<p>For those interested, here they are: <a href="http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/admissions/faq/applying.php#36%5B/url%5D">http://www.studentaffairs.columbia.edu/admissions/faq/applying.php#36</a>. Personally, I am intrigued by the fact that though the engineering school has a higher admissions rate, it has a statistically "smarter" group of students.</p>
<p>wow 10.7%</p>
<p>that's low.</p>
<p>if it's so low, I don't get why the 75th percentile of scores is 1530. obviously, that's still a great score, but still...</p>
<p>Clearly the SAT, which was re-centered a decade ago, doesnt have the intellectual value it did before. Mensa de-listed it as an IQ proxy. I think that Columbia, recognizing its coachability and its decreasing relevance, looks at other measures even more (like your ability to express yourself in writing or in person). Thats why I conjecture it rejects a lot of top-scoring people who perhaps have only those scores going for them, and accepts lower-scoring people who show intellectual ability in deeper or more important ways. As an alumni interviewer for Columbia College and Engineering, Ive frequently found an inverse relationship between a persons paper presence and human one. To paraphrase Albert Einstein, what counts cant always be counted, and whats countable doesnt always count. I think thats true in college admissions, as it is in most aspects of life.</p>
<p>jmarsh2006, you'll learn in the next year that SAT scores are only part of an application. Columbia could accept the highest 10 percent of applicants based on SAT score, but then they'd be rejecting applicants like some 1330 kid who sent them such a wonderful and memorable application. Not every smart kid with a great personality gets the highest SAT score.</p>
<p>yield 57%
har 78
yale 71
pton 68
penn 66</p>
<p>baba, The yield is actually 58%. I think Columbia will rather have the students who really want to be there. I don't think they care that much about the yields of other schools. They don't even use the common application.</p>
<p>Question about how you are all calculating the yield. Are you doing it for RD applicants only or are you considering it with the ED applicants? Overall it seems to be 60.8% from what the website shows. </p>
<p>As a member of the Class of '09, I can tell you that the students are extremely excited to attend Columbia. The yield is something that Columbia is not all too concerned about because they are building a campus with students who truly love the school not for its name, but for all that it has to offer.</p>
<p>I combined the matriculation numbers for both SEAS and College. As you said Columbia does not care very much about its yield.</p>
<p>tega: and yale, princeton, harvard, and penn does?</p>
<p>Actually, not using the common app is better yield-wise. This is because the common app allows people who wouldnt otherwise apply to a school have a chance of applying. (i.e. a What-the-hell I'll do it type of app)</p>
<p>Columbia also uses ED, showing that it does care about yield. ED is a 100% yield policy, it is much more advantageous to use EA or SCEA to get a better applicant pool.</p>
<p>I'm actually pleasantly surprised at how Penn's yield is so high relative to columbia</p>
<p>Unless I am mistaken, Columbia has the largest total student body in the Ivy League, yet the smallest number in the undergraduate college. It seems that with such a small class, yield is less important, and to gripe between 60 and 70 percent when you're talking less than 2000 students doesn't seem highly significant to me. You have to also look at RD/ED distributions at each school to come close to assessing this, and even then there are many other variables.</p>
<p>If Columbia's yield were the same as Harvard's, its acceptance rate would be 8.337%.</p>
<p>Just for your information?</p>
<p>Wasn't the RD acceptance rate something like that?</p>
<p>The RD acceptance rate was 8.9%. That's just flat out low.</p>
<p>penn probably has the 'strategic' admissions where they accept people they know will come.. but i still would say that columbia should be ranking higher because it is higher in prestige and name atleast.. its good columbia doesnt care abt these silly rankings</p>
<p>"penn probably has the 'strategic' admissions where they accept people they know will come.. "</p>
<p>Yes, they do. They utilize ED and they don't use the common app. But so does Princeton, Columbia, Dartmouth, et al. But the people I know from my area who were accepted to Penn are the best of the best. They don't accept 2nd tier individuals. This accusation is false and silly.</p>
<p>"but i still would say that columbia should be ranking higher because it is higher in prestige and name atleast.. "</p>
<p>This is debatable. Two points. a) One might say prestige doesn't matter and it's the education you get. The prestige of the two schools is on the same level anyway. Wharton is well-known worldwide and rivals HBS as the best business school in the world. The nursing school is a top 2 nursing school in the nation, SAS has amazingly strong programs in Bio, Psychology, Anthropology, English, History, etc and SEAS is a leader in BE and is strong in the materials science, chem E, etc. </p>
<p>And if you don't think Columbia cares about "these silly rankings", then why the hell does Columbia NOT report SEAS numbers to USNEWS? If anything, schools like Penn and Cornell should be applauded for having their SEAS and Nursing and public numbers reported. The fact that SEAS is NOT reported for usnews shows that Columbia cares that much more about their admission numbers.</p>
<p>HTH</p>
<p>Duststamper, Do you have a problem with Columbia? You have to know that rankings differ from one magazine to the other and it is not the final say of the quality of education. Penn is a very good school, and I don't think there is any debate about that.</p>
<p>Are you sure Columbia does not report SEAS numbers? The last time I checked USNEWS Columbia's admission rate was 12.5% instead of 10.4%.</p>
<p>I dont have a problem with columbia, but I have a problem with people who say "penn probably has the 'strategic' admissions ". </p>
<p>I hope you understand. And I'm pretty sure Columbia does not report SEAS numbers. Ask byerly or any of the other admissions people.</p>
<p>oh no i did not want to degrade penn in anyway, it is no doubt a great school but i know of a lot of people who got into princeton, yale, some even into harvard (people from my school and some other friends) but didnt get into penn or were waitlisted and people with lower stats (i dont mean to say that stats are everything and thats all that penn considers) got in ed, and i dont even want to say that penn has students who are not as qualified as students going to another same caliber school, after all not everything is measured in numbers and i am sure that penn knows that alot of students pick hyps over penn so they have to preserve their yield in some way</p>
<p>columbia, you wrote this:
i was just going through the ed and rd decisions for columbia and i saw this student who had scores in the low 1300s and a 3.0uw gpa got into columia and was international, but he was the captain of the sailing team if that mattered. what surprises me is that people with much higher higher stats and ecs got rejected! can anyone explain this? </p>
<p>
[quote]
yes but its pretty amazing that columbia is ready to accept students showing promise in their essays and ecs over those who have high scores and good ecs... go columbia! and seeing people with lower stats (columbia standard) but good ecs get accepted has really given me hope!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>You wrote this regarding columbia.</p>
<p>And you essentially restated the same thing for Penn except in a much more negative light. Perhaps those top top applicants did not show enough interest. And remember, at the top tiered level it's a wash anyway, so I don't think Penn has to "yield protect". Certainly at my school, it wasn't true.</p>