Columbia vs. Princeton

admissionsgeek
Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:41:55 +0000

hallowarts - well the numbers are deceiving and it really shows how little you must be aware of columbia. There IS a way that Columbia can be undergraduate focused.

1) most graduate students are housed in professional schools that often have little to nothing to do with undergraduate life - further they have their own endowments, faculty and purpose. so i rarely see any students in the school of social work, school of public health, nursing school, etc., though they are counted in the numbers.
2) 6.5 student to faculty ratio only refers to professors in the Graduate School of Arts and Science and the Engineering School - the schools of interest to Columbians. So what we could say at the least is that if we considered ugrad a fiefdom of its own then it is a pretty solid ugrad institution (as you even mention above)
3) I can at least offer this anecdote: I found Columbia to be nicer to undergrads than what we would properly call a graduate student (PhD). Professors have often said that they are not quite as interested in mentoring grad students as they enjoy teaching in the core or working with bright undergrads. It is also the culture around the schools is that the undergrads have risen steadily to prominence in the university, and like Princeton et al., the university has realized that it will live or die by the happiness of its undergraduates (and it has done well by that mantra of late).

4) The one byproduct of having a large university with many schools is that sometimes it is hard to cross school divides and to easily form alliances with schools though a lot of this too is starting to crumble (especially with the elevation of the Dean of the College to the level of Vice President). It means that the same registrar who deals with ugrads has to deal with dozens of other schools, which means you are limited on what you can add to students transcripts. Rarely are these issues large or severely limiting, but especially when you want to do something quickly they can be annoying and tedious to deal with. It is usually the biggest criticism of Columbia - once I got used to it I could figure out how to play organizations against each other to get even more what I needed, in a sadistic way it has its advantages. I should note that Columbia is working to minimize this long term as all universities that care about streamlining for cost effectiveness and also for ease of marketing. During my tenure at CU I noticed significant improvements in many areas - many I should say were a result of student action. In this regard I wont pretend to compare Princeton to Columbia - Pton students have it easy and silver-plattery. I think Columbia makes you tough, push to the front of the line of sorts, and I appreciate it - but once again it is something that someone who has the stomach and the adventure for it will enjoy - and long-term I think they get more out of it.

But the notion that having more graduate students immediately means you must be graduate focused…well I’d ask the graduate students how they feel, and most complain how the ugrads have it great - control the student center, priority of space, the university bends over backwards (honestly) to allow for the core when most universities can get by offering fewer courses.