Representative - Why Columbia Essay

I am currently writing my 'How does ... satisfy your desire to attend university' question and have conducted a fair amount of research on Columbia. I am a little unsure about how to formulate my answer. Is it okay to cite specific staff members and their work as a reason? Research opportunities available?

So for Columbia I was thinking about starting off with 'When I first read 'The End of Poverty' by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, I finally felt like there was hope for the billion of people who live on less than a day. In his book, his optimism had inspired me and as I read on I became more intrigued to learn from him. At Columbia, the Earth Institute, led by Professor Jeffrey Sachs himself, stands as a leader in fighting against poverty and with the Millenium Villages Project it is making lots of progress. The Earth Institute, to me, is representative of Columbia as a whole. With the best professors in the world, such as Joseph Stiglitz, and as a major research university Columbia is creating ground-breaking research that I would love to be apart of.' Would this be too specific? Is focusing on a professor not answering the general question of why Columbia?

All advice would be welcome and much appreciated!

I think its okay to mention names, but instead of focusing on how good the professor is, I think you need to mention how you will utilize the faculty and research opportunities.

Being specific is very good because that let the AO knows that you know a lot about the school. Good luck!

Thanks for the advice. I think I will probably alter it, as you say, to focus on the faculty and the programs they offer where one works with staff.

the specificity is good, it shows that you've done your research
but be sure to elaborate more on Columbia as a whole