A plug for my school at Columbia, aimed at CC/older readers

[Sen. Estes Kefauver (D-TN)]

I currently attend Columbia University's School of General Studies, which is their "non-traditional" program. I feel really cheesy breaking my inactivity on the board to promote my school, but I suspect that there will be some people who hang around in quizbowl who might benefit from knowing about it, or who know somebody else that might be interested, especially because I was shocked that I had never heard of a program like this when I was floating around as an unemployed dropout a few years ago.

Basically, General Studies is designed for students who have taken at least one year off from traditional schooling. It has an extremely high population of community college transfers (the people who I suspect will be most interested on the board) and military veterans, but it takes students from all walks of life, including people pursuing a second bachelor's. Of course, there are lots of schools that have "flexible, non-traditional programs," especially at highly ranked schools. However, when I was shopping around, the way all of those schools, like Harvard extension or NYU and Northwestern's "Professional Schools," was that they had different teachers, were run in different buildings, only offered night and online classes, and had very limited offerings for majors (many of which were business focused). The much smaller group of programs that were closer to traditional undergrads were like Yale's program which admits a tiny, tiny, tiny number of EXTREMELY qualified applicants every year. The thing that is unique about Columbia then is that they let in a much larger number of students to GS, and once you are in you have the exact same graduation requirements, are allowed to get the exact same majors, and are allowed to register for the exact same classes as every other undergrad (except for engineers. If you want to be an engineer, GS won't work). Speaking from experience, you very much get to be a normal undergrad, without having to feel out of place for being older or from a background other than having been a type A person who strove for a perfect GPA and 2400 on the SAT. Their admissions criteria is INSANELY flexible - my high school GPA was abysmal, like, below 2.5, and I know people here who got their GEDs, or had semesters of straight Fs when they went to college the first time. In other words, if you don't think you'd get in, you still might get in as long as you can convince them that you are trending upward and are now ready to do the work. I know every now and then quizbowl has some smart person who happens to be a screwup, or it has lots of community college players who would probably qualify as non-traditional, or maybe somebody just decided they needed a gap year. Also, if you are a community college coach and see a kid on your team or in your classes who you think has potential, tell them about it. Whatever the case, if you are intent on proving that you are a serious student, applying to GS is worth your time, just to see if you get in.

I also don't want this to be some sort of elitist nonsense just because it's Columbia, because I'm totally down with anybody who finds the school that works for them. I just know that coming here has really humbled me a lot and was a great fit, and I've been at some really low rock bottom points in my life and never thought I would be able to have a rewarding experience like this in school because of how poorly I had done in the past. I also just heard yesterday evening that a kid I used to coach when I worked at Rock Bridge high school got accepted to GS after spending a few years really floundering hard, then rebuilding his own life, so I hope you'll forgive me being on something of an emotional high right now. I'll be going back to my hibernation now.

P.S. If you think GS might be worth checking out, then here's a link - https://gs.columbia.edu/

[The Atom Strikes!]

So, I took a summer course in Arabic at Columbia a few years ago. A bunch of students in the class with me were GSers. They came from a really impressive variety of different walks of life-- some had worked to care for family members, some were ex-soldiers. My impression, as an outsider, is that it's a really cool program that helps a lot of different kinds of people get a top-notch education.

[AKKOLADE]

This is a really good post, Charlie, and it sounds like a really great program.

[The Time Keeper]

It's really cool to see that you've sorted stuff out, man.