Senior profile: Lauren Cooke

Starting time was not guaranteed coming into Columbia, and Lauren Cooke—now an all-Ivy center back for the women’s soccer team—embraced that.

“I was deciding between MIT and Columbia,” Cooke said. “And in my recruiting, one of the girls on the [Columbia] team directly was like, ‘Do you want to play real soccer again?’”

MIT guaranteed Cooke her center back position, “all 90 minutes of it,” but also offered only Division III competition, which ended up being the deal breaker.

Although she didn’t hit the field immediately, she found playing time by the end of her freshman year.

Three years later, Cooke exits Columbia a decorated athlete. Since her sophomore year, she has led the team in minutes played and didn’t miss a single minute her senior year. Last year, she earned second team all-Ivy accolades.

Cooke describes another aspect of her decision to pick Columbia over MIT as unorthodox. She professes that she’s more of the math-and-science type—she was the lone SEAS student on this year’s team—but ironically, the former high school valedictorian chose to play for the Light Blue because of the University’s liberal arts component.

“Academically, Columbia would have pushed me to be good at other things and force me to be … more well-rounded,” Cooke said, adding that she thinks that engineering students should be required to take more humanities classes in the Core.

A graduating mechanical engineering major, she spent two summers working at Chevron and built a source-separate latrine (a type of communal urinal area) last summer in Ghana with Engineers Without Borders. In a year or two, though, Cooke plans to attend medical school, and she hopes to become a doctor one day.

“I really enjoyed it [majoring in mechanical engineering]. I think it’s so fun and so cool. But I don’t know if I find it thoroughly satisfying as a career for life, as I would really enjoy as a doctor—the actual interaction with patients, the fact that you have a direct feel of the difference you’re making the world,” Cooke said.

QUESTIONS FOR THE ATHLETE:

Advice for the team for next year: “Savor every moment and really take it all in.”

Best team moment: “Winning 2-1 at Penn this year—Columbia overtook Penn for first place with the win.”

Parting words to the coach: “Thank you so much for your dedication to the team and for your passion throughout all of it and for each one of us—our lives on and off the field.”