Which has a better undergrad experience?

columbia2007
Wed, 23 Aug 2006 23:54:02 +0000

My impression of Yale student life was that of students holed up in their freshman suite on a Friday night IMing one another from across the room. Is this an accurate assessment of everything that was going on in New Haven that night? Surely not. But neither is “oh but my Columbia friends are always doing lines of crack at nightclubs downtown, surely there is no campus life at Columbia”- I am paraphrasing, but this was close to posterx’s characterization of Columbia on its forum.

As someone who actually attends the university, I can attest to the fact that Columbians take advantage of a plentitude of options at night- and not all of them involve leaving the neighborhood or even the grounds of the campus. There is rarely a weekend night when several student theatrical performances, campus movie screenings, or house parties are not competing for attention with whatever is happening in the rest of the city. The widespread impression on this forum is that Columbia students are never on campus, but it’s telling that Columbians are always remarking instead that “no one ever goes below 110th St!” (the southern boundary of Columbia’s immediate neighborhood)