Hi everybody my name is Kat Blackwell I'm a first year in Columbia College
partnering with Columbia Admissions to make some videos for prospective
students. This is the third video in a series of three videos about the
Columbia first-year experience. This video is about what it's like to be a
student in New York City so I asked my friends what's your favorite thing about
living in New York City and why. None of them came up with just one favorite
thing. I hope you enjoy. I feel like it would be impossible to sort of describe
life at Columbia without talking about New York City. I knew that going to
school in New York City was going to be amazing
basically during my first week. Best part of going to school in New York City is
that I don't know it's New York City so it's not just a college town. Obviously
like the greatest thing in the world like you're literally in New York City
like where there's so much talent and culture and food - food there's so much
food! Like on the weekends I like to go see a lot of the museums like we get
into a lot of them for free. So okay look at the city there's literally everything
so there's like tons of museums like everywhere and you have access to like
most if not like all the ones that you want to go to because Columbia is
amazing at that. On a Friday after class you can go to the Metropolitan Museum of
Art and just wander around for hours looking at some of the world's
masterpieces of art and that's just an afternoon activity where you know most
places that would be like a tourist trip something that you have to save up to do.
All my friends are at museums like every other day like whether it's because of
class or just because they want to go to a museum and that's crazy because you
can't do that other schools because they don't have that many museums and there's
like 50 here or like more. The MET or to the MoMA to the Whitney, all these
museums that are world-renowned that I can just visit on a whim
is so exciting. Probably more there's more than 50 museums here and you have
access to a lot of them. Another great part about Columbia that I love is they
have lottery where you can win tickets to see shows downtown, so earlier in
first semester I want a gets to see the Red Shoes Ballet which is a totally
awesome experience. You're always surrounded by just so much all the time.
To go to Brooklyn and go thrift shopping and to go to random pop-up set
you know common to Soho or the Lower East Side and to sit in cafes in
Greenwich Village those things are just iconic and that you never be able to do
anywhere other than New York City. It's kind of an experience that you're not
gonna get anywhere else and I think that's something that's very
unique to Columbia especially because yeah there are other schools in New York
City too but they're not Columbia. Lots of my friends you know as freshmen
already have internships or jobs downtown and it's just it's always
exciting there's never a boring moment because there's always so many things to
do here and I think the energy of the city definitely comes on campus too and
people are always you know trying to do something new and take advantage of all
these opportunities. Your New York City there's like a concert every like 10
minutes the city like has a lot of big buildings if you're in the big buildings
that's like like you there's no shortage of big buildings. Here I found a lot of
amazing places to study. And small buildings we have those too we have lots
of varieties of buildings. Something I particularly love is getting to see so
many performances downtown, as a dancer I like to take classes
in New York City. Lots of famous buildings really doing great here.
Anything that you want literally anything that you want is somewhere in
the city. It's so easy to just walk outside the gates and get on a subway or
walk down to Central Park and you can just experience so many amazing things
so quickly. So to be able to just hop on the one train which is right on campus
essentially there's a stop at Columbia University stop to just go outside of my
dorm get in the subway go somewhere in the city and do whatever I want to do
somewhere is amazing so I'm not just confined to a little campus or whatever I
have all of New York City I have all of New Jersey and Connecticut like it's all
we're so connected and you don't need a car, it's public
transit you can get anywhere and do anything that's I think that's the best
part is that it's limitless. My favorite thing about living in New York City is
the connectivity to different communities within the city for example
on Fridays when we don't have classes I work with a nonprofit called Youth for
Debate and I teach debate in public school classrooms around New York City.
Outside of the immediate Columbia communities there are so many ways to
get involved with issues and make impacts on things that you really care
about. Plus as my friends so kindly stated you're in New York City you can
do absolutely anything you want there's so much stuff to do. I hope that now you
have a better idea of how Columbia students interact with the New York
community as a whole and how it's just integral to our education. That brings us
to the end of our video series I really hope that it was helpful
remember that you can follow Columbia Admissions on Twitter at @hamiltonhall
and Instagram at @columbiaadmissions. Thank you so much for watching i'm Kat
Blackwell signing off and i hope you have a great
day!