Chance of Being Admitted

Colleges & Universities A-Z Columbia University
1

<p>Hello all. Columbia University is #1 on my list, but I'm worried about whether or not I'll be admitted. Information follows, and I can give additional that may aide in your assessment:</p>

<p>Male
Location: Eastern Shore of Maryland (rural backround)
Just finished my Junior year of high school
SAT Math: 660
SAT Verbal: 590
SAT Writing: 590
I just took the SAT II's in US History, World History, and Chemistry. I expect scores in the 700's, mid 600's, and mid to high 600's, respectively. Note that I took the World History SAT II without taking any advanced course.
GPA (unweighted): 4.000
GPA (weighted): 4.208
Class Rank: 2nd
AP US Government: 5
I just took the AP US History and AP Language and Composition tests. I expect, as do my teachers, a 5 and 4, respectively.
I plan on taking AP Literature, AP Calculus, AP Chemistry, and AP French next year.</p>

<p>Member of the Drama Club, International Thespian Society (inducted with school-record 49 points, for those who understand what that means), Lighting and Sound Technicians, school television news program, Chess Club, Academic Team, French Club, Student Government Association, National Honor Society, Boy Scouts, Cross Country team, Indoor Track team, Outdoor Track team, and Marching Band (in which I play alto, tenor, and baritone saxophone)</p>

<p>Representative to State Theater for Drama Club, Officer in Drama Club, President of Lighting and Sound Technicians, anchor on school news, captain of Academic Team, Vice President of SGA, Representative to County Board of Education, and President of Northern Eastern Shore Association of Student Councils
Volunteer with Parks and Recreations</p>

<p>I do notice that my SAT scores, especially in Verbal and Writing, are sagging. Having just taken AP Language and Composition, I hope that I have honed in my reading and writing skills to aide in their respective areas, hopefully bringing up those scores when I retake the SATs in October.</p>

<p>So, overall, what do you think my chances are for admittance?</p>

2

<p>You have impressive stats, do retake the SAT’s because your current score is jarring against your high school rank.
If all goes well, I’d say you’ve got decent chances, but sure your essay kicks a**. It’s the one thing that’ll set you apart from the rest of the pool</p>

3

<p>your standardized test scores are way too low.</p>

4

<p>Three AP-level courses through junior year is a bit light, as are the test scores. Unless you’re black or hispanic you might have a tough time convincing adcoms of your intellectual abilities.</p>

5

<p>Regarding the APs, I took three in my junior year and only took two AP tests (because one of the APs was more of an AP prep class at AP-level). There was no problem. It depends on context, too. Some schools have limits on the number of AP classes you’re allowed to take or they just don’t offer that many in the first place. </p>

<p>You have a whole list of activities, but adcoms might wonder if you truly have interest in all of them. They might think you’ve spread yourself too thin. I would pick a couple to focus on (drama, student government, and track sound like they’re your main interests). I’m not even sure you’ll have enough room on your application to list all of them.</p>

<p>The GPA/class rank and SAT scores are kind of incongruous. On the one hand, you might just be a poor test-taker (have you tried taking the ACT?). On the other, the high GPA and class rank might be indications of grade inflation at your school, given your relatively low SATs.</p>

<p>Also, I don’t think adcoms will care all that much if you took the world history SAT II without advanced coursework, especially if all your standardized test scores are in that range.</p>

6

<p>I know many people say that low SAT scores alone won’t keep you out but in this case I don’t think there is any chance you’ll get accepted with those scores. You need to put alot of effort in getting those scores up since the 590s in both writing and verbal are a horrible combination. </p>

<p>…unless of course you are a URM then you might have a chance.</p>

7

<p>I like demeter’s idea about the ACTs. In theory, they should track the SATs quite closely, but the advantage to you is that you’d start with a clean slate. So, I recommend that you spend some serious time on improving your test-taking skills and then give the ACTs a shot.</p>

8

<p>I don’t want to put words in Shraf’s mouth, but he seemed to say that being a URM would give you a magic wand. That may have been the case a few years ago, but things have changed significantly, especially at the upper tier schools. Now, the open door is for those applicants whose parents never attended college. For example, 400 of Stanford’s 2100 (+/-) acceptances went to such students.</p>

<p>Yes, the URM door has nearly closed. For example, I know a URM with 2300+ SATs, a 4.0 unweighted GPA, and very significant ECs who got flat-out rejected by Stanford. Go figure …</p>

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<p>your ECs are good, level of achievement too, make sure you portray a focus in the application, otherwise it’ll seem like you’re doing too many things and the impacting ones will get lost in the list.</p>

<p>“I don’t think there is any chance you’ll get accepted with those scores”</p>

<p>agreed.</p>

<p>“Yes, the URM door has nearly closed. For example, I know a URM with 2300+ SATs, a 4.0 unweighted GPA, and very significant ECs who got flat-out rejected by Stanford. Go figure …”</p>

<p>I am trying to figure, but your anecdotal evidence is meaningless.
On top of that Stanford does not prescribe the formula nor has large bearing on east coast and columbia admissions. </p>

<p>“Now, the open door is for those applicants whose parents never attended college. For example, 400 of Stanford’s 2100 (+/-) acceptances went to such students.”</p>

<p>many of these could well be URMs, this says nothing about their treatment of URMs. Stanford will publish whatever they feel is significant about their accepted population, one year its the number of valedictorians, the next the number of african americans, national merit finalists, pell grants, student body presidents, the sub categories are endless.</p>

<p>Columbia says they’re an institution that practices and upholds affirmative action, meaning it probably does make a significant difference if your a URM, anecdotally many of my URM friends seemed to have got in with seemingly low stats, many are exceptional and would have gotten in regardless of race.</p>

10

<p>Thank you all for your replies.</p>

<p>On APs: my school doesn’t offer that many to begin with, and discourages taking them before 11th grade.</p>

<p>On the GPA versus SATs: as stated, my unweighted GPA is 4.0, so I don’t think that one could argue grade inflation for that number.</p>

<p>On URM status: unless being a white male is considered an under-represented minority…
I’m from a small, rural community. There’s a low graduation rate and low high school-to-college turnover. There’s a high teen pregnancy and teen drinking rate. The overall economic make-up of the community is lower-middle class. Would where I came from have any bearing in selection?</p>

<p>On the SAT: yes, my Verbal and Writing are weighing me down. Are those the only two things really weighing me down? How much higher should they be, considering the rest of my resum</p>

11

<p>You want your verbal scores to be at lest as high as your math, if not better. May I suggest reading the Economist? I know how that sounds, but it’s a magazine that I found really helped my verbal score because, um, the words were used in context. It’s also really interesting</p>

12

<p>confidentialcoll, the four points you made regarding my comments on URMs are, without exception or deviation, uniformly incorrect.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Anecdotal evidence is the lifeblood of this forum, without which the forum would be reduced to a few posts bearing significant resemblance to college press releases. (You criticize my anecdotal evidence, but you then proffer your own in the last line of your post.)</p></li>
<li><p>You state that many of Stanford’s 400 accepted applicants whose parents never attended college might be URMs. That’s a valid observation; unfortunately, it has nothing to the point I was making.</p></li>
<li><p>Your statement that “sub categories are endless” is valid. However, the intended inference – that sub categories are uniformly non-important – is absurd. The fact that approximately 20% of Stanford’s acceptances went to students whose parents did not go to college is both relevant and statistically significant. Your attempt to link that category to categories that are irrelevant (e.g., student body presidents) is devoid of a logical foundation. That is, Stanford makes a concerted effort to attract applicants whose parents never attended college; the school does not try to attract student body presidents.</p></li>
<li><p>You said, “Stanford does not [have a] large bearing on east coast and columbia admissions.” Give me a break. Hard evidence shows otherwise. No further comment is necessary.</p></li>
</ol>

<p>In summary, my central point was that being a URM is not a magic wand. More specifically, my assertion that top-tier schools have their pick of URMs is valid, and the anecdotal evidence I cited is consistent with both the intent and format of this forum.</p>

<p>Sorry about all this i<em>c</em>weiner. My intent wasn’t to monopolize your thread.</p>

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<p>“Anecdotal evidence is the lifeblood of this forum”</p>

<p>except it’s ONE data point, I have a friend that had a perfect sat score, perfect gpa etc etc and didn’t get into duke her parents had never been to college, for stanford you made the inference that URM status guarantees being URM makes no difference, can I make the inference that being first generation to college makes no difference? - go figure. </p>

<p>“That’s a valid observation; unfortunately, it has nothing to the point I was making.”</p>

<p>and the point you were making was…? you were using the 400 being accepted as a means to discount URM status, perhaps having parents without college degrees is an advantage but we were talking about whether being a URM was a significant advantage or not.</p>

<p>“the intended inference – that sub categories are uniformly non-important – is absurd.”</p>

<p>please don’t put words in my mouth, that was not my intended inference. For clarity: my intended inference was that stanford’s publishing of one statistic in one year could have nothing to do with it’s broader admissions policy, because they will publish whatever is noteworthy about their accepted pool and that varies across years and colleges, colleges do so to attract acceptees, and ingenuity in this category is rewarded, because people take notice. </p>

<p>Choosing different categories is also safer bet because it allows no direct comparison with other colleges. If Columbia says we had 100 valedictorians and harvard says we had 300 accepted, columbia becomes tangibly inferior based on that statistic, so they each play up a unique strength, columbia for the last few years has been talking about the % of students identifying as non-white, this should re-enforce it’s advantage to URMs.</p>

<p>“You said, “Stanford does not [have a] large bearing on east coast and columbia admissions.” Give me a break. Hard evidence shows otherwise. No further comment is necessary.”</p>

<p>their choice to publish a statistic one year does not make columbia think, “holy ■■■ we need to take students who’s parents don’t have college degrees or we’ll be left behind” that happens for financial aid and not much else, because FA is universal and one-dimensionally comparable.</p>

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<p>confidentialcoll: Again, I find the need to correct the errors you made in reviewing my recent posts.</p>

<ol>
<li>It was clear from the precise wording of my original post that I did NOT say “A because of B.” Rather, I said “A,” and I then cited “B” as an example of “A.” I didn’t feel I had an obligation to provide a full and complete logical proof for “A.” That is, I proffered the anecdotal evidence as an example of “A,” not as a proof of it.</li>
</ol>

<p>However, while we’re on the topic of first-generation applicants, I suggest interested readers access the “Common Data Sets” that universities are required to file annually with the U.S. Government. Stanford’s can be found at [Stanford</a> University: Common Data Set 2007-2008](<a href=“http://www.stanford.edu/home/statistics/#enrollment]Stanford”>http://www.stanford.edu/home/statistics/#enrollment). It is hard to believe, but the information is quite interesting. To start, I recommend Table C7, which shows that a student’s “First Generation” status is given the same weight in the admissions process as a student’s volunteer work and work experience. </p>

<p>So, the “first generation” category is far from the single-year anomalous statistic that you asserted. To the contrary, it is an integral component of Stanford’s admission process and, for that reason, represents information of potential utility to i<em>c</em>weiner, this thread, and the entire CC universe. </p>

<ol>
<li>I find it hard to understand why you took umbrage with the anecdotal evidence I provided in response to i<em>c</em>weiner’s query. After a review of a statistically significant sample of your 788 CC posts, I find that such evidence is one of YOUR primary methods of conveying information to readers. To the extent that it matters, I approve. Indeed, such a method of presentation is the lifeblood of this forum.</li>
</ol>

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<p>weiner:</p>

<p>Just because your unweighted GPA is 4.0 doesn’t mean that there’s no grade inflation. Grade inflation affects the entire system, not just your weighted scores. </p>

<p>Try to aim for a combined score of at least 2100.</p>

<p>In terms of where you’re coming from, I think your school background might just end up hurting you rather than helping you. If what you say is true, that not many students go to college and a low graduation rate, then I interpret that to mean that you’re not in a very competitive high school. Yeah, it could be easy to get a 4.0 if half the class dropped out and it’s a miracle if the students just show up to class, much less do well. Add this to a lower SAT score than what is typical for 4.0 UW GPAs and your application starts to look shaky.</p>

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<p>“I find that such evidence is one of YOUR primary methods of conveying information to readers”</p>

<p>except i rarely try to disprove a widely accepted belief with one example, and your example still does not discount the URM advantage in any way because you only cited stats and something broadly about ecs, which is merely a slice of the pie.</p>

<p>“To start, I recommend Table C7, which shows that a student’s “First Generation” status is given the same weight in the admissions process as a student’s volunteer work and work experience.”</p>

<p>ok i looked at this, it also has the same weightage as residence location, and is one notch above not considered. I never said it does not matter. I have argued from the beginning that URM status is still very important, and even if by some miracle not at stanford, then still definitely at columbia. </p>

<p>Also any university would down play it’s official importance, because while everyone agrees that wealth (correlated negatively with parents not going to college) should be accounted for as an opportunity hindrance, race and affirmative action is a far touchier issue. While they down play it’s official importance they tend to play up the % of urm/non-white students, columbia definitely does.</p>

<p>heres some general evidence: people on this forum are much less shocked, if at all, when a white, asian etc. is rejected with high stats, with urms people are shocked, this would only happen if they had seen a trend of urms getting in under lower standards.</p>

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<p>confidentialcoll: Let’s wrap up this little exchange by establishing the following:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Within the specific context of Stanford, and quite possibly within the larger realm of top-tier schools, some level of preference is given to “first generation” applicants. That this type of preference is relatively new can be established (again, within Stanford’s context) by comparing the Common Data Sets that Stanford submitted to the U.S. Government in recent years to those the school submitted a decade ago, all of which are available via simple Google queries. More specifically, the “first generation” category did not exist in the earlier filings. [Note: The Common Data Sets from hundreds of other schools are also available online for those who wish to explore further. (There a 2006 CC thread on this topic, but the links are largely outdated.)]</p></li>
<li><p>A URM who expects to sail through any top-tier school’s admission process may be in for a rude awakening, at least in part because such schools have their pick of highly qualified URMs from across the country. </p></li>
</ol>

<p>Now, let’s move on to a topic that is a bit more esoteric. You mentioned, “people on this forum are much less shocked, if at all, when a white, asian etc. is rejected with high stats, with urms people are shocked, this would only happen if they had seen a trend of urms getting in under lower standards.” </p>

<p>The problem with this statement is that you are assigning all URMs to a single category. In reality, there are a multitude of different types of URMs – and I don’t mean ethnic or racial types. Rather, there are some URMs who are “first generation college” applicants and who might have been admitted largely because of that factor, while their status as a URM may have been of minimal relevance. Then, there are other URMs who have had educational advantages and who were selected because of their academic qualifications. This category might include, for example, URMs whose parents are college graduates and/or whose parents had the financial resources to open up educational opportunities.</p>

<p>Daring to venture further into the realm of anecdotal musings, let me ask about Barak Obama, a Columbia graduate. Separate and distinct from those cans of worms labeled “legacy admit” and “children-of-a-politician admit,” how would someone perceive Obama’s children attending Columbia? Would they be perceived as URMs or as students who had been afforded certain opportunities in life and were able to compete on their own for a slot in the incoming class? My guess would be the latter.</p>

<p>My essential point is that the admissions landscape has changed remarkably over the past decade, and the image of a URM circa. 1995 is vastly different (at least at top-tier schools) than today’s reality.</p>

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<p>I just got my SAT II scores back:
US History - 790
Chemistry - 670
World History - 680</p>

<p>This should help me a little bit, right?</p>

19

<p>Sorry if I’m being impatient, but I would like a reply to my last post, please.</p>

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<p>Great job on US history, the other two are too low in my opinion.</p>