Thoughts on Columbia? Intensity? Social life?
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Anonymous
| Bad location, right next to HARLEM. |
Anonymous
Not true at all. West Harlem is industrial with warehouses. and companies have been snapping up the area. East Harlem was bad in 1990 and since then gentrification in a big way. Bill Clinton's office is n East Harlem. Owning land there is a gold mine. Nationally listed brownstones. |
Anonymous
| +1 Many apartments are going for $ 900K plus. Larger apartments go for several million dollars. |
Anonymous
| Congratulations to your kid. I have a kid at Columbia right now. They love it. My kid goes all over NYC but many students stick around campus and the immediate neighborhood for the first year. Campus is awesome - small and protected. Lot of great opportunities. However it works best for independent students who are good at figuring things out. There is no handholding. It is less warm and supportive compared to a small liberal arts college. Your kid needs to think about what environment works best for them. My kid definitely feels like a small fish in a big pond but is comfortable with that. Has enjoyed it a lot socially too. |
Anonymous
| Your kid needs to be super liberal to fit in. |
Anonymous
Actually Clinton's office is/was in Central Harlem. East Harlem would be east of Fifth Avenue. Morningside Heights is a great, safe neighborhood and its proximity to Harlem is an asset, although to restate the oft-stated students should not be venturing by themselves into Morningside Park. I remember moving back to DC and feeling considerably less safe than in Morningside Heights because there was so much less pedestrian traffic and fewer stores open late at night. |
Anonymous
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Columbia is in Morningside Heights which is a great area for inexpensive diverse restaurants and for culture. It is the second safest area in all of New York City. NYC is one of the safest cities in the US. The campus is a gated very safe place at all hours. Students go to JJ's for snacks until very late.
Two of America's famous and largest gothic cathedrals are on each side of Columbia : Church of St. John the Divine and Riverside Cathedral. Beautiful cathedrals worthy of Paris. There is a medieval biblical garden with peacocks at the former, open to all. The College is smaller than most of the other Ivy League colleges, with about 1390 in each entering class. |
Anonymous
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NYC is much safer than Washington, certainly in Morningside Heights and some other areas. Tons of great culture there. We had a walking tour and then went to a restaurant called V & T's for delicious pizza.
I did not know that F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in Morningside Heights and that he finished his novel This Side of Paradise there. |
Anonymous
What are you talking about when you refer to "gated"? You can't drive a car across the center of campus at night. It's not closed to anyone on foot, is it? The other things you mention are true, but it's not like undergraduates spend a lot of time at Riverside Church (it doesn't call itself a "cathedral," unlike St. John the Divine). |
Anonymous
| OP, our child was admitted to Columbia. We are very excited! Columbia is an easy school to transfer to (nearly any other school). The same may not be true for some SLACs. Anyway, if you don't take the admissions offer, it will be snapped up by someone else in a wink. |
Anonymous
Clarification: Columbia is an easy school to transfer out of to nearly any other school. |
Anonymous
This is incorrect. Way more liberal than most SLACs |
Anonymous
Sorry. I meant way less liberal than most SLACs |
Anonymous
Sorry. I mean way most less than more. |
Anonymous
Congratulations! My DD was admitted as well and we are over the moon excited. It was her first choice. OP, your child can not go wrong with choosing Columbia. |