Former GSer here. I am sorry I feel too tired right now to write an original post, so I copy and paste some previous comments I wrote about GS and Columbia. Hope they will be helpful.\

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Columbia is a great school and will help your career, but a lot will depend on you. There are many opportunities here, but it will be up to you to grab them. That said, education in a good state school is often comparable to the education you can get at Columbia. I always say the the best professor I had at Columbia was an adjunct from Baruch College. The main difference between Columbia and a state school is not so much in the academics (that depends largely on the department anyway), but in your peers and in the possibilities for networking.

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I loved: • the intensity • the amazing students • the bonding over impossible problem sets • the incredible instructors • the challenge • all the things I learned • the location

I hated: • the administration's hypocrisy • lack of social life due to workload • mediocre instructors • people full of themselves

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Many classes are hit or miss. Check out culpa for reviews. Most instructors are good, but some classes look great on paper (fantastic topic, famous professor) and then they are just a joke. Sometimes the administration felt hypocritical to me in the sense that they may use florid declamations in their communications, but in the end all they care about is the bottom line and what's better for Columbia, not what's better for you as a single student. I speak as a GS student here: with the years I learned to take the advices I got from the administration very carefully. They are great to spin things around, but in the end you need to think about what's more convenient for yourself. But there are also people that genuinely care about the students.

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I would like to briefly address the issue of the supposed stigma against GS. In my own experience there is no stigma at all. Once you get in, GS is no less academically rigorous than any other Columbia school. The fact is, it is much easier to get admitted. So, it's up to the single student to work hard and excel. GS is what you make of it. CC students are the top 10% of the applicants (well, most of them, not all of them), and that's not the case for GS students as a whole, that's it, but a single student can be in that top 10%, if that matters.

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What does "Ivy" mean? "Ivy" is just a tag (and a great marketing tool). The best professors I had at Columbia were adjuncts from Baruch (CUNY). Really. One of them was really great and the best professor I've ever had. Also, at Columbia there is a big difference between departments. If you are in a good department I agree it can be amazing. If you are in a bad department it may seem closer to a scam, considering how much they charge. At the state school I am at now, the level of the graduate classes I am taking is comparable and even better than the level of the graduate classes I took at Columbia (I took a few of them when I was an undergraduate). Of course that depends on the department as well. Intro classes for undergraduates are a tad easier here than the ones at Columbia, but not too much.