"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.
Update 6:45pm: Check after the jump for pictures of admissions delivering the acceptances.


“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.”