<p>Columbia College has the lowest accept rate, but this is unfair because Columbia is the only Ivy to seperate acceptance rates at its various schools. Also, acceptance rate isn't the only factor in selectivity by any stretch.</p>
<p>Regardless, Columbia is extremely selective and it seems unlikely that a considerable portion of the student body consists of bitter HYPS rejects, as this thread implies.</p>
<p>Prestige plays no role in overall success of a person. </p>
<p>As a side note, I would rank Columbia higher than any other institution in the country because they don't adjust their acceptance pool in order to boost their US news rankings. Their mean SAT is lower than HYPS, not because they get lower scoring candidates, but because they choose to accept students based on more than test scores, which is, in my oppinion, extremely respectable. A ranking can't measure the value of having better personalities on campus, as compared to better test scores. What constitutes "better" in terms of personalities isn't quantifiable. I know that, and the adcoms at Columbia seem to know that.<br>
So what? people wear sweat shirts? maybe they were seniors who got into a great grad school. Good for them! But even if that isn't the case, it can get cold in NY. And I personally like the irony...perhaps it's humorous. They may have siblings there. Who knows?<br>
Prestige is useless in the terms of a happy life (more money doesn't make a happier life). There are columbia professors who went to HYMPS. And HYMPS profs who went to Columbia, showing that all of these great institutions have a signifigant impact on one another. Lay off of the prestige a bit and recognise Columbia for the amazing university that it is.</p>
<p>About Columbia separating acceptance rates, in comparison, the only schools this has any impact on are Penn and Cornell.
The 8.9% can be directly compared to HYP, Brown, Dartmouth, Penn CAS, Cornell CAS, etc.</p>
<p>Prestige, prestige, prestige, prestige, prestige, prestige.</p>
<p>There's 6 kittens.. hehe</p>
<p>S Snack. Brown, and HYP all include engineers in their overall numbers and engineers always tend to be admitted at higher rates given self-selection and a propensity for higher test scores. If Princeton seperated engineers out, for example, there is no doubt the "college" accept rate would decline.</p>
<p>1) I think Columbia kids should be excited they are attending one of the best schools in the country and shouldn't worry abut HYP. Unfortunately, some do.</p>
<p>2) Within Columbia there is a hierarcy and complexes pervade. CC kids think they are smarter than SEAS kids who think they are smarter than Barnard girls. Then factor in GS. Columbia's internal complexity creates a strange environment in this regard. </p>
<p>I transferred to another Ivy (Dartmouth) and I didn't feel a complex there at all. Everyone got in the same way (no "backdoors" or institutions such as GS, Barnard, etc). Also the Dartmouth culture was all about "I love Dartmouth" so no one even discussed other schools or HYP. I think Columbia could use a little of this attitude.</p>
<p>You guys got into Columbia! Forget about HYP!</p>
<p>Some of us got into HYP as well. And chose Columbia.
Actually, I think Columbia is one of the schools that harbors the most HYP rejectors: basically, in order to turn down HYP, a student needs a reason - at Columbia, it's NYC, Brown = no requirements/liberal environment, MIT = top engineering, and so on.</p>
<p>slipper - but none of those schools have anywhere near the number of Columbia's 300 engineers. If they were factored out at other schools, it would have an insignificant impact on acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Haha great discussion. Didn't mean to open up a can of worms.</p>
<p>Just to clarify, I, myself believe Columbia is the perfect school and would have chosen it over HYP (as I applied ED). However, I heard from some of my friends currently attending that like someone said before, Columbia harbors a number of HYPS rejects for various reasons (probably because Columbia is next in line) and some of these, tend to sulk around. That'd definitely p. me off. But it's great to hear that the vast majority of students don't suffer from this to any extent. </p>
<p>As for prestige. I don't think it matters at all unless one is into coaxing his own ego. Long term success is determined by personal work ethics and intrinsic intelligence. This is not to say, Columbia is not prestigious as it definitely is. It's just not HYP and I think people accept that without necessarily feeling "short-changed". Columbia has many hurdles it needs to jump before it deserves that kind of recognition. Just my 2 cents.</p>
<p>Oh, and one last thing, which I guess speaks more of HYP's superiority complex than of Columbia's inferiority complex, is that an HYP student will rarely take the opportunity to tell you that he or she was rejected by Columbia, when, odds are, since elite admissions have become such a crapshoot, most of them were.
Of all the students I personally know that are attending HYP next year, all that applied to Columbia were rejected. Most H students don't get into YP or C. Most Y students don't get into HP or C...so on and so on. This can be said about any of the super-selective schools.
The only students getting into all of these schools are the genuinely incredible kids, strong URM's and some athletes. Otherwise, it's just a crapshoot.</p>
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I transferred to another Ivy (Dartmouth) and I didn't feel a complex there at all. Everyone got in the same way (no "backdoors" or institutions such as GS, Barnard, etc). Also the Dartmouth culture was all about "I love Dartmouth" so no one even discussed other schools or HYP. I think Columbia could use a little of this attitude.
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<p>you need to pay attention to who is posting. NONE of the current students/alum have said there is an inferiority complex (see page 1 of this thread) and it is only the class of 2011 who is even carrying on this inane discussion. </p>
<p>please, i mean this in the nicest way possible, if you have only spent a few days on campus then dont try and argue about the atmosphere. you simply dont know what you are talking about and then get into silly arguments about prestige.</p>
<p>Thank you for reaffirming why I turned down Yale for Columbia. Why do you comment so frequently on the Columbia board? Get a life.</p>
<p>^^^^ I agree, columbia2009</p>
<p>posterX, you're really not wanted here. All you do is bring up the same few statistics which Columbia lacks in over and over again.
I could find a good 2 or 3 statistics that down show the true quality of any school, it's not that hard.</p>
<p>hey poster X,</p>
<p>Columbia has dozens of more Nobel Laureates than Yale. How bout you suck on that?</p>
<p>oh and uh oh, Columbia is ranked higher in the World Rankings than either Yale or Princeton. =)</p>
<p>Poster X, Columbia is one of the TOP research universities in the country. I don't know what STATISTIC you are using to reach your conclusion.</p>
<p><a href="http://mup.asu.edu/research2006.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://mup.asu.edu/research2006.pdf</a></p>
<p>Imaging what Columbia would have been able to achieve if it had Yale's endowment! We get so much from our relatively small endowment that I think I can say that Columbia is probably more efficient, OR we attract more high caliber scholars than these other schools. </p>
<p>All these schools with all their money is not even above Columbia!</p>
<p>Indeed, Columbia makes a lot out of what it has. A lot of the scientific research produced here is done in nearly century-old labs that would be laughed off at HYP as deteriorating facilities. The fact that so much can be done in them is a testament to how well Columbia mashals its (admittedly poorer and sparser) resources. One does have to speculate on what a twice-larger endowment in such hands would be capable of achieving.</p>
<p>I think that in discussing the issue of an institution's prestige we lose focus of what really matters when it comes to universities: their ability to educate. I was recently reading an article in the NYT (NYT</a> Insider Account required) about how many Harvard students and faculty feel that teaching isn't really a priority there. I don't think anyone would say that about Columbia both because of the Core and because, subjectively speaking, the teaching is quite good.</p>
<p>Also, I think that Columbia's location allows it to have a kind of "special status" in comparison to HYP(S)(MIT). None of those schools even come close to being in the metropolis that Columbia is, so when people look at Columbia students, they think not only that we must be smart, but also (and quite uniquely) that we chose Columbia in part because we love being in New York and having all the resources the city can afford us.</p>
<p>So don't worry about the prestige. Columbia is certainly a prestigious college, certainly the most so of the schools in NYC, and a very unique university when compared to every other top tier school. Instead worry about the education you're receiving. And then worry about the prestige of your graduate school.</p>
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I've personally heard a lot of current students at Columbia complain about the teaching and the fact professors are never around (whereas at Caltech, Yale, Princeton, I mostly hear about things like professors having extra evening classes at their houses, and always being available).
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<p>really? well it's certainly not from this forum. where are you getting your experiences? what are their years? you have none and you're pulling this all out of your a**</p>
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Part of that may have to do with the school's location; most faculty live in the suburbs (which, in NYC, take over an hour to get to) and therefore don't spend much time at the university itself
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<p>actually, you're wrong. you don't know what you're talking about.</p>