<p>Columbia set a new record this year, admitting only 6.89% of applicants. This is an all-time record, significantly lower than last year's rate (7.4%) and slightly lower than the previous record set two years ago (6.92%).</p>
<p>This year, the university only admitted 2,311 students out of 33,531 applications.</p>
<p>This makes Columbia the third-most selective Ivy.</p>
<p>Does selectivity matter all that much? If it ranks Columbia highly, it becomes a reason for Columbia’s awesomeness. If it doesn’t, suddenly it’s dependent on trivial factors like student whimsy that can’t affect Columbia’s awesomeness anyway. I feel that admissions rates are good motivation for future applicants, but I’m not so sure this blog (or bwog, whatever) is taking such data the right way.</p>
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<p>Like, I feel embarrassed for that blogger just reading that.</p>
<p>It is worth noting that you can’t really compare the admission rates in that list of schools. The figure is highly dependent on yield and comparing ED schools to non-ED schools is apples to oranges. HYP do not have Early Decision like all the other schools on that list so they cannot count on having some 40% (45% in Columbia’s case) of their class having a 100% yield. This means they have to admit more students overall based a 65%-80% yield for the whole class.</p>
<p>SCEA, which all three of those now have, also affects admit rate, but to a much lesser degree. Yield is better for students that apply SCEA rather than RD but still not close to 100%. You can note how H and P’s yield went up last year with the re-institution of Early Action, to the point that P miscalculated and over-enrolled. That is why its admit rate went down this year although it had about 100 fewer applicants.</p>
<p>Admit rate can also be manipulated by wait-listing and other things, so take those statistics with a big grain of salt.</p>
I feel that admissions rates are good motivation for future applicants, but I’m not so sure this blog (or bwog, whatever) is taking such data the right way.</p>