Making the right decison will depend on your ability to accurately understand the full value of both opportunities and their relative worth for you own goals.
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So you landed coveted places at the most powerful and visible global institutions - massive congratulations! 🎉 This page is some help - info, context and decision matrix - to make the best decision.
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..heavily adapted transcript from a real conversation with a Recruited Athlete from the UK interested in studying Computer Science, possibly with Economics and Entrepreneurship. The student told me I was the most insightful resource for topic, having spoken to a handful of Columbia folk.
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Relevant context on me: Financial Engineering (Math + CS) degree from Columbia, I worked at Goldman Sachs in Investment Banking, now I’m a Software Engineer.
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We need to get to..
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| Columbia | Goldman Sachs SWE | |
|---|---|---|
| Human Resource (Superiors)* | Access to the most impactful and intelligent professors doing the most important work in the world, across all field and industries. Often, your professors are pushing the industry forward and creating new ones - see DE Shaw (David E Shaw), an ex-professor at Columbia who made a top Hedge Fund. Generally, people that shape society in every field, and make new ones, go to Columbia. | Working with impactful and intelligent technical leaders. Some of the most important people in the professional word, with degrees from all the powerful universities. Lots of leaders in every field worked at GS or go to work at GS after - like David Cameron, PM of the UK. The work will be focused on Finance, Legal and some Tech only. Prowess for GS is Finance only, but attracts the brightest for Tech, too. |
| Human Resource (colleagues) | Access to the most intelligent, powerful & wealthiest people around the world. They concentrate at these types of universities. Most students come to college and, through help from the Columbia platform, create immense impact, knowledge and power, maybe having not had it prior to university. Students working with professors on important projects is very common. Columbia is a relatively international university so quite well reflects some diversity of the world. | Less concentration of the most powerful in the world, but it’s still there because of many factors. More localised talent pool. |
| GS has a healthy international employee sponsoring program so its diversity can mirror that of a Uni campus. |
Your only priority is work so there isn’t anything you’re legally allowed to work on outside work. You will meet smart people though, who can be useful for your professional future. | | Relationship with organisation (whilst there) | Studies, organised gatherings (societies, networking events, research presentations, class, mixer events, sports), structured informal gatherings (parties - which is also networking, when you’re at a place like this), email blasts, access to physical and digital resources.
It’s like a self-sustaining village.
Relationship primarily centred around connection, enjoyment and intellectual stimulation. | Work, organised gatherings (networking events, panels) access to physical and digital resources
Relationship primarily centred around work and performance. | | Relationship with organisation (after exit) | It’s for life.
100s of very good university-organised events per year, both on- and offline.
City-focused social clubs like Columbia Club of London / MIT Club of Great Britian, plus mixing with other top schools, both US and internationally - for example the Columbia Latino Alum association will do a mixer with the MIT Latinx club in Boston.
Access to fancy social clubs + Oxbridge ones (London-only).
Insight to uni operation, which is cool. Ex: invitations to board meetings for important university decisions.
Email is available to be used forever. Email has feature to search name of all Columbia alums - can use like a LinkedIn. Yes, the founder of D.E. Shaw is there as he was a professor at Columbia - he did his foundational research for the founding of the company at Columbia after a Stanford PhD. | It ends.
No company-organised events. Email access revoked after exit.
GS won’t host events with anyone other than clients. GS employees are given lots of trust early on.
Someone has made a GS sponsored database for employers seeking GS alums.
| | External Perception upon exit (short-term) | Unanimous understanding of pedigree to employers and people. Instant credibility which is very helpful, especially in saturated job a market. People will like to keep you as a connection because you’re a successful person and will be successul in the future. | Unanimous understanding of pedigree of degree to employers and people. Instant credibility which is very helpful, especially in saturated job a market. People will like to keep you as a connection because you’re a successful person. | | External Perception upon exit (long-term) | Lifetime credibility, independent of personal achievement. | Lifetime credibility, independent of personal achievement, but only with particular roles like banking and software engineering. | | Type of Person | This is a great experience for an academic & professional - you like being surrounded by research & those who do it, thought leadership + extreme high achievers both academically and professionally. There is both an excessive about to get up to, academically and professionally. Both are fulfulling and compliment each other.
You are okay with working intermittently around the clock - 8am or 11pm, you are there. | Good experience for a professional - someone who has strong focus on making impact through strictly a business. You like being surrounded by smart people who are high agency and do good work. The academic focus is minute, comparatively.
You will work 100% from 9am and 6pm. | | Social Experience | Your classmates are much more likely to become part of your social network & professional network. And then longer term friends.
You will embark on deep social experiences with friends and have lots of opportunity to socialise.
Post college you will have connected with hundreds of people at not only Columbia but others. | Your work colleagues are have a smaller likelyhood of becoming your network professional network, and even for your social network.
Social experiences are shallower - there is opportunity to socialise but is is appropriate to be more supeficial. There will always be opportunity to develop deep and emotionally meaningful connections from people you work with, but the chance is much lower.
Post GS you will have connected with 0-5 people from work. The stakes are higher as you are all bound by strict laws on behavior. | | Live benefit, consistent | Interaction with other Ivy League colleges through sports games, competitions, researc. Smart people know and interact with mostly other very smart people. As opposed to only knowing Columbia people, through social and professional experience, you will get to know lots of people across all Ivy League universities. | No structured interaction with other firms or roles with other firms. Meeting people from other firsm doesn’t drive the bottom line, and threatens the employment of their human assets (you) - simply: other firms can poach talent from GS, which GS don’t want. | | Freedom / Change of mind | If you don't like your major, you can change it to any of the other 50 or so courses of academic study at the University, as well as even make your own minor, and at least still take classes in fields that interest you on your own.
You have not only 4 years but also more than four years (if you decide to take some gap years) to figure out what you want, what academic & professional path you would like to pursue. American universities, especially Columbia University, are very accommodating of breaks in your academic journey. | If you don't like software engineering even in the first week, the future will be hard. You're going to have to drop out and spend a lot of time attaining another opportunity which, as you are a high achiever, is similarly difficult to attain.
Otherwise you’ll have to weather a storm for 4 years, by which time you will be extremely spent and have a software engineering background that you might not want.
You are bound by your contract to do software engineering for 4 years. As you will be doing an Apprenticeship, there is no option of changing your course of study.
There is also no option for gap years. | | Location, post-grad | Oppportunity to stay in the US + come back to UK. | Mostly UK. Can possibly transfer to the US via an L-1 Visa. | | Network location | Network in the most powerful city in the world | Network in between GS office & uni affiliated with Apprenticeship. London is also one of the most powerful & important cities in the world - Not every GS apprenticeship is in London. | | Type of person | Values academic exploration and network generation more | Values technical ability and communicative skill of value more | | Appeal to powerful people | Good - brought 4 Presidents of countries to speak in one week, during the annual President’s Wee (I was at one). Plus powerful people in every sector/of every type. CEO of NVIDIA spoke recently… also many current and furture CEOs of younger companies on campus. | Good - attracts Tier 1 professionals too, like Presidents and CEOs. They also are on panels at GS.
Only really future CEOs at GS if any, because work is the only commitment that can be handled whilst working there. Yes, some people will have side-businesses, but much fewer than Columbia. | | Network gained | General elites of America and the World. General elites = academic, financial and professional assets.
The elites value education, the children of elites are a lot less likely to do a degree apprenticehip. Wealthy people are much more likely to go to university. Children of CEOs and Presidents overwhelmingly go to top college/Ivy League universities. | Only UK Professional elites, more purely. |
Columbia and GS, which are elite communitites, will be formed by the rationale of the admission/evaluation process. If you screen for straight-A students purely, then that will be your university body. If you are looking for people that are self-starters purely, that will be what the community body consists of. Columbia University screens for both and a few other things - so that is what the university body is - the most academic bright people that alo create impact through companies/organisations. What type of commumity do you want to be part of? Lets talk about evaulation method.
The interview for the Goldman Sachs apprenticeship is behavioral questions, some logic questions, and some math questions. Great, now you've got a bunch of smart and high-agency people.
Columbia is screening for these things as well as passion, leadership ability, initiative-taking ability, commitment to goals and values, perception of student leaders, academic prowess, extrac-curricular prowess in academic field, future success potential, power of personality, kindness. Some traits mentioned in both, overlap a little.
Different communities are created as a result of filtration. Columbia is a much higher bar to pass, holistically and by strength.
Furthermore, the community of people that apply to Columbia University is much more self-selective* - this is people that have the knowledge and resources to invest the few years it takes to apply to the university. Applying to Goldman Sachs takes ~20 minutes and the bar for applying i much lower - anyone with internet access and the link can apply. Since more people apply to GS due to the higher accessibility, is not very helpful to draw conclusions from the different in acceptance rate.