34,587 Applications... Unbelievable

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
101

<p>^ 1) no, it won’t affect transfer applicants, at least not for transfer applicants for this year</p>

<p>2) I really don’t understand what the big deal is over Columbia changing from its own application to Comm App. If anything, I would expect Columbia to lament over it, while the all the applicants rejoice. If I were a college head or whatever, I would want my own applications…but today where all the top colleges (or almost all) use comm app, I would just have to be a bandwagon. Plus everyone is affected equally so … If the argument is that Columbia is being pretentious, so what? A few people might hold that view, but no offense, no one is going to care (seriously no offense and no rudeness intended…I actually thought about the repercussions of the perception that Columbia is being pretentious over a couple of times, but I seriously can’t see anyone really caring about that view)</p>

<p>3) I agree with hopingdad that there will be a increase in “underqualied” applicants…however, keep in mind that the application is read in context. If what admissiongeek said is true (which I think it is…I mean, kids from less privileged school applying because of increased access), then odds are down for everyone nonetheless. If a very underprivileged student with mediocre or subpar grades applies who may not have otherwise applied, you never know what could happen…the committee might give the underprivileged circumstance a lot of weight, and accept the student nonetheless…so I guess there will be more “hooks” in the applicant pool or whatever</p>

<p>4) Hopingdad, if I’m correct, admission rate has a lot more weight in rankings such as U.S news rankings than yield.</p>

<p>let’s all cross our fingers and see what happens…-.- GG columbia for 33% increase nonetheless</p>

102

<p>Admissionsgeek - have you hung out with kids who have never heard of Columbia University? There are millions of them. i guess htey count among the kids who have “never been told to a school like Columbia.”</p>

<p>The Upper West Side is a helluva lot nicer now than it was in 1975. Also, don’t discount what Spiderman and Obama have done for Columbia.</p>

<p>Columbia has been great for a long, long time - it is just that a lot of people are just learning it.</p>

103

<p>glido - have you read my posts carefully? i know folks that have never heard of columbia, which is why using something like the common app provides a mechanism through which students can find out about columbia and gain more curiosity and perhaps apply.</p>

104

<p>Today, it doesn’t seem like people are looking for schools that are as much a “match” for them in terms of where they fit over the prestigiousness of the school. Which is indeed sad as many people just go to schools for a name. And because no one cares anymore, they don’t care if Columbia is truly a “fit” for them as they once did, but they love it now that it’s on the CommonApp and is a simple few clicks and semi-generic “Why Columbia?” essay away from applying.</p>

105

<p>does anyone know if columbia sends out likely letters (for non-athletes)?
Yale (seems to be targeting science kids), Harvard, and Dartmouth do</p>

106

<p>yes columbia has in the past years done likely letters.</p>

<p>and don’t worry prospective applicants, the why columbia still matters a lot to admissions folks, they will use it to tell the difference between the strongest candidates and just good ones.</p>

107

<p>Columbia sends quite a few non-athletic likelies every year.</p>

<p>admissionsgeek, I’m still not convinced that that not adopting the Common App was preventing brilliant students from applying to Columbia.
Explore and discover Columbia through the Common App? Why not through the dozen other college search websites, or even, god forbid, like, Columbia’s website?
I don’t think exploration of Columbia has anything to do with the Common App.</p>

<p>The lack of the Common App being a deterrent to applicants does not seem to be a great concern too. How exactly do you imagine a really brilliant student who wanted to go to Columbia would be deterred from applying to Columbia before the adoption of the Common App? Do explain.
If you’re talking about brilliant students with 1800’s on the SAT, any counselor would be hard pressed to urge them to apply to Columbia; if you’re talking about students with 2000’s from disadvantaged backgrounds, I cannot believe that the counselor wouldn’t be willing to give the student a paper copy of his transcript.</p>

<p>I know many international students who knew nothing about the American application process, actually did a search on Google, did all of their research on their own, had had to have all of their recommendations translated (all of this without the existence of a guidance counselor) and got into great colleges with full financial aid. The thought that some awesome but disadvantaged students couldn’t possibly get a paper copy of their recommendations or transcripts just boggles my mind.</p>

108

<p>below are my observations, but after talking around with admissions officers at columbia that i work with now as an alum, they said they are pretty accurate.</p>

<p>a) i have worked with students who go to underresourced high schools in urban and rural areas, where they score 2000+ on testing and would be extremely competitive at columbia, but are not allowed to apply because their counselors will not let them apply to non common-app schools. i mean refused. you can’t believe it - but we are talking about working with a few dozen schools here. similarly - gcounselors will begin the conversation on where to apply by pulling up the commonapp website. ingraining at the beginning an interest only in some schools and not others.</p>

<p>b) i have worked with students who go to schools in new york who do not apply to columbia because it is known as an elitist institution that wont allow students to apply using the common application. the perception that it doesn’t want to allow ease to apply.</p>

<p>c) i have worked with students who don’t have computers, and limited access to computers at school, who as a result often are unaware of columbia, of its opportunities, and are generally unfamiliar with the college application process and therefore have </p>

<p>d) i know many middle class to upper class students that are beholden to rumor and gossip and make decisions based on perception. i remember when i applied to columbia i was chastised by folks because it was not on the common app, including my upper middle class suburban guidance counselor who questioned if it was a good idea. </p>

<hr>

<p>i think you’re conflating a lot of things. 1) having the time and self-direction to apply to school and being brilliant are not the same things. if you’re smart, you’re smart, and though you should spend some time applying to colleges it shouldn’t be (as one person once told me) your only priority. 2) if for every 8 new applicants, columbia gets 2 applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds that would have not applied, it is worth the change. 3) the system itself is so messed up that any effort at reducing barriers (particularly psychological ones) is a good idea. 4) columbia couldn’t afford to continue being the only ivy out there without being on the common app, sometimes you have to keep up with the joneses.</p>

<p>there are hundreds if not thousands of students that are admissible that were not applying beforehand, and many of them come from underresourced backgrounds. resourced kids whose parents send them to private schools or hire consultants are not lacking in support. but i will say, i knew quite a few kids (from my hs and afterward) who received outside support, paid a lot of money for it, but ultimately got wrong advice and incomplete support especially when it comes to understanding the relatively confounding world of college admissions. at emory it matters if you have visited, but not so much at columbia; you shouldn’t send in a request for an interview at this school, but you should at another; this school accepts test scores on your transcript, but that school does not; one school will accept a teacher recommendation without the cover letter, another will consider it incomplete.</p>

<p>not even i - someone who keeps up and reads the latest things on college admissions, who has tutored kids who are applying to college , and been an involved volunteer for columbia - know every permutation of what does or does not matter. and i’m a rather extreme case (hell my nick is admissionsgeek). imagine the kid without that kind of knowledge and with minimal support.</p>

<p>the commonapp is something that has become institutionalized in american college application culture like the SAT. everyone knows it, everyone uses it. it is like the fear that some students still have (and at times rightfully so) that a school wont accept the ACT, how are they to know what is or is not truth. but the commonapp, it is a known quantity that even the least involved parent may have heard about it once.</p>

<p>and in the end, as sad as this all may be, and i did shed a tear for the ‘barrier’ that Columbia’s own application created, sometimes being the only guy on an island is more of a tribute to stubbornness than intellect. college admissions is changing, and students vociferously have stated that they prefer to have everything as centralized as possible. naive? perhaps. lazy? most likely. but when still 60% of the country isn’t going to 4 year colleges after high school, there is a market for expanding college access, and if some students irrational choice to apply to columbia gets them to the common app and then helps them find other schools to apply to, then consider that a salvo for the system.</p>

109

<p>I don’t want why polygot seems to be hating on Columbia’s switching to common app so much.</p>

<p>1) He brings up how international students have enough resources and are able to do adequate research on Columbia, but he fails to realize that international students are extremely wealthy and rich (there are exceptions to the rule, however), hence the reason they’re applying to foreign schools like Columbia, which gives no (or very little) financial aid to internations (which means they realize they have to pay the whole 57k a year…). Compare this to innercity districts, where drop out rate in certain high schools exceed 25%, half of the students don’t have internet access at home…big discrepancy there, don’t you think?</p>

<p>2) he says for students to discover columbia through its own website (quote “god forbid, like Columbia’s website?”…). What does that have to do with switching application methods? I have looked at COlumbia’s old application, and honestly, I don’t see a big difference from the comm app one. Both gives you adequate space to say “why columbia?” Can’t you (aren’t you suppose to?) get to know columbia either way by checking out its website? … am i not catching something or is that and the other ways he advocates to check out columbia completely irrelevant to columbia’s application switch?</p>

<p>3) “How exactly do you imagine a really brilliant student who wanted to go to Columbia would be deterred from applying to Columbia before the adoption of the Common App? Do explain.”
-um while they wouldn’t be “deterred,” it would be a lot of extra trouble to go through another application/recs, etc., especially with the rigor of senior year courseload (many at my hs are taking 7, 8 AP’s senior year). And they procrastinate a lot (lol), which means that many end up finishing even common app ones an hour before deadline. They definitely wouldn’t have the time or would be willing to take the time to do a whole new app at the last second. This may seem like a really juvenile argument, but its pretty much reality; and it might be their own fault for not starting earlier, but Columbia does want to ease the stress of applying to that one extra school. </p>

<p>4) its not just about “giving them transcripts.” Counselors have to write a recommendation; and if the counselor is forced to write a rec for a student to a college that he/she didnt want the student to apply to in the first place, or is writing a rec for a student he/she believes has no chance at romanticized ivy league schools, what do you imagine his/her mentality will be when he/she is writing that rec? Not the most positive I assume, and I don’t think he/she will write the best rec he/she can write… </p>

<p>Honestly dude I don’t understand why people are making such a big deal out of the transition…is Columbia somehow “shallow” for wanting to reach out and be on par with the rest of the ivies in terms of recruitment opportunities? Is the 32% applicant increase rate not a good thing? -.-</p>

110

<p>admissionsgeek and collegeftw make good points, but I think it needs to be said that even IF the only extra applicants Columbia gained were unqualified, getting onto an even level with its competitors in terms of applications would decrease its acceptance rate and bring more of the kids who actually are qualified to Columbia in the end (higher yield).</p>

111

<p>admissionsgeek,
***?
After reading the whole of your long post, I still cannot find the answer to my question. How exactly is a brilliant student who wants to apply to Columbia deterred from applying there?
I can understand why a GC responsible for 2000 students might restrict his students to the Common App (obviously a great havoc would ensue), but I don’t understand why the GC wouldn’t have been willing to copy paste his recommendation to Columbia’s online app for about only a handful of brilliant students every year. And even if the GC says he is not capable of copy pasting the recommendation, why couldn’t he just print the recommendation and/or the transcript for the student? Columbia does allow students to apply by paper (this would be especially advantageous to students you mention who don’t have computers) and printing a document or copy pasting text for twenty students should not be a problem for even the busiest counselor.</p>

<p>

Does anybody know whether this is common practice? I have never heard of such a thing, and I come from a very poor background.</p>

<p>The Columbia-discovery idea, especially, sounds to me unconvincing. Why a brilliant student would not do a 1-hour Google search on best and generous colleges (which would inevitably lead to the discovery of Columbia) at this age is beyond me. Perhaps, a few years ago no student would have had the brilliant idea of using the internet, but now if a student can’t do even that, that is just sad. </p>

<p>I might clarify that I’m not at all against the change to the Common App; in fact, I support it as much as anyone could, but I do not agree with the premise that prior to the adoption of the Common App, amazing students were not able to apply to Columbia or that students started discovering Columbia through the Common App.</p>

112

<p>I’m not replying to collegeftw’s post because it is full misconceptions and misreadings and I don’t have time enough to correct all of them, which I would have to do to answer the post.</p>

113

<p>polyglot - short of the fact that you nor i are privy to the data that columbia had, and that other elite institutions have used as a defense to jump to the common app, i think ultimately what this amounts to is speculation.</p>

<p>i have it on good authority that columbia believed it could grow its underresourced applicant pool considerably by switching to the common app, especially native american applicants, urban and rural applicants. i also know having been a student working under the folks at columbia that they had a lot of principled objections to the switch, but almost always came to that same point about the usefulness of the commonapp; no amount of money spent on recruiting and targeting students could do what a switch to the common app would do in terms of increasing certain populations.</p>

<hr>

<p>i remember in high school doing a search for schools that had international relations majors and trying to narrow my search just to those schools. columbia would’ve been excluded from that list because it doesn’t have that major. a student operating in good faith trying to find a school of his/her choice could end up bypassing columbia because of the search criteria used.</p>

<p>as for what i said before - i was chastised because when i applied to columbia, you had to have a handwritten application - columbia and brown were unique back then in still requiring handwritten applications. people said i was wasting my time, and that a school that asked you to do a handwritten app was silly. in the end i produced a half-assed application that by some grace of god found me admitted to columbia, but i never really gave it the chance that i now advise students to give to their applications. there was an elitism that came with applying to columbia or chicago or reed in my day in part because of the barriers they constructed in their application. </p>

<p>if columbia can still ask its questions, and have it now be online and have it now be through the common app website, who does it hurt? the only thing that gains is that in the over 8,000 new applicants to columbia, hundreds of those are going to produce the kind of depth to their applicant pool that means they don’t have to take the first physics major they see, or just any student of color. it gives them the depth to truly choose the class they want without having to feel there is a lack of depth.</p>

114

<p>in the end - you’ll have to choose to believe me, or yourself, or seek out more information (perhaps ask folks at the commonapp or columbia) to figure out what you want to believe. at a certain point you have to put yourself back in the mind of a 17 yo, thinking about boys or girls, popularity and competition, how things are perceived as much as how things are. i have a lot of sympathy and understanding for being a high school student, it isn’t easy, and applying to top tier colleges is tough. in the end just because you can do something doesn’t mean someone else cannot. nor can we begin to fathom the number of unique scenarios that could lead someone to or away from columbia; silly things such as it raining on the day you visit sometimes make people not apply. then how silly is it that something like being able to check off a school through the commonapp lead someone to perhaps find the school that is an ideal fit?</p>

<p>i regret i didn’t give it my all in the columbia app, but i am happy in the end i still applied because i can’t imagine having gone to another school. but like anything it took a bit of chance, a bit of confusion, and that was me coming from a pretty good public school.</p>

115

<p>I’ll offer a bit of a different perspective. As the guy in my company who ultimately makes decisions on “information systems,” I can tell you that inertia is a very powerful force. When it comes to deciding whether to change from one system to another (e.g., whether to move from a custom application to the Common Application), one is prone to a decision based on “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I’m sure there was a significant amount of trepidation surrounding the transition. Columbia invested a lot of time, money and other resources in its custom application. The fear of glitches surrounding a new system, I’m sure, was top of mind for those involved. I suspect for the last number of years, the topic of whether to switch was a perennial and heated debate. Last year, finally, admissionsgeek’s point likely held sway: insistence on the custom application was determined to be stubborn and antiquated.</p>

<p>There’s nothing wrong with making the highly-charged college application process less daunting.</p>

116

<p>admissionsgeek, I never was against the transition; out of the thousand more applications, it is obvious that some will be admitted who might not have applied before, but what I have been saying for many posts now is that brilliant students who wanted to apply to Columbia were not in recent history prevented from finding out about Columbia or consequently applying there by the late adoption of the Common App. From what I gather from reading your post, I believe you have conceded on this point.</p>

117

<p>Now we’ll just see how long MIT lasts :)</p>

118

<p>i don’t think i ever conceded the point, i think it was more a question of semantics, i know read how your question shifted from first being ‘surprised’ that someone would not know about columbia to a more direct, how could someone who wanted to apply to columbia not be able to. i think it is reasonable to presume that some people didn’t know about columbia university (especially different from other schools of the same name, talk to someone in chicago or missouri about columbia, and the school on their mind isn’t columbia university), and could have become more curious about it because of the commonapp. remote? perhaps. but reasonably one could presume. i think the other contention that people were deterred from applying, well that has a lot more weight to the tune of 8k more people applied because the barrier was released (for a lot of reasons, i’ve listed a few).</p>

<p>–</p>

<p>but i like a shift in your tone. you talk about ‘want’ to apply and not being able to. your statement treats college admissions way to simplistically. first of all no student is ever applying to columbia in a vacuum (if they don’t apply to columbia the option would be to apply nowhere). as individuals we always seek the path of least resistance. so ultimately the question of wanting to apply to columbia or not is not a binomial probability, and we ought to qualify different categories of want. want that could be weak, want that could be strong, want that could be even unknown to the individual in question, want that can be sincere, want that could be pressure, want that could come from parents, want that could be stymied by others (there are significant social pressures from parents, classmates and authority figures that could lead someone to decide against a ‘want’). i could go off on this, but i think all i need to do is prove that your use of want was uncritical and clearly lacking, and i have.</p>

119

<p>but this is where things need to become interesting - because i remain fascinated by your insistence that you could not fathom knowing a student that couldn’t know about columbia.</p>

<p>when i applied to columbia, a good friend of mine that went to johns hopkins stated ‘isn’t columbia at the end of long island’? there are different levels of knowledge. </p>

<p>a) basic knowledge - he could know of columbia, its reputation, and still yet not know anything specific about the school. knowledge of a school can be basic, it can involve mere name recognition, seeing a school on a list. i live in chicago now, do you know what happens when i say i went to columbia? folks immediately recognize the name, but not for what you think, you see there is a columbia college in chicago, and most folks in chicagoland know only about this columbia. indeed you’d be surprised how often i would have to clarify where i went to school when i said columbia’s name. it is like the astonishment that people have when only 3 odd percent of the population know their own senator.</p>

<p>b) knowledge could come in the form of misinformation. i heard a rumor by a student that a faculty member at his school stated “columbia college is actually a school of columbia university.” something that was not true, but let’s imagine that something like this caught on. for example i stated above i was chastised for thinking about applying to columbia - this was because someone said “columbia forces you to take classes like you are in high school, you don’t want that.” a few dozen students said this to me. in the end i came to believe, wow columbia FORCES you to do things? how bad. that certainly impacted my understanding. you could be aware of columbia, but decide against the school or be led to another school based on misinformation. look up the number of schools that have the name columbia in it. now look up the number that say “Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford.”</p>

<p>c) lack of knowledge is certainly the least likely ‘level of knowledge’ but it is no less plausible. even from a smart student applying to colleges. why might that be? myopia. i wont apply to any school that is not HYP because i have heard of hyp. specific interests - i want to be a dancer, my life is made up only about knowing about dance studios and top dance schools. then there is someone like my friend Mark. Mark was a screw up in high school, but scored off the charts on the SAT and started getting noticed by everyone and everything. he got hundreds of those postcards, most of which he disregarded as he spent most of the days high in the woods behind school. he tried to go into the army, was not allowed, went to community college, but flunked out. eventually i talked to him, he asked where i was, i said - i go to school at columbia. he asked me where that was. brilliance, genius, or to use your term ‘Einstein’ nature doesn’t require that someone know about columbia. </p>

<p>intellect and knowledge are not one in the same.</p>

120

<p>and the final of a troika of posts:</p>

<p>i am going to bring you to task for a few things. mostly for being so ‘surprised’ that someone couldn’t know about columbia. </p>

<p>first folks should know a few things.
a) this thread you started - <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/832624-chance-einstein.html#post9342814[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/what-my-chances/832624-chance-einstein.html#post9342814&lt;/a&gt;
b) “I know many international students who knew nothing about the American application process, actually did a search on Google, did all of their research on their own, had had to have all of their recommendations translated (all of this without the existence of a guidance counselor) and got into great colleges with full financial aid.” This statement is really autobiographical for you if anything.
c) you use the term that you are ‘very poor’ and yet you also state you are from a Scandinavian country. i once got into an argument with someone about college admissions and how it helps the ‘very poor.’ she made a great point. that is a farce. to be honest it skims from the top, even of the very poor. you may be poor by your country’s standards. but the fact that you are literate, and score 800/800/770 suggests that you had significant opportunity both as a youngster and growing up. i’d guess you’d have attended the UWC in Norway, but for some reason that doesn’t check out with someone that states that he/she isn’t taking a very demanding course load. in the end you had a significantly strong educational background that cultivated natural talents.</p>

<hr>

<p>when we know more about you, the fact that you are really one of the ivy-baiters, that you basically only applied to ivy league schools. the fact that you are not representative of the average college applicant, in fact you are more prepared than most (heck by virtue of the fact that you are on college confidential that is proof positive already). of course it would come as a shock to you that someone could be reasonable, smart and still not know about columbia.</p>

<p>further because so much of your posts are autobiographical. because you truly do believe that you are the representation of someone that has overcome a bad situation and therefore you hold yourself as the bare minimum, you find it impossible that someone could want to apply to columbia and yet not. that they could find certain things to be barriers because you are the minimal. </p>

<p>i hate to break it to you, but most ivy league applicants wouldn’t score over 115 on the toefl. most ivy league applicants do not get admitted to every school they apply to. the truth is you find it impossible to ‘fathom’ because you have an unrealistic expectation that you place on others. when you work with students from various backgrounds, from different countries, with different levels of support from their friends and family, you realize that students can be extraordinarily different and yet still be smart, and they could be your peers. (many new york state students apply to columbia only because they know that columbia is part of the state wide heop program.)</p>

<p>congrats on being admitted everywhere. a european applicant with near perfect scores is rare. but perhaps when we use the rubric of ‘brilliant’ to exist for more of us mere mortals we can allow for people to both act in ways that are counterintuitive. perhaps your ‘humanity’ was showing when you wrote ‘i’m doing piano,’ the fact that you didn’t know the english idiom ‘playing piano’ shows that even you are subject to mistakes. now let’s expand the sample size from you to a couple million applicants? or at the least to the 8000 new columbia applicants. is it not possible (perhaps still unconvincing to you) that someone could have been led to apply to columbia simply because it was on the common application for the first time?</p>