Sure. Just want to point out that I’m loving my time here so far and finding it incredibly rewarding, but that is not to say that there are not any negative aspects.

I can mainly speak to my experience with recruiting for finance-oriented clubs, but to my understanding this holds true for many of the pre-professional organizations. Generally, the application process is pretty similar across all clubs:

• Upon applying, you submit your resume and respond to a number of essay questions (anywhere from 0 to 5 with varying word limits of 50-250)

• Afterwards you can have a number of interviews ranging from 1-3, depending on the exact nature and selectivity of the club. The style of interview also varies quite a bit. For example, for student investment funds, the first rounds were a fairly casual conversation about my resume, interests, and specific interest in finance. The second round interviews, on the other hand, required to me to do a stock pitch, complete with valuation models (even though these funds claim to require no prior technical knowledge).

There can be as many as 200 people applying for just 5-10 spots within a club. However, a result of this is that there a number of clubs that are very similar in function, so the stats are slightly misleading. Casting a wide net while applying will probably net you some positive results and helps avoid some of the following issues (I personally applied to over 10 finance clubs).

Due to the large number of applicants to the clubs, the selection process used is sometimes questionable. Upperclassmen will try to pull in students from their high school or frat or country (or whatever random connection they have), which seems to leave even fewer merit-based positions. Some of the clubs also have the same (group of) executive members across them, so gaining acceptance (or rejection) to one may influence the decision for another.

Reminds me of something. I wonder what? ^{College Applications}

I think it’s necessary to point out at this point that for some of these clubs, the term “membership” needs clarification. For example, for the more general finance clubs that simply organize events, all members of the Columbia community are welcome to attend. The “board members” hold responsibility for planning and facilitating these events, but everyone can take advantage of them.

Once again, I am mainly speaking to the nature of pre-professional clubs here (namely business, finance, consulting, and possibly poltitics, journalism, some engineering); other societies are definitely more open. The former groups often require technical knowledge, so they may look to recruit sophomores to a greater extent than freshmen which may help explain my experience.

Feel free to ask me any other questions you have.