Overview
College guides written by students for students.
Your ultimate source for honest, unbiased information, College Prowler delivers an inside look at the top colleges and universities in the United States. While writing our series of college guides, we felt it was critical that our content was unbiased and unaffiliated with any college or university.
We think it’s important that our readers get honest information and a realistic impression of the student opinions on any college campus—that’s why we intend to publish information about all aspects of a particular college, even the terrible parts you wouldn’t find in a campus brochure. While we do keep an eye out for the occasional extremist—the cheerleader or the cynic—we take pride in letting the college students tell it like it is. We strive to create a college guide that’s as representative as possible of each particular campus. Our guides cover both the good and the bad, and whether the survey responses point to recurring trends or a variation in opinion, these sentiments are directly and proportionally expressed through our guides.
College Prowler guides are in the hands of students throughout the entire process of their creation. Because you can’t make student-written guides without the students, we have students at each college campus who help write, randomly survey their peers, edit, and perform accuracy checks for every college guide that we publish. From the very beginning, student writers gather the most up-to-date stats, facts, and inside information on their colleges. They fill each section with student quotes and summarize the findings in editorial reviews. In addition, each college oruniversity receives a collection of letter grades (A through F) that reflect student opinion and help to represent contentment, prominence, or satisfaction in each of our 20 specific categories. Just as in grade school, the higher the mark the more content, more prominent, or more satisfied the students are with the particular category.
Once a college guide is written, additional college students serve as editors and check for accuracy even more extensively. Our bounce-back team—a group of randomly selected students who have no involvement with the project—are asked to read over the material in order to help ensure that the guide accurately expresses every aspect of the university and its students. This same process is applied to the nearly 300 colleges and universities College Prowler currently covers. Each guide is the result of endless student contributions, hundreds of pages of research and writing, and countless hours of hard work. All of this has led to the creation of a student information network that stretches across the nation to every college that we cover. It’s no easy accomplishment, but it’s the reason that our college guides are such a great resource.
When reading our guides and looking at our college rankings, keep in mind that every college is different and that the students who make up each college are not uniform—as a result, it is important to assess colleges on a case-by-case basis. Because it’s impossible to summarize an entire college with a single number or description, each guide provides a dialogue, not a decision, that’s made up of 20 different topics and hundreds of student quotes. In the end, we hope that this guide will serve as a valuable tool in your college selection process. Enjoy!
Synopsis
College guides written by students for students.
Columbia University Students
Tell It Like It Is
What do Julia Stiles, Anna Paquin, Rider Strong, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Joseph Gordon Levitt have in common? Yeah, they're all actors. But they're also Columbia University alumni. . . the College Prowler guidebook can let you in on everything about Columbia that they already know!
What have Columbia students said they wished they knew before coming to the University?
* That Columbia is an intimidating place. A lot of kids have a hard time settling in at Columbia because there's a feeling that everyone else knows what's going on when you don't. It's a lie-nobody knows what's going on at Columbia, everyone just makes it up.
* That you can really do whatever you want at Columbia and New York, and as long as it's not illegal, you can probably get away with it.
"The academics are intense. At Columbia, the teachers are uniquely committed to shaping the minds of all of their students."
"All I can tell you is that it is an Ivy League school and a real honor to get into. It has an outstanding academic record. I graduated at the top of my class and had my choices of graduate schools; I chose Columbia."
Ivy Leaguers aren't just about books . . .
* "Manhattan is a vast playground with hip jazz clubs, trendy bars, low-key coffee shops, and charming restaurants featuring every imaginable type of cuisine. And then there is the typical New York touristy stuff like the museums, Times Square, and Central Park."
* "The school-sponsored parties including barbecues and picnics are almost always fun, provided that they do not run outof food. Each college of Columbia has special events geared to their students such as casino nights, career dinners, and cocktail parties."
You might want to know that.
* The Core curriculum took as much time as it did, and that it was worth every second. You will spend two years fulfilling your core requirements, but you'll be a better person when you're done. And a lot smarter.
* Financial aid is readily available for those who need it. While an application process is required, it's rather simple to get some extra help from the oft-generous Columbia offices.
Find out if Columbia truly has something for you, straight from the students' mouths.
Visiting campus isn't enough.
Read our Columbia University insider's guide and discover what it feels like to be on campus for 4 years.
Discover if Columbia is Right For You.
The Boston Globe
The prospective college student's antidote to the Princeton Review doldrums.