My best friend and I are both thinking of applying to Columbia as an undergraduate next year. We are very very similar (which is what makes us good friends, I suppose) and have high grades (We take the IB Diploma), are very sociable and active in the school community, and have good SAT scores.
We are not carbon copies of each other; what I lack, I make up for in something else, and the same goes with her. We take three of the same classes: Math SL, English A LangLit HL, and Psychology (SL for her, HL for me), two of which we are in the same class. The rest of our classes are different.
If we are the only two applicants from our school, is it true that only one will most likely get accepted, as opposed to both of us getting admitted? How do you deal with this?
It’s refreshing that, despite being similar, you are aware of the differences between the two of you. Because Ivy League schools are so selective, I think you have to assume that only one of you getting admitted is a far more likely outcome than both getting admitted. And you should plan accordingly, if that is possible.
You might both get in, one might get in. or neither of you could get in. Nobody can predict. Admission at these hyper-competitive schools is a bit of a crapshoot. My suggestion is that you both apply where you want to apply and let the cards fall where they may.
If you are true friends you will remember to treat each other with respect, kindness, understanding, love throughout the process.
Honestly I think you never know. In my close group of friends, 2 of them are applying ED to the same selective school, and we all know theres a chance they may not both get in. I go to a small school (66 kids in my grade) and last year 11 kids applied to Cornell, and they took 2-just for an idea of how it can be.
There’s no way to predict.
The fact that two people applied from the same school will allow Colleges compare the two of you to get some context on the academic and extracurricular opportunities available to you.
If you two are both good enough fits for Columbia, then being from the same school will not bar you from admission.
My school had 3 Harvards, 4 stanfords, and all of them were heavy in the hard sciences with little variation. The school in the next town over had 6 cornells. There isn’t a quota.
My graduating class had 46 students accepted to Cornell (highly competitive STEM magnet high school). We also had 18 accepted to Duke, 16 to MIT, 12 to Brown, 11 to Princeton, 10 to Penn, and 10 to Stanford, to name a few schools (I only know schools with 10 or more acceptances because of the school profile). This is a similar pattern every year.
Thanks for your replies, everyone! My school has never had a Columbia acceptance before (or any Ivy, for that matter), but a lot of teachers and people have said that my year (Class of 2017) has the biggest Ivy potential so far. Will the fact that no one from this school’s been to an Ivy affect their decisions in admitting people from our school?
Who is to know? You’re asking an impossible question. But there is no standing order not to admit kids from previously unheard of schools, that’s for sure.