<p>I have been prowling the Stanford and Yale SCEA boards for a while since I got admitted to Columbia because 1. Stanford SCEA was my second choice and 2. I have a bunch of friends that did SCEA in Stanford and got deferred/rejected.</p>
<p>I'm just wondering out loud..do you think if Columbia was a SCEA school rather than ED would they have rejected/deferred so many top notch kids like Stanford did? Or was this already the case in ED? </p>
<p>Of course I want to tell myself that Columbia admissions is super competitive (and it is), but I feel that Stanford admissions gets screwy because of some very blatant Affirmative Action and also Athletic recruitments. It seems to me that Columbia does not care about those two things AS MUCH as Stanford does.</p>
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HYPSM are the 5 hardest school's to get into in the U.S.
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<p>FYI, schools not school's. Possessive vs. plural.</p>
<p>I believe that Columbia is certainly harder to get into than Stanford and MIT in terms of your inability to game the system to put together a package that the school is looking for. I'm obviously not an expert on other schools, but the Stanford kids I know seemed to just build their resumes by being presidents / EICs of 10 different clubs and that sort of leadership resume was the right formula to get in the door. And for MIT, it seems like a good formula would be doing some scientific research and having a good AMC score. Columbia is hard to get into because you can't simply jump through hoops to get in.</p>
<p>Actually the way you just described Stanford students were the ones they staight up rejected this year. I also thought it was kind of dumb of them to do that also, considering H and P will just pick up their scraps anyways.</p>
<p>I don't agree that they are harder to get into than Columbia because during RD, the rates are equally low. But I think Early Decision for ANY school becomes easier considering these are kids that actually want to commit to the school and fewer kids are bold enough to do that this early in the year..hence lower number of applicants.</p>
<p>I think Columbia ED is particularly advantageous for applicants with reference to its ED admit rate vs RD admit rate. In comparison, Stanford's EA admit rate is very close to its RD admit rate, and if I'm not mistaken so is Yale's, which doesn't make the early round much easier for those folks. </p>
<p>While it's true that Columbia EDers are somewhat self-selected for good fit and strong stats, the fact that Columbia ED has a roughly 1 in 5 admit rate while RD has a 1 in 14 admit rate means anyone who has Columbia as their first choice should DEFINITELY apply ED.</p>
<p>of course it would give you an advantage. it doesn't matter what school it is, the rates are typically like this. Take a look at any other ivy school, or even Rice, Emory, Northwestern. ED rates are higher than EA (look at MIT and UChicago). I agree, it is not wise to wait until RD if Columbia is indeed your number one choice. Financial aid shouldn't really be a problem. My money situation is screwy but I still got accepted (although I have yet to get my finaid package).</p>
<p>Yeah, I'm actually a very big fan of the Columbia application. I think it's the best in a number of ways. The text limit is very credited and very smart, in my opinion.</p>
<p>columbia already gets tons of applicants, they don't need to switch to the common app, it's a good way to weed out lottery applicants, who drop those apps like pigeon sht.</p>
<p>"I'm obviously not an expert on other schools, but the Stanford kids I know seemed to just build their resumes by being presidents / EICs of 10 different clubs and that sort of leadership resume was the right formula to get in the door. And for MIT, it seems like a good formula would be doing some scientific research and having a good AMC score. Columbia is hard to get into because you can't simply jump through hoops to get in."</p>
<p>that's an unfair take on stan, if you ask me, I've known at least a dozen kids like that who didn't get in, stan takes weird kids like columbia.</p>
<p>You might need to jump through hoops to get into MIT, but those hoops are difficult to jump through. There's unpredictability at columbia, but the MIT pool is ridiculously self selective. I would put getting into Columbia not too far from getting into hypsm.</p>
<p>mit is not nearly as self selective as it used to be. they've become more "mainstream" like the ivies.
today, i think caltech's applicant pool is the best example of self selective applicantants.</p>
<p>Heyyyy guys! I'd like to preface this post by saying that I was literally just accepted to Yale!</p>
<p>That said, it doesn't matter if Columbia would be as competitive because you're all in!!!!!!!! Let's revel in that a bit more before questioning our worth. :)</p>
<p>Why, if Columbia was your first choice, are you worried about the difficulty of getting into Stanford and Yale. Both are more competitive, both early and regular. Period. Neither of which should matter if Columbia is the best fit for you. If all you are interested in is the prestige game, apply to Harvard. If you are looking for the school where you would best thrive, and you were lucky enough to get in early to Columbia, count your blessings. (And I have one child at Yale and one who just got into Columbia ED, so I have no ax to grind with either.)</p>