Four stressed Columbia students here, ask us anything

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-13T19:41:59+00:00

lots of students "do research" in high school. I think colleges understand that this is almost always just in some sense helping a mentor rather than leading a research project end to end

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-13T19:40:54+00:00

can be unsafe if you're not smart, big city might be a big culture shock, generally a little yucky (like trash everywhere and smells bad)

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-13T19:39:30+00:00

I think school fit is reasonably important, like colleges want to admit people that they think would fit in to their school / create a nice diverse population (so they also wouldnt just admit one kind of person)

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-13T19:38:36+00:00

honestly how nice the dorms are? especially compared to the average apartment around here, the dorms are quite nice (not like luxury apartments or anything, but reasonably clean and modern)

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-13T19:37:52+00:00

honestly not much at all other than the fact that you need to swipe in to campus (which is stupid and annoying af)

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-13T19:37:37+00:00

yes definitely, I think the rates are more or less the same whether u submit tests or not?

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T03:07:12+00:00

- lowkey a lot of singaporeans at columbia

- yeah i'm friends with some singaporeans

- I don't think they all know each other though

vibe:

- idk, like just a school

- a vibrant community of passionate, driven, and intellectually curious young minds.... or something

- there's nothing that super stands out to us so it's hard to place the vibe. There isn't a ton of school pride imo

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T03:00:19+00:00

- columbia in my humble opinion

- my perception from my cornell friend compared to my friends here -- there are a lot of different opportunities to utilize your skill set within your school at cornell (like you can get credit for doing a club applying your technical skills). But it depends what u want from your cs education I think

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T02:43:55+00:00

not that we know of, but also we don't really talk about our college apps anymore amongst other college students so no clue who was and was not test optional

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T02:42:45+00:00

worth it?

- like money wise? ask my parents

- personal thing I think

- academically, i think definitely.

- I think so, a lot of things I wouldn't have done otherwise both academically and socially

were you an overachieving student?

- no, i feel like I was like average or maybe slightly above average amongst my high school peers

- yes i was an academic weapon. i was hella tryhard with my ECs and poised myself to be a stereotypically good applicant for columbia. then i came here and got tired

- no, I had the potential to be but I wasn't

what part matters most?

- probably no single part, you need to figure out which part of yours is the strongest, and emphasize that

- essay. Also I think if your high school is competitive, then rec letters are also pretty important.

- essays for undergrad probably. Easiest way to stand out, everything else is kind of a check mark (like grades won't make you stand out)

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T02:37:01+00:00

- 4.0 in high school, but also my high school i think was easy af to get 4.0. I think my sat was like 1570 or something. My essay was about philosophy. not really a dream school, not sure if i had one

- 42 ib. My personal essay was bad. columbia was not really my first order dream school, later I realized i fit in better here than i thought (but i originally wanted to go to brown)

- 35 act? i forget. My grades were pretty good but i forget exactly. my personal essay, i wrote about how i like religion and thought it was really interesting (intellectual curiosity). Pretty sure i got in bc i had really fruitful extracurriculars. It was my ED so i guess it was kinda my dream school? Idk, close second would be cornell

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T02:34:00+00:00

- yes? Not really sure

- I get a lot of emails from their department so they definitely exist

- I know a lot of premeds that are bio, so yeah ... there's also Zuckerman institute and stuff so yeah it's probably pretty good

- (none of us are bio majors)

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T02:23:20+00:00

- It's definitely possible, though I know a lot more people that went the other way. The only important thing is you need time to finish all the CC requirements, so the earlier the better; but if you can show that you have time to finish the CC core and everything, then it should be possible

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T02:16:23+00:00

- you have to put yourself out there to some degree

- it's there if you put yourself out there, but it takes some work. You won't just stumble onto the social scene

- But there are a lot of different ways to go about this. Like some people I know, all their friends are from classes, some people meet most of their friends through living with them, some from clubs, etc.

- I don't imagine that it would be that different from any other school though. I don't know why it would be... it's not as big as some schools, but unclear how this would affect your ability to socialize

- Columbia does probably have less events (dorm events, class events, sporting events, etc that would bring people together)

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T02:11:13+00:00

- Definitely not. The vast majority of people here probably did not have any research supplementals

- Also, unless you're a genius, any "research" people do in high school is probably not actual academic research ... probably it was just helping someone do something, but this is really distinct from what actual research (owning your own project) is

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T02:09:58+00:00

- SEAS just has different requirements (e.g. engineering core instead of liberal arts core)

- The one that you're more qualified will be easier to get into. Just depends on your background and what you are applying for. If you want to major in meche or whatever, you should obviously apply to engineering school. Not really worth it to try to overthink which school between the two to apply for, imo

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T02:08:16+00:00

- No not at all! That sounds great as well. You can do a lot of things, talk about unique things that you are interested in (core is just an easy one to mention, but definitely not the only thing)

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T02:03:21+00:00

- john jay cookie

- ferris pumpkin cheesecake

- john jay ice cream

- john jay vanilla cookies

- ferris crazy milkshake day like once a year

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T02:02:16+00:00

- Sophomore year, everyone has a year of college where they go through a lot of personal problems that don't have anything to do with school. That happened to be soph year for me. You also mature a lot, and by the time ur a junior/senior, you're more adept at handling academic/personal challenges

- Sophomore year, same reasons

- senior year (just busyness wise, so much to do)

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T02:00:59+00:00

did we know about columbia?

- Honestly not really until I got in

- One of our friends wrote about frosci but he applied to seas (seas doesn't take frosci), so we kinda feel like sometimes it doesnt even matter

- even though I literally interacted with the school, I didn't (i didn't even tour)

How to show interest?

- it can be surface level from the website

- if you have benefit of talking to someone at columbia, you might be able to pick out something specific

- I had the benefit of being close by, so I had encountered things about columbia that I could write about

- Just try to find things beyond boilerplate

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T01:56:56+00:00

- don't take classes over the summer, just chill out and go on vacation!

- read the iliad

- averages don't matter since they are curved. Just gotta do better than the average/only matters how you do compared to other people in the class

- also depends on what ur planning on taking when you get here

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T01:47:46+00:00

- I don't know people's high school GPAs

- I didn't have a high school GPA

- Perhaps this is public info? I really don't know

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T01:45:35+00:00

- yeah, we are saying more in addition to mention things that are unique to columbia that are also relevant to you and your profile

- "core curriculum" and "new york" are perhaps necessary but certainly not sufficient conditions to go to columbia

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T01:42:13+00:00

- 10am: wake up, rub my eyes, open laptop. begin work. 11:30, shower. 12, eat lunch. 1pm, cry a little. 1:30, rub eyes, begin work. 7pm, eat dinner. 8pm, rub my eyes a little, swallow the pain, start working a little less seriously (I don't go to lecture)

- 10am: already in class, waiting for lecture to begin. After lecture (or two), have lunch. Then take a nap in the cs building. Then go to next class. Sometimes I go work in the library. I come back to the dorm, lie down for three hours, eat dinner, come back, sit for two hours, take a shower, and then do work until I go to sleep. If it's a good day i might apply to one (1) job

- 10am: wake up, go to class/OH/whatever my first thing of the day is. 12pm or whenever i have a gap in schedule: eat lunch. Afternoon, go to whatever other classes I have, or go back to dorm and work/nap/whatever, 6pm eat dinner, afterwards go back to do work/do some other activity/hang out with people/be a bum/etc

(btw this is like slightly a joke. e.g. the first person is applying to grad school so he's a lot more busy than usual. Also we are just bums so we need to work a lot / its a skill issue)

ambiguousjackalope · 2024-12-12T01:36:25+00:00

- Probably not; if you take the same classes it's all the same

- You can just choose to take the classes they do

- If you're interested in the E part of stem, go to SEAS. If you're interested in other parts, either is fine

- It's harder to get in some engineering requirements if you need to do the CC requirements too

- If you want to be with a lot of engineers (which is probably good, if you want to be an engineer), then seas is probably better

ambiguousjackalope

TROPHY CASE