<p>Why do you think the admissions office is still sitting on these?</p>
<p>Whoops, sorry, did not see that this was discussed earlier.</p>
<p>^they did the same thing last year, even though there was an appreciable increase in applicants and a appreciable decrease in acceptance rates. It’s probably just protocol, but I have a gut feeling that this year applications are not up by much if at all.</p>
<p>Considering that most other ivies saw large increases, it’s unlikely that Columbia remained entirely stagnant - although the gains might not be as large as Princeton, Penn or Brown (that place has been on fire the last 2 years).</p>
<p>^bad reasoning, there’s no reason to assume that applications to colleges in a given year are positively correlated. Over a decade perhaps the application changes at different top colleges are all highly correlated, but in a given year more applicants at a few schools probably means fewer applicants at another few schools. If we assume that there are 150,000 applicants to the ivyleague this year and Upenn and Brown see large increases, Columbia is more likely to see a decrease or a stagnation (in the long run we’re all trending up).</p>
<p>My reason for probable stagnation or decline:</p>
<p>1) The acceptance rate for Columbia is already really low, last year we were lower than princeton (which is generally considered a more prestigious university - puck frinceton).So people will see princeton as a good opportunity and Columbia as a bad one</p>
<p>2) ED numbers were boring</p>
<p>3) Peer schools see rises in applicants for this year</p>
<p>4) Not much buzz about Columbia in the news (like Obama being elected last year), and if you examine college confidential forums broadly, there is very little talk of Columbia, more talk of Dartmouth, Brown, Penn.</p>
<p>5) No email from admissions about large increases in applicant pools, which has happened before, but also not happened with sizable increases.</p>
<p>To me these are indicators, which give me not much more than a gut feeling, that this year applications will not grow by much.</p>
<p>i think concoll is dead on.</p>
<p>a few other things here</p>
<p>1) brown and penn are newbies to the common app still and riding that tidal wave
2) columbia is going to suffer to an extent because of a certain aversion to nyc and high cost environments during the recession. i don’t think largely, but significant enough worth mentioning. during the '01 recession for instance, many of my friends didn’t apply to nyc schools because of that perception. (on this, i read something wicked in the bwog, ccsc is planning an initiative to help students feel nyc is affordable - about time.)
3) this is the first year that college going population is not increasing, but staying stagnate - if a school is to receive more applications, it is more likely that it comes from a current ivy applicant submitting one more app than probably the emergence of a brand new applicant. this bends toward schools on the common app and not columbia’s own app.</p>
<p>4) i like concoll’s analysis - there is a peril of selectivity because it makes kids not want to apply to your school, it acts as a barrier. columbia over the past 10 years has grown its applicant pool about as fast as any school, and because of its relatively small student body (2nd in the ivies to dartmouth) it has had an overpronounced decrease in its admission stats. as great as columbia is, and i love, it doesn’t carry the prestige level yet of princeton (i think it should, but the world doesn’t always listen). so whereas a student will keep their princeton app for shizt and giggles, the student that used to think they were the full reach for HYP but sure in at Columbia no longer have that feeling and thus the columbia app becomes more expendable. until columbia’s prestige level matches its admission rate, coupled with the fact that cu isn’t on the common app, students are more likely to drop their columbia app over other schools. columbia is (and brown soon will be too) in this kind of purgatory between the two tiers, in which their admission stats create the perception they are in the first tier, but their prestige level does not. if anything, i’d rather be in columbia’s position than brown’s whose huge leap is going to be hard to maintain, and if there is one thing worse than being stagnant, it is losing applicants. there is clearly growth room for columbia. and because it is a major research uni, cu will always have the inside edge at improving prestige in all the categories folks turn to. i see cu getting there, not this year, but sometime soon. at which point submitting that app to C will be seen not as a tradeoff, but as a standard.</p>
<p>of note, most schools with common apps do not count as different the number of students that do not finish the supplement, to them all students are ‘applicants.’ so it is easier to inflate your numbers without having full applicants.</p>
<p>I chatted with the current admissions director at New Student Week last fall. She seemed truly empathic with the high-achieving senior who faces a virtual crapshoot in seeking admission to a university like Columbia. Perhaps the low-profile taken by the admission office (continuing use of the custom application form, late release of statistics, releasing through non-mainstream media like the Bwog, lack of tremendous detail in the statistics actually released, etc.) reflects her small attempt not to escalate the tenor of the admissions war games. If she wanted to pull out all the stops, wouldn’t she convert to the Common Application? Isn’t Columbia the only elite university still using a custom application?</p>
<p>i think Mit also doesnt use the common app</p>
<p>You’re right mit and columbia are the two biggies. I’m sure it would get 4000 more applications if they used the common app. I would have applied to MIT if they used the common app but with 12 other schools and essays how are you supposed to fill out ANOTHER app with almost the exact same questions/ information.</p>
<p>I both agree and disagree with a lot of the sentiment here. On the one hand, there’s far too much of a correlation granted between acceptance rates and selectivity. Brown and Columbia aren’t really stuck between two tiers, because their SATs/ACTs place them squarely with Penn and Dartmouth. This year, the schools will only be 4% apart in acceptance rates (~13% at Penn, 12% at Dartmouth, ~10% at Columbia, and ~9% at Brown), and the SAT averages have not, in the past 10 years, deviated very significantly.</p>
<p>Other schools like Caltech and MIT have higher acceptance rates than all 4 of the schools mentioned above (MIT is 1% lower than Penn and the same as Dartmouth, but it’s almost the same proportion so bear with me) but they are unquestionably more selective (if not significantly, of course).</p>
<p>The point is, there is no real purgatory. HYP will always be the most prestigious, and get the lion’s share of the best students. A certain other school will always be saddled with its less-than-selective state schools that mitigate the glory of its crown jewels and put it in last. And the other 4 will battle it out for 4th place. Perhaps eventually, one of the two of those 4 that have the research firepower (Penn or Columbia) will displace Princeton, but that would take a revision cultural literacy and history.</p>
<p>Finally, I take issue with this:
Brown’s common app wave was last year. The 2nd 20% wave this year was unrelated, and even the director of admissions was without explanation. I wouldn’t attribute it to the common app.
And Penn added the common app 3 years ago, and subsequently saw 3 years of stagnant growth. Only this year, with the rise of Furda and the implementation of several strategies (a new website geared specifically towards high school students, early and increased marketing to seniors, etc.) did Penn’s pool increase so dramatically. Presumably Penn will continue to grow next year, although this type of growth isn’t so easily sustained. Like Columbia and Dartmouth, it will soon reach saturation point and hold steady.</p>
<p>Brown increase is bc emma watson</p>
<p>muerte- i think that would be true if it was not also correlated with uchicago the other 2009 adopter that had such a huge bump. and i think that i didn’t just attribute it to the commonapp, but noted that it was one of many potential explanations. i believe it is very compelling.</p>
<p>as you also note: there is a lot of evidence that changes have delayed reactions - one or two years down the line. when you build pipelines and efforts.</p>
<p>for brown, its ‘popularity’ (brown has been well-liked by students, the fun place) that has always been there was depressed by two factors - first its own application, and second its long term adherance to the handwritten application. over the course of 5 years it has dismissed both efforts, and it is here riding high. i think fundamentally these are the two biggest things that brown has done because honestly they have one of the pros at the helm for awhile who knows all the tricks of how to expand prospect pools. this isn’t an expansion of prospect pools, but the conversion of prospects to applicants by reducing barriers.</p>
<p>@conncoll
Anyone who chooses Princeton over Columbia because of greater selectivity deserves their punishment: 4 years of hard labor (and artificially deflated grades) in New Jersey, with 3 square meals a day (provided you pay a couple grand to a country club fraternity).</p>
<p>^haha, couldn’t agree more, but I guess some kids are masochistic :I </p>
<p>As was mentioned in the other thread, Columbia apps went up by 4% this year, god only knows why the daily pennsylvanian has this information and not our own publications (unless they are lying or talking about the class of 2013). I think this is better than stagnation and will lower our overall acceptance rate closer to 9%.</p>
<p>Chances are they’re blowing smoke, since the data hasn’t been released yet. So maybe we’ll wait and see?</p>
<p>Can confirm that apps went up 4%.</p>
<p>Any source?</p>
<p>Sure. I asked an admissions officer.</p>
<p>Is that overall or just including RD?</p>
<p>does anyone know the date that decisions came out last year? the ED results from this year came out 5 days early so i wonder if its the same thing for RD…</p>