Am I wrong or last year’s threads were more active? I remember the 2019 thread was super active 
I was thinking the exact same thing. This leads me to believe there might have been less applicants this time
Yeah even the Spring 2021 thread was poppin’. I think that the application fee being waived increases the amount of applicants, at least that’s what they said. For that influx of applicants, we really aren’t seeing them here!
Hopefully, that translates into better odds for us!
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I’m skeptical of that figure. The only place I’ve seen it is on a third party, admissions consulting site.
GS doesn’t publish admissions statistics because of the variety of programs. The Dual BA program, I’d be willing to guess, probably admits 10% or less. The Post Bacc program probably admits 10% or less. The regular BA program probably admits 40% of more of qualified applicants.
Those are just my guesses based on how competitive the typical applicants are in each category.
What do you mean the regular BA program admits 40% of qualified applicants? What are you basing that off? I assumed the regular BA program was at least somewhat competitive
Honestly, it’s just a hunch based off of years of talking with applicants. I don’t have any hard data - only Columbia does and they’re not sharing.
Your hunch is GS’s acceptance rate is over 40%? That’s kinda wild tbh
I’d be very surprised if the acceptance rate was below 40%.
They publish admit data on dual BA students for a majority of the dual BA programs, and the acceptance rate is ~35%.
Maybe ~60-65% acceptance rate for regular BA? Sounds about right. No idea about post-bacc premed.
What makes you think it’s that high? Would be weird considering GS students maintain a higher average GPA relative to CC, and CC has like a 5% acceptance rate
The relative acceptance rate compared to the dual BA program (which are published), and from personal experience.
Not nearly enough people get rejected per cycle in forums to make it anywhere near 35%. Per admission cycle thread (Spring or Fall), it’s difficult to locate more than 3-4 people on this thread who say they got rejected.
I think the CC threads might be skewed, if you look at the dual BA threads, the vast majority of kids also report getting accepted, despite having a 35% acceptance rate. What is the relative acceptance rate you speak of?
I’m confused. What do you mean by “regular BA”, is it like the regular poll? I’m so lost, sorry if these are dumb questions!
By “regular BA” they are just referring to the regular GS undergrad applicants, rather than a special program or duel degree etc.
I would also mimic froshman in that these forums are pretty skewed in terms of who they attract from an applicant pool, and especially so for GS. I had planned on just lurking, but am also a competitive candidate for the Fall and feel slightly disheartened that people without real data beyond a message board would posture that the GS admit rate is anywhere near 60%. Granted I don’t know how Covid has affected numbers for this year, but seems irresponsible…
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I’ve always been curious about the numbers, but as a GS undergrad can confirm that at Columbia no one distinguishes between CC/GS/Barnard/Seas (although Barnard sometimes faces a slight stigma). Recruiting and grad school admissions appears to be the same, GS and CC students take the same classes and receive the same degree, and GS students tend to have slightly higher GPAs.
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The point about Covid skewing the stats is a good one. The number of applications at most universities is way up. NYU got over 100,000 applications this year. Most ivies were up double digits (Harvard was up over 50%, I believe).
Basically, forget everything you thought you knew about admission statistics because it’s all out the window.
Another point to raise: GS classes do not have a set size. Harvard’s incoming class is set at 795. There’s no such hard and fast number at GS. One year it could be 500 and the next it could be 700.
I was curious what you meant by 'Those are just my guesses based on how competitive the typical applicants are in each category.
’
I will definitely agree that hanging out on this site does not provide you with an accurate representation of admissions statistics. The range of users you’ll find on this site naturally leans towards strong/competitive applicants, which creates the illusion of inflated acceptance rates. This is the case on various other threads too.
These are very different times, and Columbia themselves said that they’ve received a huge increase in applications, which makes it harder to get accepted right now than usual. This can probably be attributed to the exam/fee being waived.
Also, the 35% acceptance rate is surely wrong. I’ve seen that number floating around on the internet but the sources are hardly reliable.
They literally publish the dual BA acceptance rate for 3 of the programs. Averages out to be around ~34%
https://sciencespo.gs.columbia.edu/content/class-2024-profile
https://tau.gs.columbia.edu/content/class-2024-profile
https://tcd.gs.columbia.edu/content/class-2024-profile
Everyone also knows the regular program is atleast a magnitude less competitive than the dual BA programs.
GS also admitted more than 1,000 students in this last year. Nearly 2.5x the class size of SEAS and 2/3rd’s the class size of Columbia College, despite being a much less known program.
https://gs.columbia.edu/news/gs-welcomes-fall-2020-incoming-students (800 Fall)
Profiles of the Spring 2021 Incoming Class | School of General Studies (300 spring)
I would be really surprised if the acceptance rate was below 45%. I could see 55% or 60% being realistic.
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Thanks for sharing all that. I wasn’t aware that they published the acceptance rates of those programs. I guess my only question is, how do you know that the regular program is a magnitude less competitive than the dual BA programs? I’m not disagreeing with you, I’m just curious.