<p>@campaigner Thanks for your input! I don’t think I’m eligible to apply for Eli Whitney as I’ve only been away from school for 3 years, but that news itself is quite encouraging.</p>
<p>I’m taking 5 courses, mostly 3000-level. As mid-term results started to roll out when I posted, I had a sense that I would get all As and A+s. Academic quality here has been really great and the grading is not too strict, so I believe a 4.0 or above will still be the case as long as I don’t screw up finals too badly.</p>
<p>I am thinking about other ivy plus schools with a more flexible distributional requirement. I just want to tell the incoming students that Columbia is great, but it’s really not for everyone. If you do not feel comfortable being asked to take this and that and you want to have a strong control over your curriculum, you may want to commit to somewhere else. I thought I was well prepared and would enjoy taking all these cores, but when I came here and had a change in academic goal,(I switched from a social science major to humanity+natural science) the inflexibility here really disappointed me. </p>
<p>@GSTourGuides Thanks for your input and I appreciate that. I’ve joined a few clubs but unfortunately the clubs I’m interested in are not very active here and I quitted after a few weeks. I do know the monthly RA events but they don’t really excite me; I attended once and it was not as good as I expected. I’ve also spoken with the FA office a few weeks ago and they told me they couldn’t do anything for me financially. I’m not too bad socially because I hang out with some old friends in the city, but this just further strengthens the feeling that I’m not really enjoying the social part of my college life here.</p>