By Ali Feldhausen

Deciding which classes to take at SIPA can be tough. The same can be said about understanding the mandatory curriculum.

Official student reviews are buried deep inside Vergil (or maybe it’s Courseworks?); requirements are hidden in the Columbia website (we dug them out here), and course descriptions never quite fit the exact feel of the class. That’s why we asked for a different kind of review. 

To get a real insight into the courses and what to expect at SIPA, check out some of our favorite classroom review haikus below. 

General Classes
Sorting through what’s valuable and not can feel like a Herculean task. Here are some of the general class reviews from your fellow Seeples.  

Conflict Resolution with Professor Richard Gowan
Best practices are
Bad practices, but, still, please,
Join field, do like so

Campaign Management
Guest lectures each class
Group projects without guidelines
Who is teaching what

War, Peace, and Strategy with Professor Richard K. Betts
Bottled scorpions
Politics by other means
Reading, without end

Microeconomics and Macroeconomics
Economics classes loom large during your first year at SIPA. Students provide an honest take of their experiences.

Microeconomics with Professor Paola Valenti
Oh Saint Paola!
Protector of all students
SIPA's Guardian

Microeconomics with Professor Paola Valenti
numbers, confusion
yikes yikes yikes (graph) yikes yikes yikes
Paola is cool, though

Microeconomics with Professor Paola Valenti
Patience of a saint
Utility maximized
Paola, econ wiz

Microeconomics
Hunger and famine
Floods and great lightning, but worse:
Micro tomorrow

Microeconomics
A class for the mass
of the world's future leaders
and math-challenged wonks

Microec: a personal experience
supply and demand
look as if drawn by a child
when I graph by hand

Microeconomics Homework
Homework free-riding:
A dominant strategy
To make former friends

Macroeconomics
Learn how to resolve
The global unemployment
But yours has to wait 

Quantitative Analysis
Affectionately known as Quant, this required course brings up mixed feelings. 

Quantitative Analysis
Improbable X
Abnormal distribution
We are residuals

Quantitative Analysis
Cherry blossoms sway;
petals dance in golden air.
Two-tailed t-tests - sigh.

Quantitative Analysis
Requirement for all
And assurance of success
Is a causation of misery

Quantitative Analysis, A Misadventure
Sign up for boot camp
STEM for my liberal arts soul
Insignificant. (Statistically)

Quantitative Analysis: A Final
Dumpling dip, panic
All your buddies study
You eat and panic.

Politics of Policy Making
Everyone calls this PoP, to the point where I had no idea what the acronym stood for. 

PoP: American Institutions —  Lecture
Professor with perk
who's also younger than you
shows our system sucks

PoP: American Institutions —  Recitation
Underpaid TAs
teaching "memos: for dummies"
make class kinda fun

Conceptual Foundations of International Politics
The POP equivalent for MIA students. Unfortunately, this class has no cool acronym, we just shorten it to “Conceptual Foundations.”

Conceptual Foundations
Big lecture beginning;
Two papers and a debate?
Small lecture, we end.

So there you have it! If you want more honest reviews, check our archives for Conceptual Foundations Course Review #2, Conceptual Foundations Discussion- Hisham Aidi, Full Disclosure Course Review: Microeconomics (6400), Full Disclosure Course Review: Quant I, Full Disclosure Course Review: Macroeconomics, and Full Disclosure Course Review: Conceptual Foundations, and if you or anyone you know would like to write an honest review in whatever format, please reach out to us at Tmpsipasubmissions@gmail.com.