<p>My daughter wants to go to Columbia. Any Columbia students or parents here that can advise me (her) on her chances of getting in with the following stats:</p>
<p>Academics:</p>
<p>GPA 3.6 (weighted 4.0)
1420 SAT (Reading 690, Math 730, Essay 11, Writing 650)
7 AP classes (4's and 5's on all AP tests...Calc, US History, etc.)
College Major: humanities and social sciences</p>
<p>EC's:</p>
<p>Mock Trial county champions and California state 3rd, 4th, and 7th place three years in a row.
Public speaking winner and public speaking club officer
PSAT: National Merit Scholar Commendation (97th percentile)</p>
<p>Does she have a chance with these stats (assuming excellent essay and good interview)???</p>
<p>Do a search in the "Columbia" threads in the "Ivy League" forum, looking at the results of decisions for this past year. [If you link to the Old CC Board, you can "Search" and find the parallel threads for the previous two years.]</p>
<p>That 1420 SAT would have been iffy with the Old SAT. With the new SAT, imho it's disasterous for any intentions of attending Columbia.<br>
As a point of general process, I think you would be well-served to get an idea of not how strong your daughter is but how strong the competition is. After you recover from that bucket of cold water, you can start getting useful info on to help plan your daughter's search. There are a lot of very helpful, well-informed parents here...I would pay particular attention to anything that Carolyn or Jamimom writes.</p>
<p>Welcome to the board...and apologies for the first bucket of cold water. It happens to a lot of us. When my D got a 1400 on the Old SAT, I thought, "Great...she's done." Then I read this board and blanched.</p>
<p>Fwiw, Columbia had been my D's #1 on paper and after visiting she decided to not even apply. One of the things about the whole process is that many students do change their minds about their targets as they acquire information, develop criteria, and gain experience of a school via interviews, visits, etc.</p>
<p>Columbia in particular seemed to be all over the place with admissions this year. A lot of high stat candidates were rejected and several in the 1300s were accepted. I think it would be very hard to predict success for any one individual.</p>
<p>Mydaughter had a 1500 on the old SAT, well over a 4.0 in the most challenging curriculum, great music ECs and was a legacy to boot and she only made the waitlist this year...good luck</p>
<p>My daughter was an ED admit this year. I would have to say the stats you present are below average for Columbia. Who knows though? They did seem to take some kids wirh special talents and lower stats. She may just wow them with her public speaking ability!</p>
<p>It was a strong first choice for my daughter and while she did have above average stats, we really encouraged her to fall in love with some other schools, too. Urban schools seem to be in vogue, and Columbia just keeps getting harder to get in.</p>
<p>Thank you all for the replies so far, hearing from people helps set expectations a lot better than admin stats. I'm trying to help her understand her chances and see all the college options out there...taking her to Columbia in January (0 degrees) didn't weaken her interest and this from a California girl who complains when it goes below 60 at home. The draw of Columbia and Manhattan is powerful.</p>
<p>Miramontedad my son had 1550 SATs and 4.45 weighted GPA with mostly honors and AP courses and very strong extracurricular music and was rejected. However, as others have pointed out, it's unpredictable to a certain extent.
You might want to look for my story, Picking up the Pieces....posted in April.
andi</p>
<p>Andi: Interesting, I've heard this story a lot. One of my daughters friends had very similar stats as your son and was rejected from Yale and told that they had twice as many applicants in his stat/ec range so it came down to a coin toss for many of the applicants. where did all these high achieving kids come from? Have the children of the seventies really produced a generation of high achievers, hard to believe.</p>
<p>My life experience has taught me relationships often win the day, even casual awarness of someone. How important to your childs acceptance is meeting with (interviewing with) an admissions officer?</p>
<p>Do people have experience that shows we met the admissions officer "here" and were accepted and we didn't "here" and were rejected?</p>
<p>It's called global pressure from immigrants from all over the world mostly students with parents from India, China, Russia, etc...Those people that are used to high level of competitiveness to get into to college.</p>
<p>Is your daughter interested in Barnard? There are many postings here by a student who fell in love with Columbia, was rejected in the ED round, picked herself up and got into Barnard and NYU in the RD round, then chose Barnard. If NYC is the draw, there are other colleges she might look at as well, including some within easy reach of the city though not right in it.</p>
<p>Andi: That must have been heartbreaking for your son. Especially coming from the Boston area where there are such intense academic and "right" university social pressures. </p>
<p>The good news is your son sounds like a life-time learner and a young man destined for success. You may want to advise him to come west after college. Out here it doesn't matter what school you went to or what your last name is, all that matters is performance. Smart hard working young men can find their fortune (finacially or other) in California. Especially in Silicon Valley. Cisco, Yahoo, and HP don't want to know where you went to school, they want to know what you can do for them, how you can provide value.</p>
<p>All the kids do come up and meet the Admin Officer if given a chance and it may help in putting a face to an application your d's case, but college admission is not what it used to be. College admission is decided by a committee and the regional ad com can only present the file but not decided on it. By the way, have you check out some of the college admission books from the local public library(please don't make these adcoms rich), there are tons of them.</p>
<p>Yes. Thank you for the reminder. She's aware of Barnard...spent a weekend there with her Yale (camp) summer school class. That's when she fell in love with Columbia/Barnard. The freedom of being in a big city at 15 relatively anattended had a big impact on her. She's definately in a New York state of mind.</p>
<p>I think she'll pursue the Barnard angle and I believe she said there are certain majors which you can graduate with a Columbia diploma while attending Barnard...not sure if that's accurate but I know she mentioned it. </p>
<p>Datum: all Barnard grads receive Columbia degrees.</p>
<p>MiramonteDad, about the relationship thing...the whole game has completely changed from when we went to college. After three years on this site, that's one of the biggest things I'd take away from it.</p>
<p>Bandit, you're right: I read the OP too hastily and thought that 1420 was a New SAT...it's Old SAT plus Writing. </p>
<p>However, due to the demographic profiles, it's good to bear in mind that someone with average stats has significantly below average chances of being admitted.</p>
<p>In my business we just outsourced a project to 80 Indian programmers in Bangalore (hourly rate charged to our client $26 per Indian). 5 years ago we would have given the same job to guys in San Francisco charging $125 an hour. And now the Indian's are playing middle-man and outsourcing the work to China were a highly trained programmer is costing $11 and hour (the actual programmer makes less than a dollar an hour). And some of these guys are educated at US universities. However most of them are educated at very demanding technical schools in their own country's. Global competition is here. And for our children to be successful they'll need to learn how to compete in a hyper-competitive marketplace. It'll be their "depression era" or "WWII" type struggle and it'll be called "hyper-competition." I agree with you that the "pressure" we're seeing at the college admission level is coming from this global competition reality. But it's not so much because the other students they're competing with are from outside the US it's more the shrinking "hi-paid" job market because of global competition. You need to be at the top of your game to succeed in this new world and that means getting the best education you can get, which means everyone gunning for the best schools.</p>
<p>Bearing in mind that the difference between 97% and 99% is ridiculous and not measurable in the 'real' world...check out Xiggi's SAT prep advice listed above. It is targetted to those who need another few percentage points.</p>
<p>I agree with everything you said but the competition is from children of immigrants who came to US legally, not international students. They, I beleive competes a different category.</p>