Well Mara, since you asked so nicely I'd be happy to oblige.
I first learned of Columbia's opportunities for non-traditional students after receiving a notice from the Honors club (Which I had joined on a lark earlier in the semester) that the dean of admissions was going to be holding an information session at the school. Recognizing the Columbia brand name, I thought that it'd be neat to check out, but to not get my hopes up because NOBODY gets into those schools! Right? Myself and another member of the school's student veteran organization attended the session. The presenter started with an overview of the Columbia GS program, explained why it exists and how it is different from Columbia College (Which handles the right-out-of-high-school applicants), benefits and opportunities available for GS students, and cleared up some misconceptions that some people have about the school. One of the interesting things he brought up was that, out of all four colleges within Columbia University (GS, CC, Barnard, and Fu) GS has the highest average GPA and highest graduation rate. I was very impressed! He then opened up the floor for questions. Most were about what it took to gain admission (The school looks for a 3.5 GPA, good essays and would like to see at least 24 credits before applying). I stayed after, gave the dean my stats and asked what my chances would be. He said it would be tough, but to give it a shot. He gave out a few vouchers to waive the application fee (Which is 80$, I believe).
It was about this time that I started talking with @
Marauder06 about Yale's Eli Whitney program. He told me what he knew about the program, and put me in touch with a Navy veteran who had successfully applied and had been accepted. This guy proved to be a wealth of information and really helped me along in the process. Now, at this time I was perhaps midway through my very first semester of post-high school work, and I was deathly afraid of getting bad grades, and because of this I was working very hard at my studies. I was very interested in applying to these schools, but at this stage I didn't consider my chances at either to be very realistic. In hindsight, my chances at Yale were not realistic, but my chances at Columbia were very realistic (I've since met accepted veterans with worse stats than mine, so that take as you will). But I figured it was worth a shot, and I had many, many people who wanted to see me succeed and could give me advice and pointers along the way. All that I had to do was put in the effort, both at school and on the applications.
A word on the apps: Yale's application for Eli Whitney is considerably more difficult than Columbia's. Though they both use the "common app" format, Yale's essay prompt has a limit of 600 words and has three distinct sections for you to write about. Columbia's app gives you an upper level of 2,000 words and is focused on your life, employment history, and what makes you a "non-traditional student". It was basically an auto-biography so it was much easier to write that particular essay. Imagine that; a longer essay being easier to write! Yale's prompt consisted of:
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What are your reasons for applying to the Eli Whitney Students Program at Yale?
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Tell us what personal, professional, or educational experiences influenced your decision to apply.
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What personal and academic goals do you think Yale can help you to reach?
Ouch. That turned out to be a tough one to write. I looked to a friend of mine who was a professional editor and asked how I should approach this topic. His basic advice was "talk to the prompt". Great. How do you talk about yourself while addressing three very specific, very distinct prompts? Long story short, I ended up writing was I thought was a fairly good essay that answered the prompts thoroughly, sent it out to various people for a second, third, and fourth look, and after much revision finally submitted it. I did roughly the same thing with the Columbia essay, but instead of looking to others for ideas first, I just spent an afternoon writing about myself and my experiences as a Marine. Like I said before, it was easier to write because it's always easy to write about yourself! But after review by a few folks, it was clear that my autobiography was very dry, and suffered from "military writing syndrome". That is to say, it was long on generalities and short on details. It seemed impersonal and detached. There was a lot of "And then I did this and this. From that I learned X. After that I did X." As my editor friend put it, it lacked the "show me, don't tell me" factor. This was rather frustrating. I set the essay aside and didn't touch it for about a month.
It wasn't until I talked to a friend of mine, and former Marine, who had been admitted to Columbia the previous year via a program designed to help Marines get into colleges (The Leadership Scholar Program, if you were wondering). I had been talking his ear off about my essay troubles for a while now, but had been avoiding asking for help. Eventually, he said "Hey, want to take a look at my essay?". It was something some simple and obvious that I was shocked I hadn't thought of it before! So that's precisely what I did, and WOW! His GPA wasn't that great, but as a former citizen of Pakistan who had deployed with a MEU to the region after a series of floods devastated the country in 2010, his story was incredibly compelling. As one of only two servicemen in the entire task force that spoke Urdu, he was called up numerous times for translation work. It was one passage in particular, in which he had to coordinate the guard force of a military post to allow emergency vehicles to enter the city in a timely, that gave me the inspiration for the overall "theme" of my essay. In particular, it caused me to recall a funny moment in Afghanistan, which became the introductory paragraph to my essay:
My first lesson in foreign relations came on a hot July day on Camp Shorabak, Afghanistan. I was part of a five-man adviser team whose mission was to train and mentor Afghan National Army (ANA) intelligence units. Part of our duties involved the escort of deceased ANA soldiers via transport plane to Kabul, so they could be transferred to their families. I was to be the escort that day, and was directed to head to the morgue to meet with the ANA drivers. Unfortunately, nobody told me where the morgue was. However, I thought my language skills might be able to assist me in this case. The basic way of asking where something is in Dari (The Afghan dialect of Persian Farsi) is to say “Kojaa --- ast?”. But as I thumbed through my Dari dictionary, I could not find the word for “Morgue”. I was perplexed. As I sat there parked by the side of the road, along walked two Afghan soldiers. I remembered that most Afghans speak a fair amount of English due to America's ten-year presence in the country, so I thought that I might be able to substitute the English word for 'morgue' and come out fine. I approached the soldiers, gave the customary greeting with my right hand over my heart, and said “Kojaa morgue ast?”. Immediately they burst out laughing and walked away. What had I done wrong? Afghans typically appreciate it when Americans attempt to speak their language and are very polite in trying to understand, but to be laughed at was something completely new. Eventually I found the morgue and completed the escort process. But the incident bothered me the entire time. When I arrived back at base I asked an interpreter, “Hey man, today I said “Kojaa morgue ast?” to some ANA and they laughed at me. What's the deal?”. A slight smile grew on his face. “Dude, 'morgue' means 'chicken' in Dari! You just asked them 'Where is the chicken?'"
I thought to myself, "This is it. I need to talk about my experiences with foreign cultures and how they've shaped me as a person!". I had worked with the Iraqi police, Japanese self-defense force, Malaysian air force, and extensively with the Afghan National Army. If I could open it up with a funny culture joke and tie all my experience working with foreign militaries into a neat package, it could make for a dynamite essay. And so, that's exactly what I did. I removed or shortened many of the original sections that talked about my early life, and how I was a poor student, and added bits about working with foreign cultures and how I came to appreciate those around me. Originally, I had a particularly long passage about how I had to lose a bunch of weight in order to ship to boot camp (Which was, personally, very significant to me), but I shortened it and the follow-on section about basic in order to stay around the 2,000 word limit. While it wasn't a hard limit per se, I'd been advised that going too far over 2,000 words could cause the admissions board to lose interest. Because of this, I cut out enough so that I ended up at a little over 2,100 words. I finalized my thoughts, sent the essay out again for editing (This time I included my English professor since he is harsh on grammar), and waited. I forgot to mention this, but both schools also require a supplemental essay, which can be used for a variety of things, including: clarifying app discrepancies, explaining a poor grade, or anything else you might want the board to know. In my case, I wrote about learning the cello as an adult student (Something which I thought would show the board that I was very well-rounded). The people I showed the essay to thought it was great, so I kept it mostly intact, minus some editing for word choice. Both Yale and Columbia had the same requirements for the supplemental essay, so I used the same essay for both schools. After making the final changes to my Columbia essay, I sent it off and began the great wait.
Yale got back to me first: rejected. I had anticipated this, but it still stung. At the time, I had not completed a full semester of college work (I submitted my interim grades to the board), and I figured that was the primary reason for rejection. Later on when I was at Yale as part of the Warrior Scholar Project (
www.operationopportunity.org for more info) I learned from the admissions director that that was, in fact, the reason. Which was a bit of a relief, actually. If having only 15 credits almost-finished with a 4.0 average was the one thing keeping me from Yale, then I had nothing to worry about next year! After this slightly bad news, I waited on Columbia. And waited. And waited. I confirmed with my school that my final transcript had been sent to Columbia, so they were good on their end. Columbia, however, had not received it. The deadline for application had already passed so I had to scramble to find a solution. Would they accept an unofficial transcript, courtesy of a screenshot from my school's website? Yes they would. FINALLY! They had the last piece of material they needed to send my package to the board! The admissions lady let me know that I was finally up for consideration. Oh, and on that very same day, a seperate representative from Columbia let me know that they had found my transcript, which had been accidentally sent to undergrad admissions at Columbia college. There it had been lost in the veritable swamp of 35,000 other applicants. Well, cool! I ought to add that my final GPA was 15 credits with a 4.0 average, with one honors class.
Two days later, I got the call: You have been accepted to Columbia University. Expect an admissions package in the next few days.
And so, that's my experience.
