<p>I have been told exactly what goes on in the admissions office:</p>
<p>they base your admission on 4 categories and rank each one out of 10 (1 being the lowest, 10 highest) They then average all of these together and get a number, and then they discuss who shall be admitted.</p>
<p>Essays
Standarized Tests
Academics (Both College and High School Record)
Teacher Recs</p>
<p>what about EC's?</p>
<p>I dont quite understand this. If they discuss the applicants and then decide who to admit as opposed to just taking the highest averagers- what is the point in doing the 1-10 scale thing. I find it hard to believe that a single teacher rec (since they only allow one) can count as heavily as "academics". What else did this person tell you?</p>
<p>Wow this is shocking. I might apply to Columbia after all...any more details?</p>
<p>To respond to Timberland, I think the teacher rec has importance for the following reasons..</p>
<p>1) At any school, during the 1st or 2nd year, you're bound to take intro classes that are quite large. If you don't have a chance to take smaller seminar classes where a prof can get to know your/your work better, it'd show a lot of personal endeavor and initiative that you were recognized in a large pool of students and that a certain professor supports your achievements.</p>
<p>2) Just like teacher recommendations from high school, with grade inflations and deflations as well as individual circumstances, it just adds a 2nd opinion to how an academic professional perceives your work. Your "academics" which i assume to mean your GPA and the list of courses you took, doesn't necessary talk about this one <em>spectacular</em> paper/dissertation you wrote that you plan to pursue in greater depth at this College X with an amazing faculty for that field. Things like that - anecdotes or quite simply another person's opinion.</p>
<p>These are obviously just my opinions and I personally haven't heard about these 4 areas of focus. But I do know from work experience that even for graduate programs at Columbia teacher recs are given a lot of weight. ALthough this is a little different because you're dealing with a specific field of study, I think the overall logic is the same because Columbia would want to know specifics as to why Applicant A is qualified over Applicant B.</p>
<p>what about EC's? Although I hope they arn't important cause mine suck I think they have some weight.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I have been told exactly what goes on in the admissions office:</p>
<p>they base your admission on 4 categories and rank each one out of 10 (1 being the lowest, 10 highest) They then average all of these together and get a number, and then they discuss who shall be admitted.</p>
<p>Essays
Standarized Tests
Academics (Both College and High School Record)
Teacher Recs
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Did you find out how much weight high school grades get with respect to college grades?</p>
<p>btw this isnt Columbia its UPENN</p>
<p>this is UPenn??</p>
<p>I've been ranting about admissions being 4-dimensional.
To Timberland:
Academics (Statistics) aren't everything. Also, assume that a class is curved and 12% of the students get an A. Then you being as good as 20 or 30 other students means nothing, unless a Prof writes that you owned them all. "Best student I've had in 5 years" sounds nice, doesn't it? If the professors don't know you then you did something wrong. All of mine knew me except Bio and they sent me personal letters/emails with ranking/congratulations.
That said, I am not applying to Columbia.</p>
<p>It would be even more interesting if I told you what the 1-10 actually mean especially when it comes to the essays.
For other schools the dimensions are different, but again, academics is just one.</p>
<p>Also, the simple existence of 4 dimensions, hardly suggest their equal weight. There is a formula. For Yale, GPA outweighs test scores. 4.00 owns 1600. More so for transfer. More^2 so for SAT IIs for transfer.</p>
<p>At Harvard the system was implemented by 1960. The pool was divided into 22 buckets with competition only within (and not between) buckets and the applicants were judged in 4 dimensions: the ever-mysterious "personal" (most important at the time), "academic", "extracurricular", and "athletic". The cathegories and the buckets have changed since then. What you call URM is simply a bucket, which [incidentally] has a different type of (often less rigorous / except the sc asian bucket) competition. I wish sometimes people would listen instead of throw common-sense-of-applicant logic in my face. Now, I am going to drink to this holistic approach.</p>
<p>I'd also like to say even with a 4.00, no one is guaranteed a spot in Yale as a transfer. I have a friend who attended Columbia, had a 4.00 and applied to Yale for transfer. I don't know his SATs but his extracurriculars were great and all but wasn't accepted.</p>
<p>I'd like to say again that I don't see this to be any surprising or encouraging news. It doesn't say they take the highest averagers, it says after assigning a number to an applicant they discuss who they should take. They are still looking at the application and talking about who they want, so what difference does a number make- it seems to be just an apparent reflection of your application, and nothing more than an organizational strategy.</p>
<p>This is nonsense, academic index is the first thing they look at. I know this for a fact.</p>
<p>You think you know, eh?</p>
<p>When the Office of Civil Rights at the federal education department investigated Harvard in the nineteen-eighties, they found handwritten notes scribbled in the margins of various candidates files. This young woman <b>could be one of the brightest applicants in the pool</b> but there are several references to shyness, read one. Another comment reads, Seems a tad frothy. One applicationand at this point you can almost hear it going to the bottom of the pilewas notated, Short with big ears.</p>
<p>The big three have never been academic meritocrats. Actualy scratch that. They have been. Before 1920 when the Jews started overenrolling.
If academics were what HYP were looking for they would have a SAT average of 1590 and an average GPA of 4.0.</p>
<p>martini is true </p>
<p>Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Yale, MIT For sure, could easily enroll a class with an SAT average near a 1570 if they wanted to</p>
<p>however, these places all have large ranges</p>
<p>from 13s to the 15s, b/c they want kids with diverse skills</p>
<p>You guys keep ignoring my question. I'll ask for the third time: bball you didn't say anything about EC's, do you think they have little significance?</p>
<p>i don't have any quantative info when it comes to EC. i'd imagine they would be pretty important (10-15-20% depending on the school) but at the same time yale doesn't have space for ECs on the transfer application.</p>
<p>I am not saying academic index is EVERYTHING, but its the first and most important thing by a signifacant margin. As a former senior interviewer, alumni interviewer, and the best friend of an associate admissions officer I DO know.</p>
<p>****. convincing enough for me. accept my apologies. which scholl were you working for? I have never had anything different than an A my whole life (+s were never an option). do you think that gives me an edge?</p>