<p>Here are my thoughts on it: Columbia is full of diverse, intellectual, and articulate students, and the student body is one of the school’s strengths. Even the Core, Columbia’s unique strength, comes down to the students; the whole point of spending a ton of money to get 20 students discussing seminal texts (moderated by a professor or advanced PhD student) is that those 20 students are intelligent, interesting, and diverse enough that the discussion enriches everyone’s understanding. So I think Sara’s right to point to the students (as opposed to, say, the US News ranking) as a defining feature of Columbia.</p>
<p>“For the next four years, youll be surrounded by some of the most interesting, funny, and talented people youve ever met. Stop thinking about classes, potential majors, other peoples expectations, and US News rankings, and think about where you really want to be. Think about who you want to talk to and what you want to talk about.”</p>
<p>“Living in New York, and attending Columbia isnt for everyone, but it may be just the place for you.”</p>
<p>While I’d say that Columbia’s student body is one of its strengths, I’d counter that the competitive atmosphere and the physical campus stymie cooperation as well as true human interaction. It feels as if I’m speaking to shadows of human beings, as if Dementors have sucked the life from them.</p>
<p>I’ve met students outside the Columbia bubble and I’m so taken aback by the difference in their smiles and conversation. Maybe you’ve had a different experience, maybe you or others were a part of a hard-charging partying fraternity or sports team that wasn’t phased by work or even more likely, worked off of previous years problem sets and exams. </p>
<p>For the other unfortunate students, college at Columbia has been an exercise in keeping afloat, constantly drowning and gasping for air as we inch toward the life preserver: Thanksgiving, summer vacation, and ultimately graduation. My time for salvation has come and so I wish to impart some pieces of advice I wish I had known or had implemented.</p>
<p>Keep an open mind, don’t cast aside fraternities as inane, and meet as many people as you possibly can during your first month. They told me that once you get to college, you should choose only 2 out of the following 3 things: friends, sleep, or professional success. I’d say prioritize the first 2, because without friends or sleep, you’ll never achieve the success you envision for yourself. Good luck to all the prospective students who have signed and have now become prefrosh. I wish you the best in your endeavors.</p>
<p>Beard tax, I appreciate your deeply felt honesty about Columbia and its almost poetic expression. Such a refreshing change from certain, currently absent, Columbia bashers who have no connection whatsoever with the school and whose comments, therefore, have no credibility and no place on College Confidential. As a student, what you say has validity as other young persons, such as one of my relatives, makes the most important decision to date of his/her life. Negative or positive, what you say matters.</p>
<p>I am curious, however. As negative as you hint your overall Columbia experience has been, have there been NO compensating positives? If there have been, would you be willing to elaborate? If there have been no positive compensations, why did you remain? Why didn’t you transfer? And, do you think that what you have suggested negatively about Columbia is ABSOLUTELY UNIQUE to Columbia, or more symptomatic of a certain kind of generalized upper tier university culture? I have degrees from UChicago and Harvard, for example, and I am not sure that the kind of existential “funk” you describe is not experienced in some form, at some time, by students at UChicago and Harvard (and at other competitive, top tier universities). I felt it at both places, but did not transfer or remove myself from either because of their positive, compensating virtues.</p>
<p>In other words, do you feel that Columbia is uniquely awful?</p>
<p>Let me add, unless I have been under a rock, I have not heard of any roommate murder-suicides at Columbia such as rocked Harvard’s Dunster House in the 1990s (while I was both a grad student and a teacher there). For more on Harvard’s refusal to address the problems before they resulted in bloodshed, see Melanie Thernstrom’s “Murder at Harvard,” which I believe originated as an article in the New Yorker. Now, THAT was some serious angst!!! Columbians seem to complain (a lot) rather than murder each other, and that in itself might be one of the compensating positives of its school culture!</p>
<p>Hadn’t heard. Heard about the Harvard roommate murder-suicide because I was there at the time. </p>
<p>The difference – not in measurable tragedy, of course, but in motivation – was that the murder-suicide at Harvard was apparently academic competition, in the mind of the murderer, between the roommates, re: medical school admissions and such. Harvard had some control over that situation, and was believed by many to be morally culpable because of its complete unwillingness to intervene after the murderess wrote of her problems to someone, essentially crying out for help that did not come.</p>
<p>Same horribly sad result. Seemingly different circumstances.</p>
<p>Yeah, the Ruggles incident was bad. Beard tax, thanks for sharing your experience. The social community (or lack thereof) is definitely an issue at Columbia, but I think it’s primarily a structural issue. It can be very difficult to find people to be friends with, due to the lack of space for student events and the overall business and seriousness of many students, but once you’re able to find time and space to connect with Columbia students, I think you’ll find they are absolutely phenomenal people. Columbia students are sometimes very stressed and lonely, and that is a problem, but they’re still incredibly interesting people.</p>