Columbia University College Tour

It’s hard to be running late when you’re in charge of the deadlines, but somehow I manage. So, this is late—in the sense that I’m writing a report about a month after we toured Columbia. Assuming, however, that the throes of college applications have passed by this time of year, perhaps I can just declare that this is EARLY for the next admissions season. There, I feel better.
The Nikipedia is only sophomore-level, but given how LATE we are on just about everything, it seems reasonable to check things out when we’re in an appropriate city. Thus, trip to New York = visit to Columbia. Why were we interested? Okay, I feel a digression coming on.

In the few schools we’ve so far toured (Oberlin, Peabody, Northwestern & Univ. of Chicago) there seems to be two prominent methods of organizing an education. First method: have few to no required courses—student is free to concentrate heavily on major or professional training. This method often allows the student to double or triple major. One might wish, as a parent, that this would result in complementary majors—say, French and Education, or Marketing and Art—you know, something that is likely to enhance the probability that Junior will actually be able to pay off those college loans. Unfortunately, in my observation, it usually results in bizarre mash ups, like French and Accounting, or Piano and Biology, where the kid is majoring in what they really love, and double majoring in something they force themselves to take to get a job. Not so good.

The other route is to require a significant core curriculum, which nearly everyone takes. These often feature heavy reading of classics, along with math and science, or at least enough math and science that the kid will graduate with some idea of the topics (at least enough to discard all the creationist/intelligent design crap.) The idea is that the student will have a depth of cultural knowledge that they can then apply to a concentration in the last two years.

We can argue about the benefits of each until the gargoyles fall off their perches, but at least right now, the Nikipedia’s (and my) strong preference is for the core curriculum approach, à la University of Chicago and Columbia.

Okay, we already all know Columbia is a terrific school. I mean, it’s Ivy League (which really only speaks to sports, but who cares?) and has a roster of famous alumni as long as the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (including our beloved Barack, who by the way was a dorm daddy while there). If you want to know more about the core curriculum, check out the book Great Books, by David Denby. He’s a journalist who graduated from Columbia, then went back as an adult and retook the curriculum. Education is so wasted on the young.

My top concern in sending my precious to Columbia was safety and security. For a lot of people, that’s a concern for the Univ. of Chicago, too, but I live here and even went there in the bad old days—it wasn’t all that scary then, and it’s a lot safer now. Same with Columbia. I was really impressed with the attention to security, especially in the dorms. Something like 98% of students live on campus—no duh there, given the price of New York City housing. Even better, the admissions counselor said the overwhelming majority of professors live within walking distance of campus.

Mostly what I was impressed with at Columbia was the sense of a real campus community. The layout of buildings tends to feel like a giant hug around the main plaza, with the dorms anchoring the corners and edges. The architecture is interesting with a nice mix of old and modern (engineering, what else?) We ate in a dining hall that could have been lifted from Harry Potter (lots of wood paneling) and the food was terrific. Ever had dessert pizzas? Pineapple, coconut, omigod.

What we both especially liked about the dining hall (okay, after the food) was the interactions we observed. Columbia touts the number of minorities it admits, and that’s lovely, but I always watch to see if all groups appear to be interacting. I mean, it’s not fostering communication if all the Asian or African American kids sit off at their own tables. Not so here—totally interactive.

One interaction we couldn’t help but observe. We happened to sit down next to an African American girl (girl to me, at least, given what an old bat I am). She calmly checked us out, then began talking to Niki—obviously recognizing us as on visit. Her boyfriend appeared, she had a quiet set to with him where she read him the riot act for keeping her waiting—lots about honoring commitments. Yay! just the kind of girl I want my girl to be! After he left, she calmly picked up a book, then kindly spoke a little more to Niki and left—what self possession!

As 1 o’clock approached, the dining room emptied—another yay! No lolling about cutting class. In fact, my dominant impression watching students was, these kids are moving.

The admissions counselor cautioned everyone not to say in their application that they wanted to come to Columbia because it’s in New York, but let’s be real—that’s a huge attraction. I mean, the museums, the arts, the business—geez, imagine the internships. There’s a subway stop right at the entrance to campus, and you can be in midtown in about 15 minutes. My main worry is that Niki would skip class to inhale museums (I guess that’s better than the other stuff you can inhale). With most everyone living in dorms, and not a big Greek scene, it didn’t appear that drugs or alcohol were much of an issue. Or as the tour guide said, who has time? There’s just too much to do.

How would I compare Columbia with other schools we’ve seen? Well, the most comparable would probably be the University of Chicago. My totally unscientific feel is that there’s more eccentricity at the U of C. More kids look like mad scientists or poets, the purple hair quotient is higher, discussions overheard are more serious and esoteric at the U of C. The kids at Columbia look more normal and, dare I say, attractive, with more conventional albeit big city style. Not the chi-chi coed look you see at Northwestern, but polished and clean. I bet Columbia is more fun for social kids than the U of C would be, and U of C a better fit for real academics on the geeky side.

What they have in common is that kids at both campuses seem to love and cherish the common core. But then, if you didn’t want that already you most certainly would not go to these schools. I dunno, but to me it seems to produce an intellectual confidence that allows them to tackle further studies with direction and assurance. I was very impressed that our tour guide had a clear plan for graduate school, was carefully assessing how much money she could land to pursue it, and also had a Plan B that she was enthusiastic about if Plan A didn’t work out. That’s what I’d like to see in Nikipedia by senior year.

As a good daughter of the U of C, I still hope the Nikipedia might get in there, especially because, sniff-sniff, she’d only be a 45 minute drive away. But we’d do a very happy dance if the fat envelope eventually comes from Columbia.