Columbia GS or state school?

Hey guys, I just recently got accepted at Columbia GS and at a good state school here in Florida(FIU).

I was wondering if any of you could give me honest feedback regarding employers and recruiters perspective towards Columbia GS. A big concern of mine is taking out the really high debt that comes with the GS degree(Fin. Econ.) and not being able to land an IB job.

I understand that you'll think that I'll be running a similar risk of attending FIU(difficulty landing an IB job). But the difference here is that, at FIU I'll graduate debt free.

So basically, is the GS debt worth it, granted I keep a high GPA and do well as a student?

PS: I know similar questions have been answered before, but the threads are a bit older and wanted some more recent points of view.

Thanks!

9 Comments
 
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If this is a serious post, then it would be difficult to justify not going to Columbia given your career goals. Your chances at IB from FIU are orders of magnitude lower than your odds at Columbia. It's an Ivy league school in NYC, whereas FIU is around 150 ranking slots away from becoming a semi-target.

If you decide not to go into IB, Columbia's 20 year ROI is 350k higher (across all majors) and mid career pay is 65k higher as well (68k vs 134k). The only rationale I could see for attending FIU here is if you're looking into staying in Florida and you're not aiming for any competitive career path.

 

I would go to FIU. From a Columbia College alum, Columbia GS is much different from Columbia College. While Columbia GS students can take some classes in the College, the actual requirements are much different, as are admissions and consequently the people in your cohort.

At FIU, you’ll have more fun (Florida sounds amazing); no one will be skeptical of you; and you won’t have to worry about proving yourself to anyone (some CC students are arrogant towards Columbia GS students).

Go to FIU. You want to be at the real school.

 

This isn’t true at all. GS has the EXACT same core requirements as CC except for one writing class. The major requirements are also the EXACT same. Is it easier to get into GS? Yes. As a GS student do I do better than 95% of CC students while stealing their girls? Yes.

When it comes to recruiting, no one cares about CC vs GS, they care about GPA and the individual.

 

Thank you all for your replies! I actually posted this a couple of years ago and in the end I decided to choose Columbia GS. While it's true that it was more expensive than I would have liked, it did give my access to OCR and exposed me to a strong network. I had the chance to make long lasting friends, attend lectures with really great professors, and overall grow as a person. I ended up landing in IB at a BB, so definitely doable if you network hard and keep your head up. I do not regret my decision in the slightest and kind of disagree with the CC alum about the differences in requirements. As far as I'm concerned, there is only one core class that GS students don't take with CC students (University Writing). All the other classes are literally filled with people from CC, GS, Barnard, SEAS, etc... GS students also need to take 124 credits to graduate (just like CC students). In terms of academic requirements, the only big difference that I can think of, is the flexibility with class registration. GS students can have take less than four classes without penalty. Hopefully this might help clear some doubt to anyone else who might be in a similar situation.

 

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