Are Columbia admissions a joke?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
1

I personally didn’t apply, Columbia didn’t really appeal to me, but everything just started to tick me after a friend of mine got in under ED and my other friend was flat out rejected. I’ve been thinking about this ever since she got in.

I have wondered far and wide in the internet on college topics, and it seems that everyone keep saying that “they want leaders, people of tomorrow” and how “grades and testing don’t matter as much as your personality, extracurriculars blah blah blah.” They want smart talented kids? well let me tell you something about this girl. If there is a definition for an asian who studies all day for the pure purpose of getting into a college, this would be her. She once “advised” my sister to take as many AP’s as she can, because “colleges like most the students who take the most AP’s.” Came from China in 8th/9th grade, 2300 on the SAT, a 94/95 GPA (though the valedictorian has like a 97.5 GPA, so 94/95 isn’t that strong for an ivy in our school), and maybe a merit award here or there for the AP’s. That’s all she most likely had.

My friend, a man who took slightly less AP’s than that girl, a 93 GPA as well, but a national merit scholar, 2270, lots of club involvement, a legacy, an award winning fencer, and a great writer as well. He even got a 161 on an IQ test for Christ’s sake. Rejected. Not even deferred.

It’s absolutely ridiculous. If it couldn’t be any more ironic, she told us that after she learned of her acceptance, she said to herself “OK, I need to calm down, it’s time to study now.” My reject friend told me left right after school every day, so that’s the proof of no extracirriculars. My sister constantly tells me of stories of her not understanding how to make robots or code for stuff in the robotics class. Basically, being creative is hard for her.

It’s been a month since their ED results were released and I still can’t believe it. How could someone like her, who vomits knowledge instead of making use of it, gets in? What kind of an applicant does Columbia accept? As an applicant to other ivies who has a lot of EC’s but not the strongest of the strongest academics-wise, I begin to worry myself.

2

They want strong academics first. An IQ of 160 means nothing if it isn’t put to good use. You are probably right to worry if your academics aren’t so strong. Do you have match & safety schools?

3

Why is it you refer to the young woman as a girl and to your friend, also presumably a senior, as a man?

You have no idea what her application looked like. The only thing her leaving school directly after the last bell proves is that she had no ECs at your school directly after school.

Lots of ECs won’t make up for weak academics. Make sure you have some safeties lined up.

4

You’re speculating and making assumptions about a great many things, not to mention holding a great deal of contempt towards this girl who you call a “friend of yours.” You don’t know what was in either of their applications and what may have caused your other friend to get rejected. College is primarily a place of learning. This girl has shown that she is academically capable, can do well under pressure, and may have several other talents you don’t know about. I can understand why you might be upset that your friend was not accepted, but I certainly don’t see any basis for your assertion that college admissions is a joke.

5

It’s difficult to judge when you weren’t looking over the adcom’s shoulder as they were reading the application. There could be many different things going on, and the girl definitely might do a lot of activities not on school grounds. Often, those types of activities are more impressive than Key Club, MUN, etc.

6

Maybe she left for a major research internship after school.

Or maybe she worked to help support her family.

Perhaps she was a first generation college student.

Maybe she was a Pell Grant recipient.

7

Yes you should. Apply to a few safety schools ASAP.

8

Sour grapes…

9

The Columbia admissions deliberations:

You

simply

weren’t

there.

You have no idea the actual contents of these two people’s applications. Perhaps your friend sounded like a canned student and nothing stood out. Surely, the admitted person came off sounding very attractive (essay, rec letters). It’s certainly not an exact science nor is it supposed to be a meritocracy. An even * mistakes * can be made.

If this spins you so tightly, you better hold on come the end of March. My advice: focus on your own path and let everyone else’s chips fall where they will. You can’t change it. If it bothers on principle you so much, your only recourse is to withdraw your apps from holistic-evaluation schools. Just let it go and enjoy your senior year and don’t hate on others because of their fortunate results. I shudder to think if the admittee was a URM. You come off sounding really bad here.

10

Until we have a way of observing the quality of one’s Interview, Essays, and Recommendations, you have no right to say that girl was not deserving. Did you ever consider the fact that she is excelling in a different country from her birth might speak to her talents?

11

You should really realize that you probably don’t know as much about other students as you think you do.

So I am actually going to Columbia next fall. I did cancer research at a local college along with an amazing internship with Cornell University over the summer. And I can tell you as a fact that nobody in my school knows about it. I also started a competition bowl team for science. We won first place in the state and even went to Washing DC to compete. You’d be astonished at the amount of people that have no idea about it. There is a reason that that girl got in and the guy didn’t. You haven’t read her application so all you know is from what you’ve seen.

At the end of the day admissions is basically based off of “gut” feelings that admissions officers have. I suggest you look at the columbia results thread as well. There are TONS of brilliant kids that get rejected every year.

And also something about the ECs. The ECs that matter most are the ones in greatest alliance with what you want to pursue. For example, if you want to be a musician then the best way to go is competing in solo competitions and stuff like that. If you want to be a scientist, then try to get into a college lab and work on a research paper. Just because you do a lot of clubs doesn’t mean that the hold a lot of value. The award winning fencing thing is great. But unless he’s being recruited it doesn’t mean a lot to admissions. And if you didn’t know, Columbia is actually the national champion for fencing . So they’ll basically ask themselves what he will do with that ability once he gets to Columbia. Okay great, he is an awesome fencer. But he’s not going to be on the team so it doesn’t benefit Columbia in any way. The amazing violinist will get to columbia and play in the orchestra there. The genius science kid is going to columbia and do some ground-breaking research with one of the professors. The national debate champion will get to Columbia and join the debate team and maybe be one of the greatest lawyers to come out of the school if he decides to go into law. How exactly will your friend add to Columbia’s legacy as a student? To get into a school like this, the admissions has really got to want you to come there. They want the next Albert Einstein, Stephen hawking, or Nobel Laureate- people who want to change the world.

12

@Indigobeta I think you have some good points. I have seen similar results at Ivys and other selective schools in the US and here. Basically there are two key trends. Ivy admission is a total
crapshoot once the top 30% or whatever percent meet certain academic standards. The adcoms admit whoever they feel like it and I doubt if all of the essays are even read by the adcoms. Second, top schools seem to like to have some of these robotic kids (who just study all the time and game the SATs by getting over tutored and take SATs starting in 8th grade) rather than taking truly talented, smart snd well rounded kids. They know that these kids will do well in college due more to their work habits rather than their intelligence.

As for you, so long as you apply to a diverse group of top non-ivy schools you will be fine. Good luck.

13

@londondad You could not be more wrong. I’m not sure if you have any affiliation with the ivy league or have a kid that goes to one of the schools but you could not be more misinformed.

I really suggest you read this article that perfectly sums up ivy admissions (written by a Harvard Alumni).

http://blog.prepscholar.com/how-to-get-into-harvard-and-the-ivy-league-by-a-harvard-alum

And here is quote from the page on the topic of admissions:

"Let’s pick a specific school: Harvard. Harvard matriculates around 1600 students a year, and they send acceptance letters to 2000 a year. Because their admissions rate is 6%, this means they get around 34,000 applications every year. 6% sounds really low. But admissions is not a random lottery. Many people make the conceptual mistake of thinking that everyone who applies has a 6% random chance of getting in. The truth is, everyone who applies has a different chance of admission. If you’re a true superstar, your admissions chance is probably greater than 90%. If you’re a weak applicant, your admissions rate will be near 0%.

Let’s work through some hypothetical numbers. None of these numbers are factual, but they should be close enough to realistic range to prove the point. Let’s say there are 5,000 “world-class” applicants in the country. These are all people who have achieved great things in their primary area of interest, whether that’s social work, writing, scientific research, the arts, or athletics. There are 4 to 5 million high school students graduating every year, which means world-class means being in the top 0.1% of all people. Of the 5,000 world-class people in the country, 1,000 of them apply to Harvard. (Not every world-class person is applying to Harvard because everyone’s interested in different schools, like Princeton, MIT, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, their state school, etc.) Remember that Harvard receives 34,000 applications, so 33,000 applications are not world class. For the sake of simplicity, let’s say 28,000 of these are strong and qualified applications, and 5,000 are just totally unqualified and applying for the moon shot.

Now, remember that Harvard gives out 2,000 acceptances. Here’s where it gets interesting. Of these 2,000 acceptances, 900 acceptances might go to 1,000 of those world-class applicants. This is fair – Harvard wants to fill its class with the best people possible, so it gives every world-class person at shot at going to Harvard. Harvard rejects 100 world-class people because they might be huge jerks and have terrible personalities.So Harvard has 1,100 acceptances remaining. This is still a lot of students, but remember – there are a LOT more applicants who are not world-class. So the admissions rate goes WAY down.

It should be clear to you that for the group of world-class people, the chance of admissions is far higher. When people look at the 6% overall admissions figure, it seems really hard. It seems like everyone has a 6% chance of getting in, which is why it seems like a crapshoot. This is totally false. If you’re world-class, your admissions rate is much, much higher than 6%."

14

@alpha101 - thanks for the article. We essentially agree on the main point - for the 900 or so who have a much larger chance of getting in (eg, the so-called “world-class” people, legacies, certain athletes, the daughter of the Sony Pictures CEO who made a huge cash donation, Natalie Portman, children of profs, etc) they have a high chance for success. After that it becomes more subjective and to a degree random (how many oboe kids they need, how many kids from Montana they want, etc) so for these 1,100 the term “crapshoot” is appropriate, even for kids who have great grades, SATs and ECs.

15

Also, by definition a crapshoot is 2.78% (1/36) which probably about appropriate for the other 1,100 spots at Harvard, right? :slight_smile:

16

Key point here - She came from China and started in high school right away - did as well as most Ivy bound students - That has a lot more weight for an adcom than some kid who was born and raised in US with whatever advantages that come with it, especially if he is not financially constrained. There is a lot of weight given to a person’s socioeconomic circumstances and their relative achievements given what was available to them that people focused only on academics don’t dig into that some of the top privates pay attention to.

If I was an adcom reading her app and she said something along the lines of not knowing English when she started, I would have admitted her.

17

College admissions is not a system of ranking the applicants and going down the list. It is more like casting a show.

18

@brantly: I like.

19

We look at stats and activities, but you never know what’s in those essays and rec letters.

20

@brantly You are right in general terms but some colleges actually do rank students up to a point just to make it easier.

This is a quote from an article written by someone who got an inside look into Yale University’s admissions

“In the spring of 2008, I did a daylong stint on the Yale admissions committee. We—that is, three admissions staff, a member of the college dean’s office, and me, the faculty representative—were going through submissions from eastern Pennsylvania. The applicants had been assigned a score from one to four, calculated from a string of figures and codes—SATs, GPA, class rank, numerical scores to which the letters of recommendation had been converted, special notations for legacies and diversity cases. The ones had already been admitted, and the threes and fours could get in only under special conditions—if they were a nationally ranked athlete, for instance, or a “DevA,” (an applicant in the highest category of “development” cases, which means a child of very rich donors). Our task for the day was to adjudicate among the twos. Huge bowls of junk food were stationed at the side of the room to keep our energy up.”