If a city buzz, culture galore and diversity top your college wish list, then consider spending four years in New York City! The College Sage recently toured three unique options. From New York University in Greenwich Village to Columbia University in Morningside Heights to Fordham University in the Bronx and at Lincoln Center, each offers a unique way to experience college in the city that never sleeps! Read these snapshots to see if these three opportunities pique your interest in joining nearly 600,000 university students studying at 81 institutions in the world’s only Big Apple.
Columbia University in the City of New York
Columbia University is the city’s sole Ivy League and oldest higher learning institution, dating back to 1754. Its campus moved uptown in 1897 with the creation of an urban academic village campus that continues as the university’s campus core today. Columbia holds to Core Curriculum, a set of common courses required by all undergraduates, meant to cultivate a critical and creative intellectual capacity of its graduates.
With areas of excellence across its broad array of academic fields, Columbia University accepts about 2,000 students from across the globe. So if your grades and standardized tests are tip-top, you might be one of the lucky 6% to get accepted to what one student recently described as a “snow globe of opportunity”. If you want to take your interests, expand them with a wealth of elective courses, accentuate them through the Core, exchange them with motivated peers, and apply them in an unparalleled multicultural environment, then Columbia University might be for you.
Fordham University
Fordham is a Jesuit university founded in 1841. Fordham operates two campus locations, in the city at Lincoln Center and in the Bronx with the larger Rose Hill campus. When The College Sage walked through the gates onto the Rose Hill campus, the word “oasis” quickly came to mind. What a gem and leafy campus home for about 3,500 students just a 20-minute subway ride north of Columbus Circle. Being a 5-minute walk from the real “Little Italy “- famed Arthur Avenue - for authentic Italian cuisine is an added bonus.
The average accepted student has an A- GPA and an ACT score or equivalent of 28 – 32. While the university offers a broad range of academic offerings, The College Sage recently attended an information session where Fordham representatives proudly unveiled four new majors in the Communications and Media Studies department. The new majors are communication and culture, film and television, digital technology and emerging media and journalism. Journalism hopefuls should watch this space!
New York University
If violet is your favorite color and being in the middle of hip is your scene, then NYU may be the right place for college. NYU enrolls about 6,000 freshmen each year over seven distinct schools. For those students with similar qualifications to Fordham applicants who want a livelier setting, NYU fills the bill. With excellent programs in Film, the Arts, Business and the Social Sciences, NYU has what you need for almost every academic interest with 230 areas of study. Competition is steep for entry. NYU received over 60,000 applications for the first time ever in the latest admissions cycle.
If study abroad is your interest, NYU has college campuses now in Abu Dhabi and Shanghai, where NYU has become the first US University to grant degrees in China. Under new President Dr. Andrew Hamilton (no affiliation with the hit Broadway show), NYU appears committed to continue to forge a path towards a global campus.
