You can get a general sense of how much applied this year by looking at the “views” for this thread. According to my observation there is a 2k increase every hour, which is much more than past years
Does the financial aid decision come out simultaneously with the admission decision? Or, usually, the financial aid would come out later than that?
If the financial aid come out later, maybe, the admission decision could come out like May 21 ish, instead of May 28
Why do you guys think transfer applications increased this year? I understand that for first-year applicants it was largely because of making test scores optional, which wasn’t the case for transfer applicants.
For transfers shouldn’t the number of applicants decrease? Especially considering the fact that most first-year students (c/o 2024) haven’t even been able to attend classes in-person or experience their schools in their entirety. Wouldn’t this make it difficult for them to have a compelling reason to want to transfer?
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Northwestern announced that there was a considerable increase in the number of transfer applicants. I can’t find the article, but I think it was something like 600 more people applied to transfer this year. My regional AO at UChicago said that this was their most amount of transfer applicants they’ve ever had. Someone on Reddit said that UVA mentioned that they also had a record for transfer applicants.
These are just three schools, but the general consensus seems to be that there is more activity in the transfer pool than years past for the elite schools. Maybe people had more time sitting around inside to fill out applications? If you are a student at NYU or something that is remote, why not spend a few hours filling out an application to Columbia? Even if you think that your school is fine, the fact that many people haven’t been on campus to make the connection with their current school INCREASES their willingness to transfer. You always hear after the freshman application process that they’ll try to transfer because they weren’t happy with their results, but this sentiment burns out after a while after people start making friends and become invested in the campus of their current school. A lot of that hasn’t happened this year, so it’s almost no loss to throw their hat into the ring for a second shot at elite schools
Even at the elite schools, I think there will be some movement. I currently am trying to transfer out of WashU, which some might consider “elite” based on the selectivity and ranking, but when I’ve asked my Professors to fill out the mid-term report (some of my schools still wanted professor signatures), a few mentioned that they’ve already filled out a number of them this year. Maybe places like Columbia won’t see a lot of student attrition (because where else could you transfer “up” to? Harvard? Princeton? Good luck with their 0.1% transfer acceptance rates!), but I bet that the WashUs, the Rices, the Notre Dames, and the Vanderbilts of the world (what I’d call “second-tier” elite) will have a decent amount of movement of students trying to transfer out.
Oh well, just my thoughts on another lonely Tuesday evening in St. Louis. I’ll really rather type anything than the essay I have due tomorrow 
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On a possibly too optimistic note, part of the reason why they’ve moved the date back could be due to the fact that they had to move Ivy Day back one week, because presumably it’s the same admissions committee for both RD and transfers, so maybe they’re just behind! That doesn’t account for the extra week, but one extra week’s worth of apps is better than two!
And yes to what derakiii33 is saying! Speaking of NU, I’m actually at Northwestern right now, and though it’s obviously a fantastic school, I’ve had some trouble connecting to the community (and the quarter system is kinda rough too, ngl). I am obviously very happy to have gotten into NU and I know that I can be happy here, but Columbia has been my number one for a long time and I got waitlisted RD, so I figured why not try? But I also think there are a lot of people who may have chosen to go to a school closer to their family for this year because of the pandemic, who are now wanting to transfer to somewhere farther away? I don’t know, these are also just my ramblings as I stay up entirely too late for the millionth night in a row, haha!
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Agreed. I don’t think I would’ve thought about transferring if not for covid. I’m sure many think the same. I’d definitely argue that a lot of these transfers are freshman that overachieved online and have never even stepped foot on their respective campuses. Its really hard to attach yourself to a school you’ve never been to, especially if it wasn’t your first choice.
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I think so for sure. A lot of my classes during the spring had in-person components (like chem and physics labs, diff eq recitation section, and my complex variables class was mostly in person), so I was on-campus to some extent pretty much every day. Except for when I got COVID! I’d LIKE to say that I got to know my school decently well and while I don’t like it here, I’m starting to accept the fact that I’ll probably have to come back for the fall even though I was accepted to Cornell because I feel like it might be a “lateral move” and I am not sure how much happier I’d be there–I am NOT in the business of having to be at three colleges in three years!
Hey guys, I called Columbia and they said they’re still planning to send the results all at once and not waves
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Is it gonna ba May 21 or May 28? Did they say anything about the date?
They wouldn’t tell me the date, trust me I tried to ask 
maybe they don’t know either lol
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but it seems for sure that the decision won’t come out next week since they change the date from May 15 to May 30
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Ahhh I really hope that’s the case!!! Thank you for sharing and good luck to you as well 
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I think if they’re going to wait till May ending to respond to us - they might as well allow us to turn in our final grades to support our case more 
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Should I still keep my hope that they are gonna release it today
No lol. The fact that they offically changed the “decision by” date to May 30 indicates to me that they know they wont have things ready by the 15th.
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hopefully they are still aiming to be done by may 15
I heard some people saying that Northwestern university extend the decision releasing date to June 15th, and Brown is also delaying in comparison with last year. I don’t know whether Columbia is going to do the same thing.
I’m pretty sure that Columbia would have already been out at this time last year, or would be coming out shortly. Northwestern initially had told everyone that decisions would be all released by May 15th, however in communication some applicants have had with them, they say that the AOs have walked back this guarantee to a mid-June estimate.
However, I saw that Harvard was released yesterday, which is MUCH earlier than last year. So it looks like stuff is really going to vary from school-to-school.
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