59 Comments
The accepted ~6% must be of a rare breed ...like this lynx
Not everyone is deterred by our delinquency! According to Spec, Dean Jessica Marinaccio, Decider of Fates, reported that the admissions office received a whopping 34,587 regular-decision apps this year. Following a record number of early applicants, that makes an overall 32% increase from last year in total applications to Columbia. Marinaccio announced in March that Columbia was going to switch to the Common App, which is probably the most significant factor in the increased volume. Admissions prepared for the onslaught by “increasing staff and improving technologies.” We are sure that these measures will produce only the finest of future Columbians, and we wish all 34,587 potential ’15ers the best of luck. Honestly we probably couldn’t get in now…
Photo via Wikimedia
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59 Comments
@Anonymous I wonder out of the 34,587, how many jews will be disproportionately selected
@Shoe-pooper Yes, probably a lot. You anti-Semitic Fuck.
@Anonymous While Columbia is not a super-elite school, legacy applicants, mostly whites, have a 20 to 40% higher chance of being admitted.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/06/legacy-students-45-percen_n_805272.html
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/09/22/legacy
http://chronicle.com/article/10-Myths-About-Legacy/124561/
Isn’t it funny how blog, which is supposed to be more independent than the spec doesn’t address legacy admissions, or the study proving elite recruiters don’t think much of Columbia?
@Anonymous Sheesh. Was somebody rejected from Columbia recently?
@Anonymous columbia simply is NOT “super-elite.”
@Anonymous Rolling eyes for so many reasons I lost count…..
@Anonymous Columbia is NOT a top 5 school
“I find that educational credentials were the most common criteria employers used to solicit and screen resumes. However, it was not the content of education that elite employers valued but rather its prestige. Employers privileged candidates who possessed a super-elite (e.g., top 5) university affiliation and attributed superior cognitive, cultural, and moral qualities to candidates who had been admitted to such an institution, regardless of their actual performance once there. ” study on elite firm’s recruiting policies.
@Anonymous An even more credible source, more in depth:
http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/brown-and-cornell-are-second-tier/27565
@Anonymous I dont understand why you folks cant simply tell the truth, the whole truth. Here is a lovely study that finds most elite recruiters pooh pooh the oh so selective Columbia. Cant you be honest and address that?
Before posting that study: here is a lovely quote from an old spectator article makes the case why it is the essence of school spirit to criticize the university on its own blog.
” Criticism of Columbia, by Columbia students, within the setting of Columbia–like Gaudeamuses and libations of fine New Jersey vodka–is intimately tied to the sweetness of college days. Poking fun at Columbia is a question of what should best be said where. If I call Dean Yatrakis ”a contemptible, escargot-sniffing goose-stepping Brooklynite Xanthippe” in these pages, this is engagement with campus life. It is, indeed, school spirit. If I, however, so much as call her poorly groomed in the New York Times, I am a disgrace as a Columbian.”
In that vein, here is a study that shows top recruiters arent so impressed with Columbia
http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-princeton-and-yale-2011-1
@Alum “…a whopping 34,587 regular-decision apps…”
That’s actually the total number of apps, at least according to Spec — which Bwog cites as it’s source.
@David Thanks for pointing that out! It’s been corrected.
@... they use a highly sophisticated method of scoring applications similar to this:
http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2006/12/a_guide_to_grad.html
@Anonymous i so want that lynx as my roommate.
@I bet all those Barnard applicants are applying to Columbia in case they don’t make Barnard :)
@Anonymous Yeah people often do that I’m sure
@CC Girl who appreciates Barnard Why the hatin’, dudes, why the hatin’? Spread the love (in every sense of the word) and stop all these words! Otherwise, you guys sound like elite nerds with inferiority complexes because you never get any.
@elite nerdy guy with inferiority complex Leave us out of it. We love Barnard girls. It’s Columbia girls and jocky Columbia guys with inferiority complexes who diss on Barnard.
@I was talking about both Columbia guys & girls!!
@holy crap that’s almost $3 million in application fees alone. (probably closer to $2.5 million after waivers and whatnot.)
@Yeah. Why do you think Columbia switched to the Common App? To make things easier for students?
@Anonymous yeah well they have to sort of pay the people who read the apps somehow…
@Anonymous they dont read them
@Anonymous At most, they spend 2 minutes skimming an application.
@FALSE they spend a lot of time reading them. when i got here the woman who welcomed me quoted my essay, and did the same to all of the people with me.
@FALSE Doubt it
@Anonymous Same. It seriously amazed me how much my admissions officer (Rachel Fried) knew about me during DoC (I had applied ED). I was seriously dumbfounded her attentiveness.
And if you’ve taken the time to talk to any of the admissions officers, you’ll probably change your cynicism too. They’re seriously some of the best.
@true story first met my admissions officer almost two years after i replied. she remembered a lot. more than i did. almost like having a stalker. but cute. they do actually read those things. i assure you.
@me too My parents had dinner with my admissions officer as part of DOC, and he had a lot to say about my essay and my hometown.
@uhh.... I’m pretty sure there are an ass load of smart kids in the bunch that just won’t get in. More people overall is definitely unnerving.
@Anonymous “The relative percentages are skewed by the increase in idiots who apply here.”
Agreed. All the kids wanting to go to NYU have now applied to Columbia..!
@34587? actually, the real number is probably close to 1,000,000 (around the median bonus of many of our alums, 20 years out heh heh…but i degress…)
only 34587 people in this world actually “believe” they have a chance to get in here, even if it’s 0.1%. The rest of the 1,000,000 high school students in this world WANT to go here, but no they can’t stand a chance so there’s no point in wasting the time to apply.
@uh... why did this get 5 thumbs downs? i don’t understand? if you disagree with something, im open to debate although, being columbians, i was hoping to see more school spirit…
@Anonymous I didn’t thumb it down, but I’m guessing it’s your dim outlook on high school students, saying some are “wasting time” to apply?
I don’t know, even if logically that makes sense, I don’t think anyone considers it to be a “waste of time.” How many of us applied to Columbia not as a “safety school” to HYP, but as a legitimate shot-in-the-dark dream school? It’s a $50+ dip in your wallet to pursue your dreams and take a chance, and I don’t think that’s a waste of time in the slightest.
Just my 2 cents~
@uh... honestly man, if you can’t calculate risk and reward maybe take some statistics?
if your SATs are real sub-par, your GPA isn’t real good eithyer, you dont have much ECs and your essay really isnt that convincing, AND you didnt have some life story and you were a regular kid, AND you dont have any other hook, AND youre not a URM or have athletic skills, how the HELL do you think you’ll make it in, UNLESS out of pure luck the admissions officer confused your name with someone else’s?
of course there would be times you wouldnt apply. If I didnt get the scores I got or the extracurriculars that I did, I wouldnt apply here either.
@anon Oh please, don’t act like everyone’s so perfectly calculating and rational. Even having that laundry list of qualifications the best “rational’ expectation to make is that you won’t get in. After all, E[X]=.09. But it sure did make you feel better about yourself now didnt it?
@yo stfu E(getting in | horrible stats and no special circumstance) =! .09. Conditional probability for the win, bitch.
I hate self-righteous people like you who argues for the sake of arguing. good grief. “Oh just apply and follow your dreams…your stats suck but you still have a .09 chance of getting in.”
How about something “dude, you won’t get in. Get your shit together, try really hard in college and then reapply for graduate school.”
@i will defend you, my good man. if you are nowhere near the stats, let’s say for the sake of my argument you have an applicant with a 1.9 GPA, 1300 SAT (out of 2400), no extracurricular, dad is the ceo of a fortune 500 company, would you accept him? (assuming dad isn’t donating money for a new building?)
I would just say save the application fee money. even though money wouldn’t be an issue.
@perhaps columbia will take a chance on stats like that, but don’t get me wrong, dad will be “compelled” to donate upon graduation, most likely.
@perhaps o nvm those are really retarded stats..
@Anonymous I wasn’t accounting for the people who had absolutely positively no chance of getting in. There’s no need to jump between “dreamer” and “realist” – you can balance both. I figured anyone who was even considering Columbia as an option had something to go on. I don’t think people will just go around blowing $50+ fees on unattainable dreams – I’m speaking for the people who have dreams and work hard for them. It’s not “taking a chance” like the lottery. It’s taking a chance on everything you’ve worked torward and believe. OF COURSE there are a billion scenarios where it makes no sense for a person to apply – I didn’t think we would waste time accounting for those, and I didn’t say they don’t exist.
ANYWAY: I’m done arguing. Your entire post was just to poke fun at the word “want” in the blog title. “Only arguing for the sake of arguing.” So this is just a waste of time.
@.... dormlist sucks had such a bad experience with it
@Anonymous I still have no effing clue why on earth Columbia let me in here.
@Yea we were thinking about that here at the admissions office, and we’ve realized that we mismatched your face to a more qualified applicant, but we’ve already received your tuition so what does that matter anyway?
@CC '12 I have that feeling every day. I must be much smarter than I think for hoodwinking the admin office. I need to somehow make it work again for grad school, but I have no idea how.I feel like any day they’re gonna knock on my door and make me pack my things because they figured me out.
@Anonymous You wanna feel really small? Check out the statistical abstract and look at “Undergraduate Degrees by Program of Study” (http://www.columbia.edu/cu/opir/abstract/students.html)
@woah 112 got history degrees and 128 for poli sci? shit. what do all of you hope to do later with those degrees, if not apply for law school? just wondering…
are all of you going to become teachers or professors/academia?
@duh read bwog all day.
@Are you gay, black or native american? jkkk
@Because of NYC... every successive jump in these kinds of statistics gives us a greater relative jump in stature versus other schools. More kids will want to go here, and more professors will want to teach here. For example, why teach at the best Econ department at Princeton when you could go to a nearly as good one in NYC?
Great success!
@Anonymous i don’t think isolating NYC as a factor is fair (at least if you mean it negatively). I mean it certainly is a factor, but I think we all can attest that NYC has augmented our education, or at least our quality of life. I think the comparison to Princeton is great. So what if the academics are a wash–as they are at the top schools–the location and culture of campus is going to influence you much more than the number of citations that the econ department churned out.
@to the above cheap much??
@Come on, dude. We’re poor college students! We don’t all have rich mommies and daddies to splurge on us.
@student Bwog, could you do a PSA on the website where Columbia students can sell/buy books from each other? Thanks!
@uum 6% is a relative percentage, doesn’t mean admission was that competitive. Every year, a finite amount of students get admission to this school. The relative percentages are skewed by the increase in idiots who apply here. Flag down all you want, it won’t change this fact.
@agreed. the # of qualified applicants has not changed…it’s not like every year there is an intelligence increase among the society’s youth. in a generation where kids use ipads to learn arithmetic, I would point to the contrarily. it’s just that the average # of schools each student applied to that makes college admissions so competitive.
@Kids these days... When I was a freshman, we had to chisel out our applications in stone, and then send them by pterodactyl to the Admissions Cave. In the snow.
@ha... I am generally in agreement with you, and I appreciate the fact that you prove your own point by including “to the contrarily” in your remarks.
@wow great argument. pointing out a spelling/grammar error.
@uh what are you guys talking about? I’m pretty sure the commenter is talking about dormslist.com where you can buy and sell books from columbia students, cutting out the middleman
Totally agreed–please do a psa about dormslist! I’m not at all affiliated, but like culpa (which you do do psa’s for), this site will only work with student involvement! And I for one would like as many students to participate as possible so we have as many options as we can for buying books. Sorry is that selfish? I just want to stop giving the bookstore my money.