54 Comments
"I'm holding your future."
This afternoon the Columbia Undergraduate Admissions performed their ritual early decision annoucement send off. Belting “Roar, Lion, Roar”, the crew carried the decisions from Hamilton to the awaiting FedEx truck on College Walk. Now we have only to wait until some intrepid pre-frosh founds the Columbia Class of 2016 facebook group and a new generation of heros are born. Congratulations future Columbians!
Some stats about this year’s Early Decision acceptances:
- Columbia received 3,088 ED applications, 5.86% less than last year.
- Jessica Marinaccio, Dean of Undergraduate Admissions, writes in an email that this is “likely attributable to changes in some of our peer schools’ early policies.”
- However, “the ED pool increased in terms of academic quality indicators, making this the most competitive selection process in our history.”
- Columbia has historically filled 44% of the incoming class with Early Decision applicants, and this percentage did not change this year.
- Accepted early applicants hail from 40 states plus DC and 32 countries outside of the US.
“We are gratified that almost 3,100 students selected Columbia as their first choice school and applied Early Decision. We spent the last several weeks reading applications and vigorously debating cases around the admissions committee table to select the first members of Columbia’s Class of 2016. We were compelled not only by their remarkable academic achievements, but also by their dedication to extracurricular passions, by their commitment to their communities and, most importantly, by their individual voices. It was the boundless curiosity and spirited intellect manifested in their applications that showed us they were genuine Columbians.These new Columbians are also representative of all that makes the current student community so distinctive; they hail from across the United States and from over 30 countries around the world, represent a tremendous diversity of backgrounds, and have expressed an interest in studying almost 90 different academic disciplines in the liberal arts and engineering. Each of these gifted students will bring a unique voice to the spirited discussions and debates (both in and out of the classroom) that have been the hallmark of a Columbia education for almost 260 years. We now eagerly look forward to reading Regular Decision applications and to selecting the rest of the class that will join these tremendous students on campus next fall.”
Loading …
54 Comments
@Anonymous I used to hate it here. Then I got involved with Greek life. It’s not for everyone, but most people in the Greek community are pretty happy here, because it’s filled with people who want to be happy. It’s just not as much the culture to complain about work constantly — and maybe that makes us seem shallow to you non-Greeks, and if it does, I don’t give a shit. The point is that after I found people who actually value happiness, I found it a lot easier to be happy here. There is a way to make this school work for you. You don’t have to join Greek life (like I said, it’s completely the wrong decision for some people), but you do need to surround yourself with happy people. There are people here who seem to base their sense of self-worth entirely on how much worse their work/stress level is than everyone else. I’m not saying that you should ditch your depressed friends — it’s not depression that’s the problem here. It’s that disgusting competitive misery that so many Columbians try to force on one another, bringing down as many people as they can with them. Just don’t get involved with it. Don’t listen to the people who make you feel guilty for sleeping, for putting off an assignment to do something you truly love, for “wasting” precious study time to see your friends. Maybe my grades would be higher if I tried to make myself miserable in the process, but I really don’t care. My grades are absolutely average, but I am a genuinely happy person.
(And it doesn’t hurt that I have 80 or so sisters that truly support and love me.)
So class of 2016: It is possible to love this school. I’d be lying if I said it was easy. But it is absolutely possible. Congratulations on your acceptance!
@and if you think this is an exaggeration.. Ask yourself why the most read and commented article BY FAR on The Eye was about the “Culture of Misery” at our school–written by a student here
OR
Ask yourself at what other school would students themselves be so ruthlessly critical and judgmental about their own fellow students who got caught in the drug bust. No sense of generalized loss as a student body. Just heartless condemnation of their own peers, even as others were visibly affected by the incident. Look at Penn State, they fucking rioted over Paterno’s firing! Obviously I’m not condoning crime or sexual abuse, do you get what I’m saying? Real college kids care about losses from their social communities, PERIOD. Here at Columbia, where school spirit is barely existent, there is no sense of community. All those people back then that acted like the school would be a better place for what happened last year–it’s even more miserable than ever.
@CC'13 Dear Class of 2016,
Yeah… I’m not even trying to be snarky, but for the most part, this is not really an enjoyable place to be. While you certainly can get involved and go out of your way to meet people and take just 4 classes a semester and whatever else people are recommending, the fact of the matter is that you have to go out of your way to enjoy yourself here, which is not my idea of a fun college experience.
Obviously you cant generalize about the personalities of every student, and you can certainly be friendly and meet other friendly people, but that doesn’t change the fact that the actually social CULTURE itself here is cold, distant, competitive, untrusting, and judgmental. Very few people at this school are REAL, GENUINE people, you know? It’s like you get all these extremely intelligent people who were at the top of their classes in high school, and they come here and they want to be cool because the vast majority of the genuises in high schools arent popular; and most CU students just werent popular, and those who arent popular are the ones who want to be the most. A lot of people just end up being forcibly fake and dismissive, making a conscious effort to not be warm and friendly because “the social elite already have friends”. But inside, you know they feel just as distant as anyone else, because after just a few weeks of playing this role, portraying this character of who they thought they want people to believe they really are, people start to see them as that role, and they become supremely miserable at the realization that they are simply too afraid to show who they actually are, getting angry at themselves for putting themselves into such a psychological bind. They become trapped within their own minds. Add to that what is arguably the most incompetent educational administration I’ve ever learned of, and the relentless demands of an ivy league courseload, and you have a recipe for what can only be described as an indescribably profound, near-existential sense of loneliness (you’ll read about that in CC).
This is definitely true with a lot of people here, and it was true for me when I first got here. Honestly, if a few strong doses of MDMA and LSD hadn’t forced me to step back, see the world and people for what they really are, and reassess what is meaningful and important to me, I would be supremely miserable here, and I would probably be taking it out on others by treating people the same way that others have treated me, propagating the same exact behavior of my peers that made me become distant–angry at the world for making me feel like I had to hide and like I wasn’t good enough, doing it to a new person so that someone else can feel my pain. Granted those drugs are great drugs and I highly recommend them, but even so, it’s a shame that it took them to realize what was important to me. That’s how the cold social culture of this school grows and spreads, continuing year after year, sapping the strength and willpower out of people before they have a chance to possibly change things.
This is an extremely trying and taxing environment, even for the most mentally secure and stable people. Unlike the way college should be, fun is not just simply going to be had… you’re gonna have put in major effort to find it. This school is NOT a friendly, warm, relaxed place to be, and despite people’s rebuttals that “there are so many people so obviously most people are not gonna know/talk to you”, I’ve visited other schools of comparable size and the fact remains that they have a CULTURE of fun, camaraderie, making memories, and spending their fleeting college years (they go by SOOO FAST!) enjoying every single moment with as many people as possible, rather than feeling like your whole life is some sort of social or academic competition that you can never seem to win. The one–literally, ONE–time you see the undergrads all come together to go wild and have fun and make a collective college memory is Bacchanal. That’s it. All year. Period. That’s the only time this place feels like college.
You’ll see when you get here; parties are so forced its almost pathetic. It’s weird because there’s tons of booze for sure but most people at any given party dont look like they are actually enjoying themselves. No matter how much everyone drinks, the party will never really be fun, because the openness of social bonds, the camraderie, the positive energy that one can simply sense and feels drawn to when in the presence of genuine and happy people, is glaringly absent. I wonder how many people on this campus can say they have numerous people with whom they have an entirely genuine relationship, or that they have meaningful, non-superficial conversations with numerous people everyday. You would think that people would naturally want this, too! Like who wants fake friends? Who wants to have to hide who they are? Who wants to have a mental sparring match with every social interaction they have? Seriously, you would think no one, but here, I honestly dont know…. Students as a whole just succumb to it instead of trying to change the culture to be happier and healthier.
OK, long rant, but as excited new accepted students you are probably reading everything you possibly can about things like this. All in all, if you want help ensure that you enjoy yourself here, I would say… BE REAL and try to find people who strike you as the same!!!! This is essential! Seriously! This happened by chance early on in my time here when I was bidded at a fraternity much to my suprise, and it was honestly the single most important and pivotal decision in terms of my wellbeing that I’ve ever made here. Search until you find that group of people–or until it finds you. Don’t come here with the goal of being popular… NO ONE IS ACTUALLY POPULAR HERE. Period. Everyone gives the air that they are socially superior, but if everyone’s doing it, who’s actually superior? Accept early on that your dreams of a genuine college experience will be dashed here–you are going to have substantially less of a college-esque good time here than if you went to probably any other school. And most of you will eventually be forced to recognize that the allure of going to school in NYC quickly wears off when you realize that you are trying to maintain a college student’s budget in the middle of the most expensive city in the country. $12 for a pack of Newports–and you best believe that’s just the beginning of it.
And one final time, I say, find that REAL, GENUINE person/group of people early on before everyone closes themselves off socially and its too late. You’re gonna get to a point at some place in your time here where you feel more overwhelmed than you ever have before, and more than you are sure you can handle–if you don’t have that genuine friend to talk to when that moment comes, you’re in for a world of trouble.
Congratulations on your acceptance. You should be proud because it is a truly grand accomplishment. You should also be fully aware of what you’ve actually gotten yourself into.
See ya next year.
@SEAS 15 Most important advice for the incoming class of this post:
“And one final time, I say, find that REAL, GENUINE person/group of people early on before everyone closes themselves off socially and its too late.”
@This is one of the best bwog comments out there.
You have just won entrance into one of the most respected educational institutions in the world. You will be moving to one of the greatest neighborhoods in one of the best cities in the world. Things will go wrong. They will rarely go that wrong.
@ryan ’16-
my advice for you is as follows.
just take four classes a semester like people do at every other school in the country. When you get here, knock on your neighbor’s door and introduce yourself. join a club. if no one wants to do something fun with you, do it alone– and keep that mentality for all four years. the school isn’t going to hand itself to you on a silver platter, and if you want to have a good time here, then have a good time. you deal your own hand at columbia, and as you can see by these comments, a lot of people dealt themselves a pretty stressful one. it doesn’t have to be stressful if you don’t want it to be.
i’ve been here for three years and i will tell you
i really like it, and i want you to like it too.
@Anonymous hey EDers, the fact that half the people on these comments are complaining and the other half are telling you how great it is should be an indicator that some people are telling the truth to you and others are lying to themselves.
columbia does indeed suck ass. you would’ve been better off going to any of the other schools within hypsm than if you came here. the students here are uber-competitive (even about stupid bwog comments), the bureaucracy has the intelligence of a 3 year old with down syndrome, and everything else pretty much sucks! i’m not saying that there won’t be great and good and amazing moments, but those are few and far in between. so good luck tiding your suicidal ideations over with those few great moments while you ever circle around the drain of death while you are here.
but look on the bright side, you can still tell people you go to an ivy. WHAT A VICTORY.
@Anonymous Don’t lose faith! You still have time to make friends. I’ve found that people are quite friendly if you find some common ground with them. Yes, some people are off in their own little worlds — it’s hard not to be when you have so much to do. Don’t be discouraged by people’s apparent lack of compassion; But I’m certain that there are wonderful people who care about you, even if they’re not at this school. Worst case scenario, you’re done in a few months and you can find a group of people who suit you better than the ones here!
@I have no friends here at Columbia I had a lot of hopes when I arrived on campus September of my freshman year, but boy I never could have expected how my life would have turned out here as it has. I’m a senior, and as I reflect on my time as an undergraduate here at Columbia, I can truly say it has been the most terrible period of my life. And mostly because of my profound loneliness. It’s been incredibly hard to make friends here, I don’t really have any honestly, and I’ve realized that just because students here are some of the smartest people in the world, they’re not necessarily the friendliest or even nice. There’s such a cold social atmosphere here, full of blank, anonymous, passing faces. I’ve tried to make friends, but students here are so unfriendly that it makes me cry; I was crying today. I wish I could make more friends but it seems as though no one here wants to be around me. No matter how many times I tell myself I don’t need friends, I feel more and more miserable. I study in the library everyday, but I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even care about studying anymore; it’s all worthless and meaningless when you don’t have friends. It makes me feel so bad to study in the library on Friday nights and Saturdays, but what else can I do? I don’t care any more about studying honestly. When you don’t have friends, you can’t enjoy knowledge or studying no matter how much you try. I’ve lost the desire to attend classes and to study all because of the misery I feel over not having friends. If only Columbia students were friendlier, and I had real friends here, maybe I wouldn’t feel so terrible. Lately, I have thoughts of swallowing a bunch of pills I have on my desk :(
@Carolyn It sounds like you’re going through a really difficult time. You don’t deserve to feel this way, and Columbia offers helpful resources that many have benefited from.
Students can make appointments for free at Columbia Psychological Services (212-854-2878) and Furman Counseling Center for Barnard Students (212-854-2092). Nightline, the anonymous peer counseling hotline, can be reached at 212-854-7777.
There are people here who truly care about your well-being.
@Anonymous keep your head up. we’re all in this place together…
@Please While you still have the chance, don’t go here. Not only will you be miserable, but all you will ever hear from anyone is that it’s your fault. You see, as everyone on campus will tell you, if you actually make an effort/break away from the cycle of complaining/whatever glittering generality you prefer, then Columbia will be a great place and the Cubs will win the World Series and you will be a happy person. But you won’t be. You’ll be miserable. And at that point the general sentiment is, essentially, “before you complain about anything, make sure to take the time to hate yourself for daring to be unhappy at this school.”
@Wow This is wonderfully written, and so very true. That’s what adds to the pain: you feel miserable, but you also hate yourself for it, because of the propaganda. I don’t know what the people in this thread who’re writing “Best years of my life!” have done, but it sure hasn’t been my experience. And this is from someone who’s involved in different things on campus, had leadership roles in them, etc. And who spent last year abroad and had an INCREDIBLE time, making INCREDIBLE friends–so it can’t just be me.
So, CC ’16, this isn’t just about “It’s finals, everyone’s unhappy!” It’s something much deeper. If you’re ED, I guess you’re locked in, but I’d say: expect nothing, ever from Columbia; and don’t rule out the possibility of transfer.
@CC'15 Congratulations to the new members of the class of 2016!
I and all my friends love Columbia! You have no idea how lucky you all are. You get one of the elite universities in the country plus New York City!!!
You have obviously worked very hard to accomplish this goal. Enjoy the rest of high school and get ready to have a great four years at Columbia!
@Hey genius we can track you…
@I lol'd So what’s next, bro? You gonna assume the authorial voice of CC ’14? Or perhaps the psychology of CC ’12 might be more interesting to explore?
@Anonymous Undergraduate Recruitment Committee??
@CC '12 Class of 2016,
Congrats!!
Please know that commenters on Bwog are snarky. I have had the best 3.5 years of my life here and can’t believe I only get one more semester.
Every semester has struggles, it’s almost finals week, and this is Bwog. Please don’t take angry comments to be an indication of what this pace is like!
Go celebrate!!
@cc'13 Dear class of 2016. You have a lot to be proud of and a lot to look forward to.
Columbia is the best thing that ever happened to me! I have made so many great friends and have had so much fun. The best part about Columbia are your fellow students.
Get involved with activities and meet your Columbia classmates. Go to sport events. Explore the City. Take really interesting and challenging classes.
Don’t listen to the anonymous bwog negativity.
You are truly very fortunate to be going to Columbia.
Now, go back to celebrating!
@CC'12 Dear CC ’16
Meet Bwog commenters, who actually are the worst people in the entire world. Truth is that Columbia’s great, even when people want to complain about their work. It’s also just about finals week, so that probably contributes.
When you get to Columbia, don’t be like these people. Get involved on campus, because it’s great. Get to know your professors because lots of them are pretty cool. If you budget your time, you’ll definitely have a social life.
Don’t worry, it’s a great school. Just embrace college and you’ll have an awesome four years.
Congrats, and have fun next year
@Anonymous Early decision: helping rich, comparatively under-qualified people get into college at higher rates since 1978. Something to celebrate, for sure.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2001/09/the-early-decision-racket/2280/
@Anonymous Not at Columbia.
@Anonymous Yes… actually at Columbia. As the admissions office what percentage of ED folks are on financial aid, compared to the overall class. When they refuse to tell you, you’ll have a pretty good sense of who gets in early. Not everyone who applies early is rich, and not all rich people are under-qualified. But turns out, that’s pretty much what the ED pool is all about.
@CC '16 Thank you Bwog for bursting my 7-hour-young happy bubble.
@Lulz That feel you just described? I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to it.
– CC ’12, Butler Library
@"the good kind of ED" I feel like this tag is… questionable. : /
@SEAS '12 Welcome to the 9th circle of hell! Get ready for 4 years of self-doubt, anger, and downtrodden spirits.
As a solace, if the world makes it past 2o12, then 2016 and onward can only look better!
@CC' 12 Lol thats not true. Get ready for 4 extremely turbulent and formative years. The quality of said years will be determined by how you cope and react to the re-evaluation of who you think you are
@Anonymous I think SEAS might be just a tad bit more difficult. Quality of said years will be highly dependent on whether you want to be employed, which is positively correlated to how much time you spend in the library and inversely correlated to how much fun you have.
@CC'12 Congratulations to all the new members of the Columbia community!
Get ready for the best four years of your life!
@Anonymous ^this is a lie.
@If these were the best four years of my life, then I’m going to go open my veins now, before I have to take any of these finals.
@CC '13 penis!
@CC'16 hello I’m very excited to join the columbia community! I have already friended everyone else who was admitted ed as I know we will be friends in future endeavors!
PS. Really cool discussions going on in the college confidential thread; I encourage you all to check it out
@CC '15 Get ready for the awkward, “oh-hey-I’ve-seen-you-on-facebook-and-we’ve-talked-but-this-is-the-first-time-I’m-seeing-you-in-person-and-I-really-don’t-know-how-to-approach-this encounter” looks you’ll be experiencing.
@Anonymous no one thumbs downed this (was going to say dislike, but this isn’t fb)
@Anonymous you aren’t real!
@Anonymous After the first week, you’ll realize everyone has already grouped off into cliques and nobody will give a shit about meeting you anymore.
Also, fb stalker alert
@Anonymous Aaron Phillips 3.0?
@Sucks to be you guys This school has no soul.
@CC 2014 I remember seeing a comment exactly like this on a Bwog when I got in ED. Dear CC 16 kids, it’s sadly a little bit true. But you take the good with bad and you’ll have the best years of your lives.
@Hmm > Still trying to locate the good
> Graduating in five months
> ED kids are screwed
@'11 I’M FUCKING OLD
@'07 It gets worse.
As a side note, dumb that alums that did interviews cannot see whether the people we interview got in until next week. I guess to make sure we don’t email them to say congrats and accidentally be the one to spill the news of acceptance before they check? But really who is not checking incessantly anyway.
@i spot a couple of cc11 people work for admissions now?
@Anonymous oh jeez. Meet your new classmates…
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/columbia-university/1254367-official-columbia-early-decision-class-2016-results.html
@were you one of them back then
@Anonymous the ED pool increased in terms of academic quality indicators, making this the most competitive selection process in our history
^^ Why does it seem like they always say that?
@Anonymous because they always say that
@Anonymous …because they have. These students are better than you.
@Anonymous Congratulations new Columbians!
@That black dude looks like a pussy version of morpheus from the matrix
@His name is Alec and he’s a boss.
@Anonymous and probably admitted you.