Columbia GS vs UCLA bizecon

Well you'd be fucked for on-campus recruiting since they would rather have a Columbia college student than GS, right? Plus Bizecon is the best major at UCLA, a top public school.

If you are from California- I would take UCLA bizecon hands down. If you don't mind networking outside of OCR and taking debt, then maybe consider GS.

speaking from experience...

A warning about UCLA, although it is a top public school, It DOES NOT get that much recruiting. The only firms coming to UCLA are mostly LA firms, and you will be competiting with students from UCB,USC,Stanford, and Claremont for very few positions since the LA office for most BB are not that big.

In addition, UCLA does not have any biz school, which hurts it a lot under this environment considering UCB and USC have biz schools of their own.

I would probably take Columbia if I were you. However, I personally did not go to east coast because I hate the cold weather. So it's your call.

GS Financial Aid sucks, but Obama was GS and no one ever feels the need to say GS about that - so I doubt it will matter during recruiting that much. Just make your resume say Columbia University - OR & Econ expected......

I really liked the program but they wanted me to take out 32 Gs a year in loans! Good luck though

I would take UCLA. General Studies is for non-traditional students. Also, quit thinking about where the BB's recruit. The world is completely different. . . hjksadhfjakbefuiae;fb why do I even care?

Oh yeah, I forgot to ask - Whats ur story? What did you do between HS and College?

i thought gs students take the same classes and get the identical diploma as students from other colleges at columbia, why are they treated differently by recruiters?

i thought gs students take the same classes and get the identical diploma as students from other colleges at columbia, why are they treated differently by recruiters?

Thats all true, I just have trouble believing that if you got a great GPA in the same classes that anyone would be able to argue lessor caliber. If you don't go straight to college (military etc) you HAVE to apply to GS and cannot apply to CC. Why would you be dinged for this?

Finally, most people in GS are already established in careers and want the great liberal arts education. This wouldn't leave a whole lot of people going into banking anyway I wouldn't think...

pretty much everything said is true, there is a HUGE stigma against GS students (and Barnard) at Columbia and since most of the interviews are done by recent CC or SEAS grads, it is a lot more difficult for GS students, I only know of one who is now full time in S&T. I don't think analysts or associates want to work with SAs that are already older than them. Its also more difficult to maintain a high GPA in GS. Most undergrads can bunker down in the library and walk 1 minute to the dorm, while GS students commute and might have to work a part time job. But if you really want it, go for it, pretty much every BB recruits at Columbia except for DB for some unknown reason.

you WILL have the opportunities for a lot OCR interviews, since most BBs recruit at LA for LA office. However, competition is really tough since LA office doesnt not hire that many, and you have to basically to be the top 15 people in the IB pool to have the legitimate shot.

any more comments guys? thanks!

Hi,

I was a UCLA biz econ major. If I had it to do over again I would not have gone there. I would take Columbia GS in a heart beat over UCLA.

It is very hard to land a top finance job out of UCLA although I know plenty of people who did. Not too familiar with the recruiting process as I went straight to grad school after undergrad. I do know that UCLA's career services is awful.

On the flip side, UCLA biz econ does have a great reputation in LA, and particularly among people who went to UCLA and know that it's a difficult major to get into.

If you have specific questions about the major or the school ask I'm happy to answer.

Columbia General Studies is a glorified community college. Im pretty sure you should be able to transfer into Columbia College after two years though.

Getting high GPA in Columbia is not easy by any means. If you think you can do it and are willing to sacrifice your social life, go to Columbia.

Background: I went to UCLA and majored in Biz Econ. I had ibanking internships, consulting internships (not MBB), and general f500 corporate internships. I went through the recruiting process multiple times (Sophomore Summer, SA, and FT). In fact, I work in Ibanking (at a top-tier shop) now on the West Coast.

With that being said, UCLA is horrible compared to CAL and CMC when it comes to finance/consulting recruiting. Their career services are just not very well developed. I’m not sure what it is, but I think it has a lot to do with the fact that everyone at UCLA is just very diverse. Not everyone wants to enter the crazy world of finance, so naturally their alumni reflect that. UCLA does get many BB LA (and some SF) firms to come recruit there. But in recent years, given the crisis, firms coming to LA has been more of a "for show" thing. Often times, while you would see several UCLA candidates at super days, candidates from CAL, CMC, Stanford, even USC would get the offer (granted each office only gave a handful).

UCLA does, however, have a very strong presence with the Big 4 in audit/tax. The sad part is that most people studying econ end up minoring in accounting and end up getting sucked in to the "glory for working at a big 4". When I mean big 4, I mean audit and tax. The advisory services positions usually go to CAL & CMC.

Long story short: don’t go to UCLA to study business. Go to study UCLA for a well rounded experience. Go to UCLA to have a very FULL college experience. You can still get into a BB. You can still break into banking. You can still break into MBB (very few). But if you are in hs (and/or transfer), and contemplating on going to UCLA because of their career services....think again.

I more or less agree with sushiboi and to some extent MBA_hi as well but at the same time I also think their opinions are skewed by when they graduated. Recruiting in late 2008 was HORRIBLE and I mean horrible. Very few got offers. However, FT recruiting this year was robust and SA recruiting after that was off the charts. UCLA now has students going to Goldman, JPMorgan IBD NY, UBS, MS, Deutsche and a number of boutiques as well. And these are all people I know of personally, not just those whom I "heard about" though friends. I'm sure there are many more I don't know who are also going to BBs and solid MMs. While UCLA may not specialize in banking, there is definitely a core group of very, very competitive banking (and consulting)-geared students that will give you a run for your money. Most if not all the BBs come to UCLA and I even was flown out to NY a couple times for IBD positions as well. And while it may not be easy, you're also competing with fewer banking-crazy students, so your chances are higher. Choose UCLA if you want to stay in LA or go to SF.

Yes, I will qualify my last post. I, too, know of most the "robust" FT and "off the chart SA candidates. And it is true that UCLA recruiting has picked up quite a bit since the recruiting seasons of 08-09.

But, I would also like to address the fact that when times are tough, UCLA will be on the back burner of many firms. Given our economic climate, who knows what will happen next.

Sure, UCLA may be placed on the backburner when times are bad, but so will someone who's doing General Studies at Columbia. In fact, I would bet that any BizEcon major at UCLA could beat a GS student at Columbia for a spot in IBD during a bad year any day.

i had no idea finance recruiting at UCLA was this bad. i know at berkeley the SF and LA offices of bulge bracket banks do recruit. no idea how many they hire though. goldman sachs TMT group at SF probably hires no more than a few each year.

I take back what I said about going to Columbia GS over UCLA biz econ. I hadn't looked up Columbia GS before and didn't know that it is basically a community college. Yuck. Its something akin to the Harvard Extension School and not considered a real Columbia degree.

Re UCLA biz econ. I graduated summa in 2005 and still have bitter memories of spending the year after graduation working as a file clerk before going to law school (at Harvard). Career Services at UCLA does suck. They were utterly unhelpful to me when I tried to look into getting finance interships off-cycle. No internship = no job from UCLA because the alumni network is also basically non-existant. Even in 05, when the economy was hot, there weren't many UCLA kids getting top finance jobs.

If you want a finance job and want to stay in Cali for undergrad go to Stanford or Cal.

GS is great, but it's bloated. There are some very accomplished non-traditionals, but because GS is so big, Columbia ends up accepting some downright crazies.

The non-traditionals at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Brown, Cornell, Duke etc. are much better incorporated into the campus scene because they aren't in a whole huge school of themselves, and are about 20-30 per class size.

Imo, GS needs to cut its population by at least half. Also, I might be wrong here, but aren't CC/SEAS recruited separately?

i had a friend who did columbia GS for econ ( i believe) and came out with an internship and offer at BAML on their forex desk.. and i heard on your transcript it doesnt show that you were GS or not

^ It does say GS if you're in GS. My transcript states that I'm part of Columbia College, for instance. And there are some CC/SEAS-only networking events. Also, only CC/SEAS kids get on-campus housing. But that's about it as far as disadvantages are concerned. GS is a good program. But, like I said before, it's bloated. There's no way in hell that you can have a non-traditional school as big as GS and still bring in the same quality of students as CC/SEAS do.

So if GS admitted 92 students in 2009, that's 1.2% of the undergrad population, or 4.8% over four years.

So since you're a CU grad who went through CC, I'm REALLY interested to know - do you think these numbers are really too high for CU transfers? Again, I'm just having a hard time understanding where the quantifiable arguments are among CU/other Ivy grads for GS being bloated or somehow inferior, if more than 95 out of every 100 CU students came directly from high school, while less than 5% transferred with a minimum GPA of 3.7 in college work, typically over 60 units. No offense, but I'm not actually sure that a 4.0 in college isn't at least as impressive as a 4.0 in high school with great SAT's.

And since this forum is really about GS vs. a UC, I'll compare that 5% of GS students to another UC - Berkeley - which states that they are "strongly committed to admitting transfer students, who typically make up about one-third of our fall class." And 33% of Berkeley's undergrad population of 25,530 is like 8,424 students. So does that diminish UC Berkeley's standing? So would you rate UC Berkeley below GS in prestige/reputation/recruitment opportunities? Seems like you'd have to, if 5% is your argument. Understand that anybody with a 3.7 GPA at a cc definitely has other options - UCLA and Cal among them. And when we start talking about 3.8-4.0, with Honors, I mean... Again, what am I missing in these numbers?

Truly appreciate the feedback, s u! It's a big decision.

http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?scho…

http://students.berkeley.edu/admissions/transfer.asp

Really surprised by all the false information here.

Columbia GS is a highly selective official undergraduate college of Columbia University along with CC and SEAS. Academically, CC and GS are one and the same. Students take the exact same classes, with the exact same faculty and receive the exact same degree. (Even their faculties merged in the 1990's.)

The GS acceptance rate is in the low 20's. That's more selective than schools like UC Berkeley, UCLA, several colleges of Cornell, and many other elite colleges. This number is getting lower every year.

GS is a relatively new college, but its prestige is undeniable as its selectivity and demand are increasing exponentially.

Over 25%of undergrads at Columbia are GS students (including the post-bacs and dual degree students). They also have the highest average GPAs.

One of the only notable differences is that students at GS get academic scholarships rather than low income financial aid.

Uninformed people usually get it confused with Columbia's School of Continuing Education, the Harvard Extension equivalent.

Hi all,

I wanted to post all the information I could to help educate people who are considering GS, but are having second thoughts due to the negative posts throughout the majority of these [ivy league] college forums. I was recently admitted into Columbia GS, a fact that I take tremendous pride in, and the decision to apply to Columbia was not a hard one to make. *(A little side note about myself: I do not rush into decisions that will have a tremendous impact on my life both mentally and financially). I wanted to be as thorough as possible after considering Columbia GS, so I read and researched just about everything I could that had to do, or mentioned, Columbia GS and this is what I have found:

Brief Overview: Columbia GS is one of the official three undergraduate schools at Columbia University, dedicated to non-traditional students. The other two undergraduate schools that make up Columbia University are Columbia College and Columbia Engineering (formerly known as SEAS), which are dedicated to traditional students. You must apply to GS if you have taken at least a one year break in your education, and you cannot apply to either CC/CE if you have taken more than two semester course loads at another school. In addition, you are automatically ineligible to apply to CC if you have taken over a year break from school. Also, you cannot apply to more than one school during the same cycle.

Being that all three schools are official undergraduate schools of Columbia University, they are all considered to be in the "Ivy League". Some have questioned the prestige of Columbia GS because the admissions process and criteria differs from that of CC, but it should also be mentioned that CE too has a completely different admission process and criteria from either schools. This is because all three schools have different admission committees that review their own applicants for each specific school, thus the different admission rates for each school. The rankings are based on the combined average CC/CE admission rates. GS rates are excluded in the overall admission rates, because (from what I've gathered): 1.) Most applicants for GS are transfers opposed to first year students 2.) GS applicants are non-traditional it would not make sense to lump them into the admission rates with the other traditional applicants considering there is different criteria that are examined. Nearly all the other schools in the nation only record traditional students admission rates, it only makes sense for Columbia to do the same. *if there are more logical reasons I'm sure someone else with add to this section.

Now, I have no idea what life is like at Columbia nor after graduation, but the fact of the matter is that GS is a part of Columbia U, regardless of how the other students or peers throughout academia view GS students. Prestige has become synonymous with admission rates, but I would not be too worried about GS admission rates considering there is only a fraction of qualified applicants able to apply to GS (about 1500-2000 transfer apps) compared to the 34,000 first year apps CC/CE had this past year. Not to mention CE had admission rates varying between 23-31% prior to 2006. In reality if you took CC/CE admissions rate for 2005(I believe this is the correct year) CC had a rate of 12% and CE had a rate of 31% making their combined rate about 21.5%, similar to the rate of what GS posted recently. Their marks have come down dramatically in recent years (especially after Obama was elected in 2008), but this is because of the substantial increase in applicants. As the years pass, GS will continue to have lower acceptance rates as it becomes more well known (if you want to look at it in that light).

As for the classes, there are only a few that GS students can't automatically register for (I believe they can petition for registration into these courses however), but they have the same equivalent courses in the GS sections. The rest of the classes, including the core requirements are the same and integrated. You learn side by side with the other students of the college as well as from the same professors, and graduate with the same Columbia University degree, with only minor adjustments:

For the following images, see their location below (this site will not let me post the links directly to them)

GS diploma: Go to the GS website

CC / CE diplomas: Google CC diploma - wikicu has both CC and CE diplomas Only CC and Columbia Law have diplomas in Latin, but are worded the same as the other diplomas (including the GS diploma) / As you can see CE's diploma is nearly identical to the GS diploma (along with 13 graduate school diplomas)

The only real difference you will find with these diplomas are the dean's signature line. They will correspond to the specific school in which you attended (ie: General Studies, Columbia College, etc..)

One last this I wanted to reiterate, is that GS is a unique school within the "Ivy League". There is no other "Ivy League" school that houses a specific undergraduate college for non-traditional students. Yale and Brown have programs within their college, but they are not schools of either institution. Yale only accepts about 5-10 transfers (and usually they are extreme cases such as Mike Richter - former NY Rangers Goaltender) into their Eli Whitney program, who graduate with a degree from Yale College, because there is no other undergraduate school at Yale. The same goes for Brown's RUE program; however, you must be away from school for at least 5 years. The other programs mentioned on this board that were compared to GS were Harvard extension and UPenn LPS. Harvard extension is similar to Columbia's School of Continued Education, but is open enrollment. You can take courses at Harvard under certain contingencies, and you will not be fully integrated as some people alluded to. UPenn's LPS is not a school, it is actually a program housed within another college (School of Arts & Sciences) at UPenn.

I hope this helps. It was late when I put this together, so please forgive any misspellings or shortcomings. If I left out any information, I will add it another time.

^ Wow, GS Admissions, I was sure you would have better things to do. Guess not.

Fact is, GS is a cash cow for Columbia. And there is no need for it to be as big as it is.

"I have a feeling that you have great resolve and are absolutely convinced that Columbia GS is a cash cow and I realize that I won't be able to convince you to think otherwise on this online forum."

You won't convince me either. I graduated from GS in 2012, and can tell you first hand that GS is perceived as inferior by instructors, students, administrators and GS students. We do not have the same access to financial resources, physical buildings, and certain classes such as Teachers College. In fact, there is no reason to even have GS, other than to make money, and lots of it, for the university. Non-traditional students, many of whom are over qualified to even be there, are paying through the nose to get a designer label just like traditional students. However, CC students get a free ride if their parents make under a certain amount. This kind of discrimination, especially from a school which is ostensibly enlightened, is plain outrageous!

Columbia needs to take a cue from Brown, Princeton and other comparable schools that don't segregate people because of their age and place a less than label upon them. Of course, if GS were eliminated then certain administrators like Dean Peter Awn would be out of a job. Awn is an interesting character, because he purposely keeps GS students down to protect himself. This year, for example, the entire GSSC voted unanimously to have the official school song performed at Class Day, like CC does. GS has a school song, but Awn refuses to acknowledge it, because it imparts a sense of tradition, pride and parity with other undergrad schools. Awn's attitude toward the GS Alma Mater encapsulates his attitude toward GS in general, in that he does not want GS to be on the same playing field as other schools. Awn is also the sole party responsible for ending the GS -Juilliard program for students (of which he did not grandfather clause anyone in). He further disadvantaged GS by negating students from taking classes at Teachers College, even though CC, SEAS, and Barnard students can. Although Awn orates about how GS is the finest non-traditional school in the world, his actions are stratifying. In other words, Awn is a hypocrite. A shamefully disingenuous administrator who exploits students for his own gain.

As a GS graduate, I would never recommend GS to anyone! You will pay first rate tuition, and be treated as a second rate student. You are far far far better off at UCLA or any state school than GS. I am sorry I went to Columbia, and ashamed of my degree.

Also of note, GS caters to the military crowd. The so called "milvets" are a minority on campus, but Awn kisses their asses. If you disagree with violence as the one best way of conflict resolution, then GS is not for you. Interestingly, it is the military that has discriminated against gay, lesbian and transgender students which systematically denies them access to scholarships. This kind of discrimination is contrary to school employment policy. Considering ROTC and the military as an employer, their inherent bias has created a hostile learning environment for many students, some of which transfer out. Yet Awn himself is gay creating a perplexing conundrum. He supports the very organization which discriminates against him and so many other students. The man is simply slime.

Again, if you are even considering GS, I urge you to look elsewhere. My expensive degree is basically worthless. I feel completely ripped off because I was a cow and they raped me for my cash. Anyone can do much better at a state school, a community college, or even with just a library card.