$80k In Debt Worth It for Ivy Undergrad?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You people are truly insane.

OP, I'm a mental health professional. I wouldn't recommend taking out $80k in loans to go back to a school that makes you miserable. Your previous thread pointed out how you were forced on a leave of absence since you were suicidal.

I hope you're in an IOP or inpatient program. You need something much more intense than therapy, judging off of your prior thread.

A highly anxious and depressed student should NOT go to a notoriously competitive, intense, cutthroat school where she'll have to take out an enormous amount of loans.

Blah blah blah who gives a shit?

You therapists just promote narcissism and laziness. No one has ever benefitted from going to therapy because it just makes you soft, self-serving, and undisciplined. All therapists do is spoonfeed BS about how life is great and all that.

Work sucks and life is mostly a drag. The sooner OP (who seems extremely naive, sheltered, immature, spoiled, and lazy) realizes that, the better she will be mentally.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Try to stay positive and finish the degree, OP. That Ivy name will open doors for you forever. A high school friend of mine who went to an Ivy (likely yours, based on your description) just bought a $14 million dollar McMansion at age 34! Meanwhile my DH and I will not come close to that amount over our lifetime. Then again, we didn’t go to an Ivy. We all went to the same high school and our friend wasn’t even in the top 10% academically, but he had a special interest/talent and decent grades, and I guess that was enough to be admitted to an Ivy in the 90s.

LMAO. Most Ivy grads will never get to such an accomplishment. Your friend is either an extreme outlier or had rich parents help him buy the McMansion. Absurd to use this one random anecdote as proof OP should stay.

He works for a top financial firm. I personally know a handful of Wall Street people who retired in their late 30s and 40s with $50-100 mill. My friend’s parents are middle class at best. His boss went to the same Ivy and took a chance on him early on. My friend works a ton, but he loves it.

OP here. I would literally rather go to jail than go work at Wall Street (and I was in prison for a day after getting arrested at a protest, so there's that...)

A number of posters have called you spoiled/ungrateful/entitled, and I am sensing some of that too. What separates the people on the top from everyone else is their ability to delay gratification. Grunt it out. Not everyone is cut out for this, but then don’t complain when you cannot afford stuff in life.

OP here. You're right. I guess I'm tired of delaying gratification. My entire life up until this point -- my parents screaming at me to perform academically to their standards, trying a STEM major and failing, trying to tough it out at a notoriously competitive school that I hate -- has been a series of delayed gratification. It's just that achievement seems empty at this point, and I want something more immediately tangible and pleasant. I am tired. I am so, so tired of trying to delay all these awards when fundamentally it seems like meaningless bullshit that I don't care about. I don't see the point of sticking it out in the rat race since it seems like the rewards are too far off for me to enjoy.

Yes, I'm aware that makes me spoiled/self-indulgent/entitled. I think it's because I was raised by Asian immigrant tiger parents to delay gratification for so long that I'm super burnt out and tired of everything.

PS: It's hard to delay gratification during a difficult, trying job when you're actively suicidal as a college student. Idk, I think my mental illness is calling for me to stop delaying and instead search for more immediate and more intrinsically meaningful things.

Ok so then quit, move out, get a job (or more likely two is what will be required to make ends meet) pay your own way (and try not to get into credit card debt) and go back to school when you are older. I mean what do you want us to tell you? There’s no magical third option beyond go back to school or get a job. You have declared it an impossibility for you to go back to Columbia and your parents won’t be moved so the choice is clear. Thousands and thousands of young people every year don’t go to college or enroll in community college because they have parents who can’t or won’t pay for their school. So they get jobs, and make do, and scrape by somehow. Nothing is stopping you from doing this. Literally nothing.

Actually one thing is stopping you. Deep down, you do care about prestige, but just of a different nature than what your classmates care about. I know this because you fixate on prestigious sounding albeit low paid careers. You know where you could really make an impact? Working as a health care aid in an Alzheimer’s facility, or in a drug rehab center, or cleaning cages in an animal shelter, or some equally unglamorous job that actually helps people. You could just quit, get a Starbucks job, and never go back to college. But instead you want an “acceptable” sounding job in publishing” or “helping the environment.” Ok, so do that, but you know what help the environment needs? Scientists and engineers who grind it out in labs to come up with innovative solutions to huge problems, and smart lawyers and policy makers who grind it out in law school or grad school so they can draft and implement legislation and regulations and lobby to get them passed, and IT folks who grind it out over the weekends to keep the Sierra Club’s network up and running so they can do their business, and HR employee benefits folks, who put in overtime to hire and onboard and pay the employees to do all those things, and fundraising folks who are out at events nights and weekends at events to raise money for the research and advocacy, and the list goes on. Do one of those things, or be a waitress, but don’t you dare sit here and lecture us about being prestige obsessed when your immediate solution to dropping out of Columbia is not to get a degree from your local CalPoly or whatever but rather to hoof it to a blue blood Seven Sisters school. I mean come on.

This. This. 1,000,000x this. Most jobs that truly make a difference aren't anywhere near as exciting as they sound.

Get the darn degree, OP. It will open doors you don't even know about now. Public interest loan forgiveness programs exist for a reason.

-BTDT

OP here. I disagree.

Ivies don't magically open doors for you. There's nothing magical about having Columbia on my resume that will magically net me opportunities if I'm too depressed and tired to really make anything of the opportunities available to me at school. Sure, Ivies open doors that aren't available to grads of other schools -- but that's only if the student really goes after that while they're in college and are a high performing student who takes advantage of the resources Columbia offers. Which I'm not. I'd be better off at a Cal State.

Also, doors can't open if you don't know about them -- you have to be the one to open up the doors yourself. You have to be the one to take advantage of your opportunities and actively work to open these doors, which isn't a possibility if you don't know about these doors or are too depressed to really do anything with them.

There was a study by Dale and Kruger that showed that there is NO difference between students at Ivies and students accepted to Ivies who chose to go to their state school (except for URMs, which I am not). I was completely unsurprised to learn about the study, since going to an Ivy won't magically set up opportunities for the future if the student themselves don't aggressively go after these opportunities.

Whatever job you apply to whether it is nonprofit or finance, you will have the advantage over a no name school. It can be the difference between a job interview or not.

You sound pretty annoying, OP. Go drop out or whatever.

You may find it hard to cover your rent, build credit, buy a car, food, gas by having a job without a college degree with no parental financial support. It is unlikely you will miraculously go back to some amazing college experience after taking a few years off. You will either be much older than your classmates and have a different bad college experience or I would bet on you won’t go back at all. Just suck it up and get the degree.

I have 3 kids and I always tell them to finish what they signed up for.

You are giving them bad advice. One of the smartest things you can do is quit something that isn't working or isn't getting you closer to what you want. It's very limiting if you can't try a thing without having to see it through to the end. Knowing when to quit, and giving yourself the ability to quit, is much better.

[Anonymous]

Cornell guy from before. I will admit using my school email for things is a huge boon to getting my emails opened. And having it on my resume shows I was smart or grindy enough to get in. Seems like you already have those things. The rest of the narrative could be up to you when people asked why you left.

I would recommend trying to find a school that transfers credits if you do plan to eventually go somewhere else (which you should). And don't worry about being older. In cc I was with a ton of older students. I preferred them because they were mature and knew what they wanted. They studied with purpose, and they got a lot more out of it then anyone else. Even now in grad school there's leagues of difference between those who went straight through and those who took more time to find their path.

Sorry there's so much pressure on this decision. I hope if anything, these angry posters are just showing the importance of therapy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You people are truly insane.

OP, I'm a mental health professional. I wouldn't recommend taking out $80k in loans to go back to a school that makes you miserable. Your previous thread pointed out how you were forced on a leave of absence since you were suicidal.

I hope you're in an IOP or inpatient program. You need something much more intense than therapy, judging off of your prior thread.

A highly anxious and depressed student should NOT go to a notoriously competitive, intense, cutthroat school where she'll have to take out an enormous amount of loans.

Blah blah blah who gives a shit?

You therapists just promote narcissism and laziness. No one has ever benefitted from going to therapy because it just makes you soft, self-serving, and undisciplined. All therapists do is spoonfeed BS about how life is great and all that.

Work sucks and life is mostly a drag. The sooner OP (who seems extremely naive, sheltered, immature, spoiled, and lazy) realizes that, the better she will be mentally.

The irony is that you perfectly demonstrate why more people need to see therapists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Cornell guy from before. I will admit using my school email for things is a huge boon to getting my emails opened. And having it on my resume shows I was smart or grindy enough to get in. Seems like you already have those things. The rest of the narrative could be up to you when people asked why you left.

I would recommend trying to find a school that transfers credits if you do plan to eventually go somewhere else (which you should). And don't worry about being older. In cc I was with a ton of older students. I preferred them because they were mature and knew what they wanted. They studied with purpose, and they got a lot more out of it then anyone else. Even now in grad school there's leagues of difference between those who went straight through and those who took more time to find their path.

Sorry there's so much pressure on this decision. I hope if anything, these angry posters are just showing the importance of therapy.

OP here. Thanks for the words of wisdom. Idk, everyone on here seems to be under the impression that if I leave Columbia, I'll NEVER be able to graduate from college EVER in the future and I should just suck it up in this hellhole and stay. Interesting to hear that you found older students to be more focused -- the commenters on here seem to believe that older students just don't finish, ever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

OP here. Thanks for the words of wisdom. Idk, everyone on here seems to be under the impression that if I leave Columbia, I'll NEVER be able to graduate from college EVER in the future and I should just suck it up in this hellhole and stay. Interesting to hear that you found older students to be more focused -- the commenters on here seem to believe that older students just don't finish, ever.

To be fair, it will be harder. You'll probably squeeze classes in at night. You could always save up just a little more money before going back. You might get married. You might find something you're happier in. And being real, it will close doors. I have a close friend who came back to school at 35. She originally failed chemistry at 18 after having some mental stuff going on. She came back and did something else. But at 35 she tried again to become a doctor. Even though she had her masters and straight As in all of her classes, med schools didn't want her. But she is a nurse now, and she's doing fine.

And it's a different experience. Will you get into a great sorority? No. But you can still have a fulfilling and successful career/education.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Try to stay positive and finish the degree, OP. That Ivy name will open doors for you forever. A high school friend of mine who went to an Ivy (likely yours, based on your description) just bought a $14 million dollar McMansion at age 34! Meanwhile my DH and I will not come close to that amount over our lifetime. Then again, we didn’t go to an Ivy. We all went to the same high school and our friend wasn’t even in the top 10% academically, but he had a special interest/talent and decent grades, and I guess that was enough to be admitted to an Ivy in the 90s.

LMAO. Most Ivy grads will never get to such an accomplishment. Your friend is either an extreme outlier or had rich parents help him buy the McMansion. Absurd to use this one random anecdote as proof OP should stay.

He works for a top financial firm. I personally know a handful of Wall Street people who retired in their late 30s and 40s with $50-100 mill. My friend’s parents are middle class at best. His boss went to the same Ivy and took a chance on him early on. My friend works a ton, but he loves it.

OP here. I would literally rather go to jail than go work at Wall Street (and I was in prison for a day after getting arrested at a protest, so there's that...)

A number of posters have called you spoiled/ungrateful/entitled, and I am sensing some of that too. What separates the people on the top from everyone else is their ability to delay gratification. Grunt it out. Not everyone is cut out for this, but then don’t complain when you cannot afford stuff in life.

OP here. You're right. I guess I'm tired of delaying gratification. My entire life up until this point -- my parents screaming at me to perform academically to their standards, trying a STEM major and failing, trying to tough it out at a notoriously competitive school that I hate -- has been a series of delayed gratification. It's just that achievement seems empty at this point, and I want something more immediately tangible and pleasant. I am tired. I am so, so tired of trying to delay all these awards when fundamentally it seems like meaningless bullshit that I don't care about. I don't see the point of sticking it out in the rat race since it seems like the rewards are too far off for me to enjoy.

Yes, I'm aware that makes me spoiled/self-indulgent/entitled. I think it's because I was raised by Asian immigrant tiger parents to delay gratification for so long that I'm super burnt out and tired of everything.

PS: It's hard to delay gratification during a difficult, trying job when you're actively suicidal as a college student. Idk, I think my mental illness is calling for me to stop delaying and instead search for more immediate and more intrinsically meaningful things.

Ok so then quit, move out, get a job (or more likely two is what will be required to make ends meet) pay your own way (and try not to get into credit card debt) and go back to school when you are older. I mean what do you want us to tell you? There’s no magical third option beyond go back to school or get a job. You have declared it an impossibility for you to go back to Columbia and your parents won’t be moved so the choice is clear. Thousands and thousands of young people every year don’t go to college or enroll in community college because they have parents who can’t or won’t pay for their school. So they get jobs, and make do, and scrape by somehow. Nothing is stopping you from doing this. Literally nothing.

Actually one thing is stopping you. Deep down, you do care about prestige, but just of a different nature than what your classmates care about. I know this because you fixate on prestigious sounding albeit low paid careers. You know where you could really make an impact? Working as a health care aid in an Alzheimer’s facility, or in a drug rehab center, or cleaning cages in an animal shelter, or some equally unglamorous job that actually helps people. You could just quit, get a Starbucks job, and never go back to college. But instead you want an “acceptable” sounding job in publishing” or “helping the environment.” Ok, so do that, but you know what help the environment needs? Scientists and engineers who grind it out in labs to come up with innovative solutions to huge problems, and smart lawyers and policy makers who grind it out in law school or grad school so they can draft and implement legislation and regulations and lobby to get them passed, and IT folks who grind it out over the weekends to keep the Sierra Club’s network up and running so they can do their business, and HR employee benefits folks, who put in overtime to hire and onboard and pay the employees to do all those things, and fundraising folks who are out at events nights and weekends at events to raise money for the research and advocacy, and the list goes on. Do one of those things, or be a waitress, but don’t you dare sit here and lecture us about being prestige obsessed when your immediate solution to dropping out of Columbia is not to get a degree from your local CalPoly or whatever but rather to hoof it to a blue blood Seven Sisters school. I mean come on.

This. This. 1,000,000x this. Most jobs that truly make a difference aren't anywhere near as exciting as they sound.

Get the darn degree, OP. It will open doors you don't even know about now. Public interest loan forgiveness programs exist for a reason.

-BTDT

OP here. I disagree.

Ivies don't magically open doors for you. There's nothing magical about having Columbia on my resume that will magically net me opportunities if I'm too depressed and tired to really make anything of the opportunities available to me at school. Sure, Ivies open doors that aren't available to grads of other schools -- but that's only if the student really goes after that while they're in college and are a high performing student who takes advantage of the resources Columbia offers. Which I'm not. I'd be better off at a Cal State.

Also, doors can't open if you don't know about them -- you have to be the one to open up the doors yourself. You have to be the one to take advantage of your opportunities and actively work to open these doors, which isn't a possibility if you don't know about these doors or are too depressed to really do anything with them.

There was a study by Dale and Kruger that showed that there is NO difference between students at Ivies and students accepted to Ivies who chose to go to their state school (except for URMs, which I am not). I was completely unsurprised to learn about the study, since going to an Ivy won't magically set up opportunities for the future if the student themselves don't aggressively go after these opportunities.

OP, sorry to say that this does not apply to you as a potential state school (or lower ranked) graduate. You will not have come out at the top of your class from the state school, as many of those kids who were accepted at Ivies but chose to go to state school instead. You have 3 years of grades and drop offs from Columbia that will follow you, and you’ll forever have to explain why you dropped out with 3 semesters left to go. Employers will think you couldn’t handle the pressure at Columbia, or you don’t finish what you start unless you can come up with a solid explanation for why you left. If you say you were miserable because of the people and the culture, and it made you mentally ill — for an employer, that’s a red flag. You have the luxury of staying it out and down the road even your grades won’t matter much but the doors will still open. You are wrong that only the highest achieving kids at Ivies do well. Plenty of middle of the road graduates get the benefit of the doubt when they interview at a company, especially the further out you get from college.

[Anonymous]

Also, I'm not sure if you're cut off from Colombia's resources, but absolutely see if they have a career counselor willing to talk to you. They can sit down and discuss how this affects your future with better insight than the folks here. And they've seen students in your position, and genuinely want the best for you.

Just recently I met with my grad advisor. I wanted to find an easy summer class to knock out that could be lowkey enough to not kill me during my current work crunch. Figured out I could take a class and save a couple grand and finish a semester early if I just packed it in tighter. He begged me to reconsider. Said he's seen more and more students coming back for second degrees as students have been going that route. They get burned out and get nothing but the diploma. School is really what you make of it, and you need to get something besides the paper.

I'm taking his advice and have taken the summer to leisurely research and plan my thesis before I need to get started in force. It's honestly been really nice, and has made me way more excited to work on it than I otherwise would be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cornell guy from before. I will admit using my school email for things is a huge boon to getting my emails opened. And having it on my resume shows I was smart or grindy enough to get in. Seems like you already have those things. The rest of the narrative could be up to you when people asked why you left.

I would recommend trying to find a school that transfers credits if you do plan to eventually go somewhere else (which you should). And don't worry about being older. In cc I was with a ton of older students. I preferred them because they were mature and knew what they wanted. They studied with purpose, and they got a lot more out of it then anyone else. Even now in grad school there's leagues of difference between those who went straight through and those who took more time to find their path.

Sorry there's so much pressure on this decision. I hope if anything, these angry posters are just showing the importance of therapy.

OP here. Thanks for the words of wisdom. Idk, everyone on here seems to be under the impression that if I leave Columbia, I'll NEVER be able to graduate from college EVER in the future and I should just suck it up in this hellhole and stay. Interesting to hear that you found older students to be more focused -- the commenters on here seem to believe that older students just don't finish, ever.

Careful about your takeaways on an anonymous board. It might just be one or two really vocal, miserable people who hate life and think you should too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:Try to stay positive and finish the degree, OP. That Ivy name will open doors for you forever. A high school friend of mine who went to an Ivy (likely yours, based on your description) just bought a $14 million dollar McMansion at age 34! Meanwhile my DH and I will not come close to that amount over our lifetime. Then again, we didn’t go to an Ivy. We all went to the same high school and our friend wasn’t even in the top 10% academically, but he had a special interest/talent and decent grades, and I guess that was enough to be admitted to an Ivy in the 90s.

LMAO. Most Ivy grads will never get to such an accomplishment. Your friend is either an extreme outlier or had rich parents help him buy the McMansion. Absurd to use this one random anecdote as proof OP should stay.

He works for a top financial firm. I personally know a handful of Wall Street people who retired in their late 30s and 40s with $50-100 mill. My friend’s parents are middle class at best. His boss went to the same Ivy and took a chance on him early on. My friend works a ton, but he loves it.

OP here. I would literally rather go to jail than go work at Wall Street (and I was in prison for a day after getting arrested at a protest, so there's that...)

A number of posters have called you spoiled/ungrateful/entitled, and I am sensing some of that too. What separates the people on the top from everyone else is their ability to delay gratification. Grunt it out. Not everyone is cut out for this, but then don’t complain when you cannot afford stuff in life.

OP here. You're right. I guess I'm tired of delaying gratification. My entire life up until this point -- my parents screaming at me to perform academically to their standards, trying a STEM major and failing, trying to tough it out at a notoriously competitive school that I hate -- has been a series of delayed gratification. It's just that achievement seems empty at this point, and I want something more immediately tangible and pleasant. I am tired. I am so, so tired of trying to delay all these awards when fundamentally it seems like meaningless bullshit that I don't care about. I don't see the point of sticking it out in the rat race since it seems like the rewards are too far off for me to enjoy.

Yes, I'm aware that makes me spoiled/self-indulgent/entitled. I think it's because I was raised by Asian immigrant tiger parents to delay gratification for so long that I'm super burnt out and tired of everything.

PS: It's hard to delay gratification during a difficult, trying job when you're actively suicidal as a college student. Idk, I think my mental illness is calling for me to stop delaying and instead search for more immediate and more intrinsically meaningful things.

Ok so then quit, move out, get a job (or more likely two is what will be required to make ends meet) pay your own way (and try not to get into credit card debt) and go back to school when you are older. I mean what do you want us to tell you? There’s no magical third option beyond go back to school or get a job. You have declared it an impossibility for you to go back to Columbia and your parents won’t be moved so the choice is clear. Thousands and thousands of young people every year don’t go to college or enroll in community college because they have parents who can’t or won’t pay for their school. So they get jobs, and make do, and scrape by somehow. Nothing is stopping you from doing this. Literally nothing.

Actually one thing is stopping you. Deep down, you do care about prestige, but just of a different nature than what your classmates care about. I know this because you fixate on prestigious sounding albeit low paid careers. You know where you could really make an impact? Working as a health care aid in an Alzheimer’s facility, or in a drug rehab center, or cleaning cages in an animal shelter, or some equally unglamorous job that actually helps people. You could just quit, get a Starbucks job, and never go back to college. But instead you want an “acceptable” sounding job in publishing” or “helping the environment.” Ok, so do that, but you know what help the environment needs? Scientists and engineers who grind it out in labs to come up with innovative solutions to huge problems, and smart lawyers and policy makers who grind it out in law school or grad school so they can draft and implement legislation and regulations and lobby to get them passed, and IT folks who grind it out over the weekends to keep the Sierra Club’s network up and running so they can do their business, and HR employee benefits folks, who put in overtime to hire and onboard and pay the employees to do all those things, and fundraising folks who are out at events nights and weekends at events to raise money for the research and advocacy, and the list goes on. Do one of those things, or be a waitress, but don’t you dare sit here and lecture us about being prestige obsessed when your immediate solution to dropping out of Columbia is not to get a degree from your local CalPoly or whatever but rather to hoof it to a blue blood Seven Sisters school. I mean come on.

This. This. 1,000,000x this. Most jobs that truly make a difference aren't anywhere near as exciting as they sound.

Get the darn degree, OP. It will open doors you don't even know about now. Public interest loan forgiveness programs exist for a reason.

-BTDT

OP here. I disagree.

Ivies don't magically open doors for you. There's nothing magical about having Columbia on my resume that will magically net me opportunities if I'm too depressed and tired to really make anything of the opportunities available to me at school. Sure, Ivies open doors that aren't available to grads of other schools -- but that's only if the student really goes after that while they're in college and are a high performing student who takes advantage of the resources Columbia offers. Which I'm not. I'd be better off at a Cal State.

Also, doors can't open if you don't know about them -- you have to be the one to open up the doors yourself. You have to be the one to take advantage of your opportunities and actively work to open these doors, which isn't a possibility if you don't know about these doors or are too depressed to really do anything with them.

There was a study by Dale and Kruger that showed that there is NO difference between students at Ivies and students accepted to Ivies who chose to go to their state school (except for URMs, which I am not). I was completely unsurprised to learn about the study, since going to an Ivy won't magically set up opportunities for the future if the student themselves don't aggressively go after these opportunities.

OP, sorry to say that this does not apply to you as a potential state school (or lower ranked) graduate. You will not have come out at the top of your class from the state school, as many of those kids who were accepted at Ivies but chose to go to state school instead. You have 3 years of grades and drop offs from Columbia that will follow you, and you’ll forever have to explain why you dropped out with 3 semesters left to go. Employers will think you couldn’t handle the pressure at Columbia, or you don’t finish what you start unless you can come up with a solid explanation for why you left. If you say you were miserable because of the people and the culture, and it made you mentally ill — for an employer, that’s a red flag. You have the luxury of staying it out and down the road even your grades won’t matter much but the doors will still open. You are wrong that only the highest achieving kids at Ivies do well. Plenty of middle of the road graduates get the benefit of the doubt when they interview at a company, especially the further out you get from college.

No, it's the other way around. The further you get out from college, the less it matters where your BA is from. Sure, it helps getting the first few jobs out of undergrad, but by the time you're 30, no one will care.

IMO, it's not worth $80k in (mainly predatory private) student loans.

-Hiring manager

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Also, I'm not sure if you're cut off from Colombia's resources, but absolutely see if they have a career counselor willing to talk to you. They can sit down and discuss how this affects your future with better insight than the folks here. And they've seen students in your position, and genuinely want the best for you.

Just recently I met with my grad advisor. I wanted to find an easy summer class to knock out that could be lowkey enough to not kill me during my current work crunch. Figured out I could take a class and save a couple grand and finish a semester early if I just packed it in tighter. He begged me to reconsider. Said he's seen more and more students coming back for second degrees as students have been going that route. They get burned out and get nothing but the diploma. School is really what you make of it, and you need to get something besides the paper.

I'm taking his advice and have taken the summer to leisurely research and plan my thesis before I need to get started in force. It's honestly been really nice, and has made me way more excited to work on it than I otherwise would be.

OP here. I agree with you, but the posters here seem to disagree. Idk, it seems like everyone here is saying that it doesn't matter if I graduate from Columbia burnt out and with nothing really worthy of note at graduation (connections to peers, professors, meaningful research or extracurricular experiences, etc.). They all seem to be saying that as long as I get a Columbia diploma, it'll give me a leg up in the job market forever -- even though I am super burnt out from school and also don't feel like I'm getting anything out of Columbia (connections to peers, professors, meaningful research or extracurricular experiences, etc.). I've been rejected from almost every single student club and research position I've applied to, I have no close friends, and my professors mostly tolerate me as a warm body in their class.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Try to stay positive and finish the degree, OP. That Ivy name will open doors for you forever. A high school friend of mine who went to an Ivy (likely yours, based on your description) just bought a $14 million dollar McMansion at age 34! Meanwhile my DH and I will not come close to that amount over our lifetime. Then again, we didn’t go to an Ivy. We all went to the same high school and our friend wasn’t even in the top 10% academically, but he had a special interest/talent and decent grades, and I guess that was enough to be admitted to an Ivy in the 90s.

LMAO. Most Ivy grads will never get to such an accomplishment. Your friend is either an extreme outlier or had rich parents help him buy the McMansion. Absurd to use this one random anecdote as proof OP should stay.

He works for a top financial firm. I personally know a handful of Wall Street people who retired in their late 30s and 40s with $50-100 mill. My friend’s parents are middle class at best. His boss went to the same Ivy and took a chance on him early on. My friend works a ton, but he loves it.

OP here. I would literally rather go to jail than go work at Wall Street (and I was in prison for a day after getting arrested at a protest, so there's that...)

A number of posters have called you spoiled/ungrateful/entitled, and I am sensing some of that too. What separates the people on the top from everyone else is their ability to delay gratification. Grunt it out. Not everyone is cut out for this, but then don’t complain when you cannot afford stuff in life.

OP here. You're right. I guess I'm tired of delaying gratification. My entire life up until this point -- my parents screaming at me to perform academically to their standards, trying a STEM major and failing, trying to tough it out at a notoriously competitive school that I hate -- has been a series of delayed gratification. It's just that achievement seems empty at this point, and I want something more immediately tangible and pleasant. I am tired. I am so, so tired of trying to delay all these awards when fundamentally it seems like meaningless bullshit that I don't care about. I don't see the point of sticking it out in the rat race since it seems like the rewards are too far off for me to enjoy.

Yes, I'm aware that makes me spoiled/self-indulgent/entitled. I think it's because I was raised by Asian immigrant tiger parents to delay gratification for so long that I'm super burnt out and tired of everything.

PS: It's hard to delay gratification during a difficult, trying job when you're actively suicidal as a college student. Idk, I think my mental illness is calling for me to stop delaying and instead search for more immediate and more intrinsically meaningful things.

Ok so then quit, move out, get a job (or more likely two is what will be required to make ends meet) pay your own way (and try not to get into credit card debt) and go back to school when you are older. I mean what do you want us to tell you? There’s no magical third option beyond go back to school or get a job. You have declared it an impossibility for you to go back to Columbia and your parents won’t be moved so the choice is clear. Thousands and thousands of young people every year don’t go to college or enroll in community college because they have parents who can’t or won’t pay for their school. So they get jobs, and make do, and scrape by somehow. Nothing is stopping you from doing this. Literally nothing.

Actually one thing is stopping you. Deep down, you do care about prestige, but just of a different nature than what your classmates care about. I know this because you fixate on prestigious sounding albeit low paid careers. You know where you could really make an impact? Working as a health care aid in an Alzheimer’s facility, or in a drug rehab center, or cleaning cages in an animal shelter, or some equally unglamorous job that actually helps people. You could just quit, get a Starbucks job, and never go back to college. But instead you want an “acceptable” sounding job in publishing” or “helping the environment.” Ok, so do that, but you know what help the environment needs? Scientists and engineers who grind it out in labs to come up with innovative solutions to huge problems, and smart lawyers and policy makers who grind it out in law school or grad school so they can draft and implement legislation and regulations and lobby to get them passed, and IT folks who grind it out over the weekends to keep the Sierra Club’s network up and running so they can do their business, and HR employee benefits folks, who put in overtime to hire and onboard and pay the employees to do all those things, and fundraising folks who are out at events nights and weekends at events to raise money for the research and advocacy, and the list goes on. Do one of those things, or be a waitress, but don’t you dare sit here and lecture us about being prestige obsessed when your immediate solution to dropping out of Columbia is not to get a degree from your local CalPoly or whatever but rather to hoof it to a blue blood Seven Sisters school. I mean come on.

This. This. 1,000,000x this. Most jobs that truly make a difference aren't anywhere near as exciting as they sound.

Get the darn degree, OP. It will open doors you don't even know about now. Public interest loan forgiveness programs exist for a reason.

-BTDT

OP here. I disagree.

Ivies don't magically open doors for you. There's nothing magical about having Columbia on my resume that will magically net me opportunities if I'm too depressed and tired to really make anything of the opportunities available to me at school. Sure, Ivies open doors that aren't available to grads of other schools -- but that's only if the student really goes after that while they're in college and are a high performing student who takes advantage of the resources Columbia offers. Which I'm not. I'd be better off at a Cal State.

Also, doors can't open if you don't know about them -- you have to be the one to open up the doors yourself. You have to be the one to take advantage of your opportunities and actively work to open these doors, which isn't a possibility if you don't know about these doors or are too depressed to really do anything with them.

There was a study by Dale and Kruger that showed that there is NO difference between students at Ivies and students accepted to Ivies who chose to go to their state school (except for URMs, which I am not). I was completely unsurprised to learn about the study, since going to an Ivy won't magically set up opportunities for the future if the student themselves don't aggressively go after these opportunities.

OP, sorry to say that this does not apply to you as a potential state school (or lower ranked) graduate. You will not have come out at the top of your class from the state school, as many of those kids who were accepted at Ivies but chose to go to state school instead. You have 3 years of grades and drop offs from Columbia that will follow you, and you’ll forever have to explain why you dropped out with 3 semesters left to go. Employers will think you couldn’t handle the pressure at Columbia, or you don’t finish what you start unless you can come up with a solid explanation for why you left. If you say you were miserable because of the people and the culture, and it made you mentally ill — for an employer, that’s a red flag. You have the luxury of staying it out and down the road even your grades won’t matter much but the doors will still open. You are wrong that only the highest achieving kids at Ivies do well. Plenty of middle of the road graduates get the benefit of the doubt when they interview at a company, especially the further out you get from college.

Is it still a red flag if I say that I left because the school took away all of my financial aid? Because that's true as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Cornell guy from before. I will admit using my school email for things is a huge boon to getting my emails opened. And having it on my resume shows I was smart or grindy enough to get in. Seems like you already have those things. The rest of the narrative could be up to you when people asked why you left.

I would recommend trying to find a school that transfers credits if you do plan to eventually go somewhere else (which you should). And don't worry about being older. In cc I was with a ton of older students. I preferred them because they were mature and knew what they wanted. They studied with purpose, and they got a lot more out of it then anyone else. Even now in grad school there's leagues of difference between those who went straight through and those who took more time to find their path.

Sorry there's so much pressure on this decision. I hope if anything, these angry posters are just showing the importance of therapy.

OP here. Thanks for the words of wisdom. Idk, everyone on here seems to be under the impression that if I leave Columbia, I'll NEVER be able to graduate from college EVER in the future and I should just suck it up in this hellhole and stay. Interesting to hear that you found older students to be more focused -- the commenters on here seem to believe that older students just don't finish, ever.

People who are older and more experienced than you understand that the odds are against you. Doesn’t mean you specifically won’t finish but many people end up not finishing when they take a break like this. It could absolutely be the right thing for you but it is a risky path and hard to predict

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Try to stay positive and finish the degree, OP. That Ivy name will open doors for you forever. A high school friend of mine who went to an Ivy (likely yours, based on your description) just bought a $14 million dollar McMansion at age 34! Meanwhile my DH and I will not come close to that amount over our lifetime. Then again, we didn’t go to an Ivy. We all went to the same high school and our friend wasn’t even in the top 10% academically, but he had a special interest/talent and decent grades, and I guess that was enough to be admitted to an Ivy in the 90s.

LMAO. Most Ivy grads will never get to such an accomplishment. Your friend is either an extreme outlier or had rich parents help him buy the McMansion. Absurd to use this one random anecdote as proof OP should stay.

He works for a top financial firm. I personally know a handful of Wall Street people who retired in their late 30s and 40s with $50-100 mill. My friend’s parents are middle class at best. His boss went to the same Ivy and took a chance on him early on. My friend works a ton, but he loves it.

OP here. I would literally rather go to jail than go work at Wall Street (and I was in prison for a day after getting arrested at a protest, so there's that...)

A number of posters have called you spoiled/ungrateful/entitled, and I am sensing some of that too. What separates the people on the top from everyone else is their ability to delay gratification. Grunt it out. Not everyone is cut out for this, but then don’t complain when you cannot afford stuff in life.

OP here. You're right. I guess I'm tired of delaying gratification. My entire life up until this point -- my parents screaming at me to perform academically to their standards, trying a STEM major and failing, trying to tough it out at a notoriously competitive school that I hate -- has been a series of delayed gratification. It's just that achievement seems empty at this point, and I want something more immediately tangible and pleasant. I am tired. I am so, so tired of trying to delay all these awards when fundamentally it seems like meaningless bullshit that I don't care about. I don't see the point of sticking it out in the rat race since it seems like the rewards are too far off for me to enjoy.

Yes, I'm aware that makes me spoiled/self-indulgent/entitled. I think it's because I was raised by Asian immigrant tiger parents to delay gratification for so long that I'm super burnt out and tired of everything.

PS: It's hard to delay gratification during a difficult, trying job when you're actively suicidal as a college student. Idk, I think my mental illness is calling for me to stop delaying and instead search for more immediate and more intrinsically meaningful things.

Ok so then quit, move out, get a job (or more likely two is what will be required to make ends meet) pay your own way (and try not to get into credit card debt) and go back to school when you are older. I mean what do you want us to tell you? There’s no magical third option beyond go back to school or get a job. You have declared it an impossibility for you to go back to Columbia and your parents won’t be moved so the choice is clear. Thousands and thousands of young people every year don’t go to college or enroll in community college because they have parents who can’t or won’t pay for their school. So they get jobs, and make do, and scrape by somehow. Nothing is stopping you from doing this. Literally nothing.

Actually one thing is stopping you. Deep down, you do care about prestige, but just of a different nature than what your classmates care about. I know this because you fixate on prestigious sounding albeit low paid careers. You know where you could really make an impact? Working as a health care aid in an Alzheimer’s facility, or in a drug rehab center, or cleaning cages in an animal shelter, or some equally unglamorous job that actually helps people. You could just quit, get a Starbucks job, and never go back to college. But instead you want an “acceptable” sounding job in publishing” or “helping the environment.” Ok, so do that, but you know what help the environment needs? Scientists and engineers who grind it out in labs to come up with innovative solutions to huge problems, and smart lawyers and policy makers who grind it out in law school or grad school so they can draft and implement legislation and regulations and lobby to get them passed, and IT folks who grind it out over the weekends to keep the Sierra Club’s network up and running so they can do their business, and HR employee benefits folks, who put in overtime to hire and onboard and pay the employees to do all those things, and fundraising folks who are out at events nights and weekends at events to raise money for the research and advocacy, and the list goes on. Do one of those things, or be a waitress, but don’t you dare sit here and lecture us about being prestige obsessed when your immediate solution to dropping out of Columbia is not to get a degree from your local CalPoly or whatever but rather to hoof it to a blue blood Seven Sisters school. I mean come on.

This. This. 1,000,000x this. Most jobs that truly make a difference aren't anywhere near as exciting as they sound.

Get the darn degree, OP. It will open doors you don't even know about now. Public interest loan forgiveness programs exist for a reason.

-BTDT

OP here. I disagree.

Ivies don't magically open doors for you. There's nothing magical about having Columbia on my resume that will magically net me opportunities if I'm too depressed and tired to really make anything of the opportunities available to me at school. Sure, Ivies open doors that aren't available to grads of other schools -- but that's only if the student really goes after that while they're in college and are a high performing student who takes advantage of the resources Columbia offers. Which I'm not. I'd be better off at a Cal State.

Also, doors can't open if you don't know about them -- you have to be the one to open up the doors yourself. You have to be the one to take advantage of your opportunities and actively work to open these doors, which isn't a possibility if you don't know about these doors or are too depressed to really do anything with them.

There was a study by Dale and Kruger that showed that there is NO difference between students at Ivies and students accepted to Ivies who chose to go to their state school (except for URMs, which I am not). I was completely unsurprised to learn about the study, since going to an Ivy won't magically set up opportunities for the future if the student themselves don't aggressively go after these opportunities.

OP, sorry to say that this does not apply to you as a potential state school (or lower ranked) graduate. You will not have come out at the top of your class from the state school, as many of those kids who were accepted at Ivies but chose to go to state school instead. You have 3 years of grades and drop offs from Columbia that will follow you, and you’ll forever have to explain why you dropped out with 3 semesters left to go. Employers will think you couldn’t handle the pressure at Columbia, or you don’t finish what you start unless you can come up with a solid explanation for why you left. If you say you were miserable because of the people and the culture, and it made you mentally ill — for an employer, that’s a red flag. You have the luxury of staying it out and down the road even your grades won’t matter much but the doors will still open. You are wrong that only the highest achieving kids at Ivies do well. Plenty of middle of the road graduates get the benefit of the doubt when they interview at a company, especially the further out you get from college.

Is it still a red flag if I say that I left because the school took away all of my financial aid? Because that's true as well.

This should be fine, if you say your parents income increased and school dropped your aid. And you are trying to navigate a more sensible economic decision.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Try to stay positive and finish the degree, OP. That Ivy name will open doors for you forever. A high school friend of mine who went to an Ivy (likely yours, based on your description) just bought a $14 million dollar McMansion at age 34! Meanwhile my DH and I will not come close to that amount over our lifetime. Then again, we didn’t go to an Ivy. We all went to the same high school and our friend wasn’t even in the top 10% academically, but he had a special interest/talent and decent grades, and I guess that was enough to be admitted to an Ivy in the 90s.

LMAO. Most Ivy grads will never get to such an accomplishment. Your friend is either an extreme outlier or had rich parents help him buy the McMansion. Absurd to use this one random anecdote as proof OP should stay.

He works for a top financial firm. I personally know a handful of Wall Street people who retired in their late 30s and 40s with $50-100 mill. My friend’s parents are middle class at best. His boss went to the same Ivy and took a chance on him early on. My friend works a ton, but he loves it.

OP here. I would literally rather go to jail than go work at Wall Street (and I was in prison for a day after getting arrested at a protest, so there's that...)

A number of posters have called you spoiled/ungrateful/entitled, and I am sensing some of that too. What separates the people on the top from everyone else is their ability to delay gratification. Grunt it out. Not everyone is cut out for this, but then don’t complain when you cannot afford stuff in life.

OP here. You're right. I guess I'm tired of delaying gratification. My entire life up until this point -- my parents screaming at me to perform academically to their standards, trying a STEM major and failing, trying to tough it out at a notoriously competitive school that I hate -- has been a series of delayed gratification. It's just that achievement seems empty at this point, and I want something more immediately tangible and pleasant. I am tired. I am so, so tired of trying to delay all these awards when fundamentally it seems like meaningless bullshit that I don't care about. I don't see the point of sticking it out in the rat race since it seems like the rewards are too far off for me to enjoy.

Yes, I'm aware that makes me spoiled/self-indulgent/entitled. I think it's because I was raised by Asian immigrant tiger parents to delay gratification for so long that I'm super burnt out and tired of everything.

PS: It's hard to delay gratification during a difficult, trying job when you're actively suicidal as a college student. Idk, I think my mental illness is calling for me to stop delaying and instead search for more immediate and more intrinsically meaningful things.

Ok so then quit, move out, get a job (or more likely two is what will be required to make ends meet) pay your own way (and try not to get into credit card debt) and go back to school when you are older. I mean what do you want us to tell you? There’s no magical third option beyond go back to school or get a job. You have declared it an impossibility for you to go back to Columbia and your parents won’t be moved so the choice is clear. Thousands and thousands of young people every year don’t go to college or enroll in community college because they have parents who can’t or won’t pay for their school. So they get jobs, and make do, and scrape by somehow. Nothing is stopping you from doing this. Literally nothing.

Actually one thing is stopping you. Deep down, you do care about prestige, but just of a different nature than what your classmates care about. I know this because you fixate on prestigious sounding albeit low paid careers. You know where you could really make an impact? Working as a health care aid in an Alzheimer’s facility, or in a drug rehab center, or cleaning cages in an animal shelter, or some equally unglamorous job that actually helps people. You could just quit, get a Starbucks job, and never go back to college. But instead you want an “acceptable” sounding job in publishing” or “helping the environment.” Ok, so do that, but you know what help the environment needs? Scientists and engineers who grind it out in labs to come up with innovative solutions to huge problems, and smart lawyers and policy makers who grind it out in law school or grad school so they can draft and implement legislation and regulations and lobby to get them passed, and IT folks who grind it out over the weekends to keep the Sierra Club’s network up and running so they can do their business, and HR employee benefits folks, who put in overtime to hire and onboard and pay the employees to do all those things, and fundraising folks who are out at events nights and weekends at events to raise money for the research and advocacy, and the list goes on. Do one of those things, or be a waitress, but don’t you dare sit here and lecture us about being prestige obsessed when your immediate solution to dropping out of Columbia is not to get a degree from your local CalPoly or whatever but rather to hoof it to a blue blood Seven Sisters school. I mean come on.

This. This. 1,000,000x this. Most jobs that truly make a difference aren't anywhere near as exciting as they sound.

Get the darn degree, OP. It will open doors you don't even know about now. Public interest loan forgiveness programs exist for a reason.

-BTDT

OP here. I disagree.

Ivies don't magically open doors for you. There's nothing magical about having Columbia on my resume that will magically net me opportunities if I'm too depressed and tired to really make anything of the opportunities available to me at school. Sure, Ivies open doors that aren't available to grads of other schools -- but that's only if the student really goes after that while they're in college and are a high performing student who takes advantage of the resources Columbia offers. Which I'm not. I'd be better off at a Cal State.

Also, doors can't open if you don't know about them -- you have to be the one to open up the doors yourself. You have to be the one to take advantage of your opportunities and actively work to open these doors, which isn't a possibility if you don't know about these doors or are too depressed to really do anything with them.

There was a study by Dale and Kruger that showed that there is NO difference between students at Ivies and students accepted to Ivies who chose to go to their state school (except for URMs, which I am not). I was completely unsurprised to learn about the study, since going to an Ivy won't magically set up opportunities for the future if the student themselves don't aggressively go after these opportunities.

OP, sorry to say that this does not apply to you as a potential state school (or lower ranked) graduate. You will not have come out at the top of your class from the state school, as many of those kids who were accepted at Ivies but chose to go to state school instead. You have 3 years of grades and drop offs from Columbia that will follow you, and you’ll forever have to explain why you dropped out with 3 semesters left to go. Employers will think you couldn’t handle the pressure at Columbia, or you don’t finish what you start unless you can come up with a solid explanation for why you left. If you say you were miserable because of the people and the culture, and it made you mentally ill — for an employer, that’s a red flag. You have the luxury of staying it out and down the road even your grades won’t matter much but the doors will still open. You are wrong that only the highest achieving kids at Ivies do well. Plenty of middle of the road graduates get the benefit of the doubt when they interview at a company, especially the further out you get from college.

Is it still a red flag if I say that I left because the school took away all of my financial aid? Because that's true as well.

This should be fine, if you say your parents income increased and school dropped your aid. And you are trying to navigate a more sensible economic decision.

NP here, it would absolutely NOT be fine. If someone left an elite school with only 3 semesters left, it marks them as a loser, a quitter, and a lazy worker with no perseverance. Anyone with even a tiny amount of grit would've sucked up the student debt and stayed at the school, since they had already invested so much time and money into it. $80k is NOTHING when you consider that restarting would be much more expensive (both time-wise and financially). Any student with even a small amount of common sense would realize that leaving Columbia five semesters in is equivalent to academic and professional suicide, even if it's because the school dropped all of your financial aid.