Remember your Columbia application essay? Aside from struggling to find the right picture to attach (it had to be fun AND intellectual AND mature AND cool), you probably wrote a compelling essay. Chances are you wanted to change the world.
Most of us entered Columbia with lofty ambitions to engineer positive change. Even if you already knew you were going to be a lawyer or a banker, you probably still talked about how you were going to simultaneously give back and do social good. I know what I wanted to do: I wanted to be either a human rights lawyer or a development economist à la Jeffrey Sachs. I was going to study saving-the-world-onomics. Like the rest of my classmates, I wanted to make a difference.
