<p>So I recently found out that someone from my school applied to two schools ED, one of them being Columbia, and got into both. He then went to the other school he got into, breaking off the legal contract he had with Columbia. This was a few years ago. Since then, not one person from my school has gotten into Columbia, even those that were accepted to Yale, UPenn, Princeton, etc. Does Columbia "hold grudges" against students from schools they've had bad experiences with?</p>
<p>I would ideally like to think that that doesn’t happen, but who really knows, it might be coincidence; it might not.
I know the guidance councilors’ at my school think that Princeton backlisted my school because we haven’t had an acceptance in years despite people getting into Harvard, MIT, UPenn, Dartmouth, Yale, etc… Really though, maybe there just hasn’t been a candidate thus far that really stood out to them. College admissions at the top schools are so competitive that no one can really know these things for sure.</p>
<p>No one at my school has been accepted to MIT in the past decade. But then again our school was made for students who want to do music, art, theater etc.</p>
<p>My school had some very bad press this year with a huge cheating scandal yet Columbia accepted 9 kids who applied early decision.</p>
<p>My teacher, who is an alum of Columbia, thinks so himself. </p>
<p>One year a girl from our school got into Columbia and switched to Harvard once she got off that waitlist, and I guess our numbers have never been that good with Columbia since.</p>
<p>Urban rumors. Colleges don’t punish students at a high school because of what a past student did.</p>
<p>High schools don’t have kids get in to Princeton or Columbia or whatever elite school for a long period because they don’t produce someone who is good enough to stand out from the 25,000 others who apply (that’s Princeton’s number of applicants). A valedictorian who is a class president is incredible in the eyes of the high school and comunity, but nothing special in the Ivy League pool of applicants.</p>
<p>I don’t think it is an urban myth, at least not completely. Especially if the college thinks maybe the guidance counselor did not adequately impress on the student what they were signing up for and what was expected of them as an ED applicant. I think a lot of top colleges will “blacklist” in this situation. They don’t actually have many other ways to pressure high school guidance counselors to keep their students in line on this.</p>
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<p>There is no “legal contract” at all involved with ED.</p>
<p>Discussed here on CC many times.</p>
<p>Not legally binding in the sense that you will get sued. But that is all the more reason for a school to “blacklist” against a high school whose students break the ED agreement.</p>
<p>I have no idea whether Columbia blacklisted students from the OP’s school.</p>
<p>On the other hand, I’ve heard many stories of students accepted at Harvard and Princeton and rejected by U. of Chicago and Johns Hopkins. Really, at that level it is a crapshoot and it’s possible that it’s just random, and it’s also possible that given a range of hyper-acceptable students, the ouija (sp?) board at Columbia, the fickle finger of fate, steered away from students at your high school.</p>
<p>You will NEVER know. One possibility is that students are just not good enough. Or the qualified students didn’t go through the final random lottery (it happens, and quite often).
However, it may be possible that Columbia DOES blacklist your school. Still, you will not know this because adcoms will NEVER admit this. It sounds too bad. It’s like “breaking the belief in equality of opportunity upon which we, the United States of America, are founded.” So even if you or your counselor call, they will not admit, no matter under how much pressure.</p>
<p>Years ago our HS was ED (not RD) blacklisted for a while by a top school for multiple ED applications. It can happen.</p>
<p>It may all seem like luck but I can assure you there is no “random lottery” involved.</p>
<p>If I were an admissions officer and I accepted someone ED and then they broke the agreement with the tacit approval of their guidance counselor, I’d think long and hard before I accepted another ED applicant from that school, though I probably wouldn’t hold it against RD applicants. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.</p>
<p>eep, im sorry thats the situation. do you think i’d be better off applying RD next year then? but columbia really is my first choice, i have no thoughts about applying to more than one school ED</p>
<p>i hope i can just come off in my essays as someone really earnest about the school and the opportunities it offers. that seems to be my only shot right now</p>