<p>I'm not applying to Columbia, but one of my friends had a question that he wanted me to ask (I know, what a loser, he doesn't have a CC account :)):</p>
<p>Anyway, here is his problem:</p>
<p>Apparently, there is a Columbia application status page and on his page, it says that none of his materials had been received... He was sure that all his teachers had sent out the recs early December and now he keeps nagging me about whether he is doomed or not... </p>
<p>So does anyone else have this problem?</p>
<p>Columbia has over 20,000 undergraduate applications to process. TWENTY THOUSAND. That’s 40,000 teacher recommendations, 20,000 test scores, not to mention supplementary materials/recommendations. They have to manually sort through all this mail(no mail-sorting robot- to my knowledge 
). To answer your question: No! Your friend should not be worried. I would check back in late January/mid-February to make sure that everything has been received.</p>
<p>To put things in perspective, Cornell won’t even let you see what they’ve received in the way of application documents until mid-February.</p>
<p>Yeah mikesown is right. </p>
<p>Though I wonder though how the University of Austin at Texas processed my application so quickly. Within 5 days of sending (international priority mail) the application status was updated. I guess it varies between different universities. It seems as though the Ivys take their time.</p>
<p>Whew! I thought I was the only one!!</p>