<p>The College posted a 4% increase and SEAS, a real comer in engineering education, posted a 15% increase. For more details: <a href="http://www.columbiaspectator.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/01/31/41fdde6d860bb%5B/url%5D">http://www.columbiaspectator.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/01/31/41fdde6d860bb</a>.</p>
<p>HOLY SHOOT</p>
<p>15%?!</p>
<p>Thank god I got in ED 8)</p>
<p>I did some calculations and it seems, if the class size remains the same, the acceptance rate for SEAS will have dropped by 6% from last year. :eek:</p>
<p>Columbia's applications have risen every year for over a decade. And this has happened without the admissions policy and financial aid manipulations at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and elsewhere.</p>
<p>OMG! this turns this year's admissions cycle into a really heady roller coaster!</p>
<p>You mean like offsetting tuition increases with greater financial aid?</p>
<p>What is distasteful or "manipulative" about this?</p>
<p>The motive behind the change in harvard's financial aid policy truly is noble, but it is worth noting that columbia has registered an increase even without incentives like the ones harvard is offering.</p>
<p>Of course it's not distasteful that schools try to offset tuition increases with greater financial aid. It's that they do it in response to each other, and particularly when one school has a notable increase in applications. Doubtless Harvard was mortified by Yale's surpassing it in selectivity last year; hence to retrieve its supremacy, it pours new money into financial aid. Yale, having lost applicants this year while Harvard gained big, will no doubt respond in kind next year. Columbia, I'm proud to note, has remained highly indifferent to all this posturing. It has stuck to its admissions and aid policy for years, and has done increasingly well with it.</p>
<p>dude u call that distasteful?....GOD FINANCIAL AID ROCKS..its not supposed to make u sad!</p>
<p>In itself, it makes me happy indeed. I'll need it to send my own children to college one day. But the cynical use of it makes me sad. It makes me sad to see very rich instituions play with each other and with applicants this way. It feeds into a sick strain well entrenched in our society -- the monetization of absolutely everything. Columbia has, in its own way, withstood this corruption, and I think it's admirable. That's all.</p>
<p>it's probably because a lot more applicants are attracted to new york city. especially new york residents. it's just a thing if you're a bright student applying to top schools --you almost automatically apply to columbia. at least that's how it is in my school, but i happen to personally like columbia.</p>
<p>Columbia has indeed benefitted in the last few years as urban schools have come back into vogue with the demographically-enduced drop in the crime rate (and, in NYC, Guiliani's banishing of the squeegie guys).</p>
<p>But they also have a problem in that over the same period their endowment has grown far more modestly than endowment all the other Ivies - and, indeed, has not kept up with inflation.</p>
<p>Thus it is not entirely clear that their decision to increase financial aid less generously than some others have was a "moral" decision to avoid "corruption" as much as it was a decision based on economic necessity.</p>
<p>"But they also have a problem in that over the same period their endowment has grown far more modestly than endowment all the other Ivies - and, indeed, has not kept up with inflation."</p>
<p>Yeah, Columbia's endowment and alumni contribution rates are near the bottom of the Ivys. They can't afford what the other Ivys, such as Princeton, can. But Columbia still attracts huge numbers of student despite this, which shows its greatness as an institution. Or the greatness of New York. Maybe both.</p>
<p>No doubt. The location is a unique attraction; not for all, of course, but for many.</p>
<p>Byerly makes a good point, I concede. But then Columbia, unlike Harvard and Yale, hasn't made fundraising and endowment growing its central endeavor (ironic in a way, since Columbia resides in New York, the ultimate money center). I know that schools need money -- lots of it -- to grow and be great, but when the money becomes an end in itself, the greatness soon collapses. May Columbia avoid that trap!</p>
<p>ughh, shoot me now :mad:</p>
<p>I guess the 9/11 scare that affected Columbia application numbers is over.</p>
<p>What does this mean the acceptance rate for CC will likely be this time around? 3%</p>
<p>Hahaha... not quite. Probably more like 10-12%.</p>
<p>We usually do at least slightly better than average <em>crosses fingers</em></p>
<p>According to somebody's calculations on the Harvard board, a 5.47% acceptance rate for the RD round is expected (at Harvard). That's just obscenely low.</p>