochester, Oberlin (gave some merit money to a bunch of my friends), Clark U, Ursinus, Bard, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Bryn Mawr, Goucher, Case Western, Carnegie Mellon, William and Mary