It is also, quite a bit harder than having “just a pulse,” to get in. While admissions requirements are not as academically focused as CC, academic performance is taken into account. I personally transferred with a community college GPA of 3.71 including Honors College distinctions, numerous officer positions in extracurriculars, and 7 years of full and part work and acting experience. Most of GS is made up of those who either left traditional schooling early to pursue professional careers otherwise (IE: we have many actors, dancers, and musicians among us), Military Veterans, or those that pursued careers after high school and returned to higher education later.
You also seem to disambiguate between GS and regular university classes. This is incorrect. While certain CORE requisites like Undergraduate Writing have separate GS sections tailored to those who may have had previous college work, the rest of all CORE and Major requisites are classes integrated with CC, SEAS, and Barnard. There is no difference. I've taken many classes with CC, SEAS, and Barnard students for mine. You also claim you get a CC diploma, this is incorrect and has been a matter of contention. GS graduates receive a Columbia University diploma in English like SEAS, CC receives one in Latin. That's the only difference.
It's indeed not a mystery that many CC’s didn't know him. GS tends to be a tight knit group of folk who are a little more mature and experienced than CC fresh from high school or prep-school. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's as cliquey as you describe, even now twenty+ years later, there's still a distinct divide between GS and the other schools socially. There are plenty of people, CC’ers and even GS’ers, in my major program I don't know after a year. It was an inside joke, that when they announced the GS Val and Sal just a few days ago, that they must be lovely, shame that no one’s met them. The rigor of study here is daunting. I fully believe when he says he became monk like, spending nights in Butler. I've done it myself. It is incredibly easy to become isolated, even in the time of Facebook and text messaging, in 1983 it would have been even harder.
I too "attended" Columbia GS, but not with the goal of a degree. I used it as a service to take courses I needed, or felt I needed, which were either not offered at my college, or presented scheduling (and other) difficulties. Sign-up for GS courses was, from my POV, seemed pretty much pro forma. You paid your money, you took your seat. Ditto, NYU.
For instance, at my small college Organic Chemistry was, as usual, taught by a vicious ogre. So I took it at GS over the summer! Hell! But you are correct. It was a Columbia course and taken by people from CC and other Columbia schools.
Now this was well over 50 years ago! However, as do you, I still feel that Barry's initial connection to Columbia was through GS, which goes a long way toward explaining why none of the CC fellows seem to know him. I also assure you that the CC Ivy Leaguers I knew, a with a couple of whom I had prepped, would rather be caught dead naked with their girlfriend's ugly cousin Muffy than hang out with GS people.
But all of this is beside the point. Rather than focus on Obama, who no longer is the country's major problem, I am studying up on the Convention of the States, which seems to me to be one of very few remedies available to the monstrous distortion of the Constitution that is surely to end the Republic. Join me.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3147512/posts
Regards