Columbia university - the tourists view ;) (Columbia University in general)

Member Name: jrtpixie

Product:	Columbia University in general
Date:	01/12/00 (206 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good reputation, Good facilities

Disadvantages: location, location, location

One thing I can say about American univeristies - they sure do look impressive. In general I dislike the structure of American courses - they are too broad in the beginning as there is not a proper high school course structure over all the states.

I stayed in Columbia University 'Wein Hall' during my orientation course prior to work experience. The place was a pit. Inside a nice stone building the rooms were grotty, with rusting metal beds with thin mattresses. Battle-scarred pieces of wooden furniture littered the room. I sincerely hope that they don't put any freshers in there for the first year - I'd imagine it does terrible things for the drop-out rate.

The other problem is the location: although the university itself seems quite safe, it doesn't take but five minutes walk to get into the sort of areas where it seems that everyone is eyeing your wallet. Quite scary.

The university does have quite impressive facilities otherwise, with free internet terminals dotted about, very nice breakfast in the dining hall (they even had froot loops, or what was probably budget froot loop substitutes), a mixture of increadibly impressive stone buildings, old statues, big wrought iron gates, and also no shortage of modern style buildings and spacious lecture theatres, not to mention a sort of university superstore selling recommended course textbooks, Columbia university branded clothing and mugs, etc, and was both a stationery and book shop. I half expected a Starbucks in the corner. (There probably is one on campus, though I didn't find it)

Columbia does have a good reputation and it looks like a great university but I do hope they have some half decent university accomodation somewhere. You know, something with a little bit of carpet in it somewhere.

And they had the air conditioning up too high. Or maybe that was just me.

Summary: