And is there much of a difference in the credentials of their students? It seems like much of it is just preference in atmosphere, and maybe a bit of name brand preference.
<p>Yes, Harvard is more selective in terms of % applicants accepted</p>
<p>But regarding quality of students, you are right, that's debatable
If there is an edge, it's marginal</p>
<p>IMO, there is a pretty significant difference between Columbia and Harvard; you can't tell the difference by looking at SAT scores, percentage of valedictorians or SAT 2 Scores or AP test info. Harvard requires you to not only be a scholar, but to also be extraordinary in some particular way. Harvard has almost an 80% yield and they don't even have ED; in other words, they pretty much get who they admit, this is not the case with Columbia.</p>
<p>I don't have any evidence to back this up, but based on the admissions decisions I've seen from Harvard and Yale at the school I work for, Yale is right up there with Harvard. Sure, Harvard has the higher yield on cross apps, but Harvard takes around 1600 in a freshman class, whereas Yale is closer to 1200; to me, these extra 400 matriculants (about 500 accepts) nullifies the selectivity difference between Harvard and Yale and usually leads them to make similar decisions on applicants. However, I've seen a lot of kids accepted (and even courted with likely letters) summarily turned down by Yale and Harvard in a way that made me feel: they weren't even close.</p>
<p>If you jump off of a twenty story building, would it be softer to land on asphalt or concrete? Any difference between the two would only show up in a large statistical sample. For any individual application, the lottery aspects of the admissions process will make any such generalization useless.</p>
<p>like the first response said, if you look at it strictly numbers based, yes, columbia is less selective, but in actuality: no, they are equally selective.</p>
<p>Kids get accepted to Columbia and rejected from Harvard and kids get into Harvard and rejected from Columbia. The reason for this is that each school has a specific persona and culture about them. Not all students who apply to those schools will actually fit these cultures. Raw stats and numbers do lie about much in a person.</p>
<p>I applied to Columbia ED and did not apply to Harvard. I loved the culture of Columbia and what it had to offer me and my career aspirations. I visited Harvard and did not get a sense that I would belong or want to belong there. Just how I felt. It is different for every student in the world.</p>
<p>Percentage wise for admission this year:
Harvard: 9.3%- Hardest school (percentage wise)
Columbia: 10.4%- 3rd Hardest school (percentage wise)</p>
<p>% admitted is a very misleading statistic. As I said, it is about a school choosing the right kids to exemplify their culture and persona. </p>
<p>Hope that helps.</p>
<p>all the elite schools are a toss up. for example, i got into harvard,yale,princeton,mit but got waitlisted by columbia and rejected by stanford. its weird.</p>
<p>For every applicant accepted, there are four or five practically identical applicants who are denied or waitlisted. If after a college selected their freshman class, they threw out everybody that was accepted or waitlisted and started over again, then the result would be statistically identical to what they got the first time. The college guides talk about how the system is a lottery or crap shoot.</p>
<p>1.2 million high school students go to college each year. Americans are very brand conscious and everyone in the top of their high school class looks to the top 10 schools. There are plenty of schools out there besides the brand-name schools.</p>