Why I hate Columbia University
This is an ongoing list to vent my built-up frustrations from 4 years attending college at Columbia College:
1.
I live in Broadway residence hall. I usually wake up at 6am and I only ever see one girl walking around during those hours on my side. (There's about 8 girls on my side of the hall). Half the time I see her and I go to the bathroom, I see that the toilet is not flushed and it stinks. FLUSH THE TOILET!
2. Often there's a huge pile of garbage outside of the residence building, right in front of the door, about 100 construction-sized bags. It stinks and it's hard to walk around it to get to class.
3. Grade-grubbing students. Some girl from my Cognitive Neuroscience class just emailed me saying that she posted something and she thinks I copied her. I read her post; it was nothing like mine. Plus, I didn't even read her post, I'm too lazy to do that.
4. Huge lectures. Columbia advertised that average class size was 10 people. The average class size for my pre-med and econ classes is more like 125, making teacher-student quality terrible.
5. Dangerous campus. Columbia advertises that it's one of safest campuses in all American universities. Several people have died over the course my stay at Columbia, but of course, it's on 118th and Amsterdam, Columbia's main gates are 116th and Broadway. While its main campus is very safe, everything outside is not. The "security alert" email I get every week constantly lists robberies and other crimes right outside my residence hall, but Columbia doesn't count it because it's not "on campus"
6. Class quality. Columbia fails to mention that I will feel like an uncared for ant on campus because rather than the 1000 Columbia College students here, there's also General Studies, school of engineering, Barnard, post-bac's, who are allowed to take any classes at Columbia, making it 3 times more people than expected.
7. Huge bureaucracy. I feel as if the school does not even know I exist, and does not really care. I've never gotten an email from my dean just to chat and see how I'm doing. I've never gotten any emails from my major advisor either. It feels as if no one cares that I
8. School prestige. I came to Columbia because in New Jersey, it's really hard to get into this school, and hence it's prestigious. 10% acceptance rate is pretty low. I then found out that its prestige is relatively low outside of the tri-state area, and I can easily get into this school by applying to their engineering school (17% acceptance rate), or any of the other schools within the University
9. Competitiveness. The econ, math, and science departments are difficult because we have the second highest international student ratio in the country, and there's a lot of students from India, China, Japan, Korea, who are much better at math and sciences than any US-raised student.
10. Unfair grading system. Teachers drastically vary in their grading system, and humanities tends to curve around an A-, while for econ and premed classes it's a B. Not fair, for someone who is both econ and premed, to watch anthropology majors write shit papers and still get better grades.
11. The financial cost. Columbia is one of the most expensive school in the country ($52,000 per year). It charges things like money came from trees sometimes. Meals in the dining hall are $14. I just got fined $38 for a book that was overdue by 1 day in the library. I get charged $1300 per year for a "student life fee," which usually goes toward paying for our RA's free housing, random study breaks, and other occasional events. It's definitely not worth the money.
12. Student life events. Although there are a lot of random study breaks and free events on campus, timing is everything. I once waited 3 hours to get my free flu shot. I also have waited and missed out on free things because there's just so many students here competing for the limited free things.
13. Professors. The professors are generally extremely smart and some are great, but often the professors are too focused on their research and not on their students, and some just don't care for the classes, such that exams don't match lectures, etc.
14. Feeling of community (lack of). There is no feeling of community on campus, largely due to the huge student body size (with all the other schools), and the school being in NYC. The only year I ever felt Columbia trying to make its students meet new students was my freshman year. There is no big-brother, big-sister program or anything like this.
15. The dirtyness, freezing weather, and stench of NYC. The streets are constantly dirty. I always have random hobos and weird guys shout sexist or racist things at me when I am on Amsterdam by myself ("hey there Asian doll," etc).
16. Slow elevators and stairs. I know it's a small thing, but for every class, I have to wait at these slow elevators or walk up many flights of stairs to get to any class. Example: I lived in Mcbain my sophomore year. There is 1 elevator for all 500 people that live in the building. It takes me 5 minutes just to take the elevator down, or else I'd have to walk on the tiny, dangerous spiral staircase. Then it takes me 15 minutes to walk to class, and another 5 to take the elevator to the classroom from that building. It gets really annoying when you have 3 classes a day.