Boon's Basement

Columbia University Visit 7.16.2009

// July 21st, 2009 // Thoughts

It was 75 degrees that day when I hiked up to 116th St and Amsterdam Ave for Columbia University’s MBA Info session. The first impression that I got from stepping into the gorgeous campus was that I was in garden of Eden. An absolutely, amazing and freaking-fabulous looking campus, with luscious gardens and shrubs, located in the upper west side of Manhattan. Not only the campus is amazing, the students are very diverse and speak multiple languages. As I walked from the Main entrance to the foot steps of the library, I heard people speaking Korean, Mandarin, Italian, English and Spanish. A truly “International” campus.

Finding Warren Hall, the building where my info session was held, was disastrous. I printed out the map of the campus but there seem to be two Warren halls! Asking students where Warren Hall is, none of them knew. Ughh! So i decided to go to the visitor center to get directions. After doing that, I got the directions to Warren Hall, not to be confused with the other Warren Hall opposite of the Law School. I was 10 minutes late for the presentation and as I was walking in the room, I could sense some stares from the audience, giving me that “My god, how can this kid be late for an MBA info session….” feeling.

The info session started at 12.30pm and it was conducted by Columbia MBA Admission Office Assistant Director, Christina Shelby and she was very informative and entertaining. She was going through the slides and played us a video with all the Alums of Columbia Business school, ranging from Lew Frankfort (CEO and Chairman of Coach) to Sidney Taurel (CEO of Eli Lily and Co). The main highlight of the info session was the application process. Christina explained to audience that Columbia MBA admission process is a rolling basis and every applicants’ admittance decision is done as they come in. Pretty neat I must say.

The session ended around 2 pm and some of the participants stayed to talk to Christina more but I didn’t, so i left.

Considering it a nice sunny summer day (mind it its 75 degrees F and humid outside – similar to a typical Kuala Lumpur weather), I decided to walk downtown. Oh boy, walk i did, 66 streets downtown. Whoopee! I walked from 116th st to 50 st, along Broadway from North to South. Along my way, I got myself a dollar ice tea from McDonalds and a couple of free granola bars from people who were handing out flyers. I journeyed on to 5oth St Station where I boarded the uptown E back to Forest Hills.

-Boon