<p>I have practically gotten accepted to UPenn (Questbridge applicant, received a "likely" letter meaning 100% acceptance when its April)
but i really want to go to Columbia!
Do you think that if Penn accepted me, Columbia will?</p>
<p>They’re equally selective, and given that you’re a questbridge applicant you have a great chance. Columbia has a lower admit rate, but the same average SAT scores and a lower average high school rank than Penn. There are several posters on this board who were accepted to Columbia and chose Penn - perhaps they will weigh in on this. I’m sure there are similar people in the Columbia forum who made the opposite choice.</p>
<p>According to the revealed preference study in the New York Times several years ago, people who were accepted to both schools chose 50/50 between them. Presumably you’re drawn to New York? Or the core? Those are the two main things that pull people there.</p>
<p>Why do you prefer Columbia to Penn?</p>
<p>^^ If you’re gonna round, the NYT thing was closer to 40/60…</p>
<p>Muerteapablo - I don’t think it’s accurate at all to say that cross-admits at Columbia and Penn are split 50/50 between these two schools. Here’s the NY times chart you were referencing: </p>
<p>[The</a> New York Times > Week in Review > Image > Collegiate Matchups: Predicting Student Choices](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/09/17/weekinreview/20060917_LEONHARDT_CHART.html]The”>The New York Times > Week in Review > Image > Collegiate Matchups: Predicting Student Choices)</p>
<p>Columbia gets about 60% (59%) of the cross admits studied for this article. I think the Penn numbers may be helped a bit because Wharton probably does much better in cross-admit battles with Columbia college than just Penn CAS. If you’re purely comparing Penn CAS to Columbia College, I wouldn’t be surprised if Columbia was taking 65%+ of the cross admits. At least according to the NY Times article, Penn loses the cross-admit battle to every other ivy except Cornell (and is somewhat close to Dartmouth). Otherwise, HYP, Brown, and Columbia seem to take the majority of cross-admits from Penn.</p>
<p>Wharton might skew the numbers, but not significantly - I think Wharton applicants typically overlap with schools like Stanford, Yale, Princeton, etc. and not so much Brown, Dartmouth and Columbia - those schools are the peers of Penn CAS.</p>
<p>Among the people I know, this is generally accepted - Columbia/Penn splits down the middle. I also don’t trust anything Cue7 writes on this board since she/he appears to be ridiculously biased against Penn undergrad. Not sure why.</p>
<p>Edit: probably a bit strong, Cue7, my apologies. But I really do think Penn is equivalent to Columbia, have a number of friends at both schools who agree, and it ****es me off when people make distinctions in either direction arbitrarily based on 1) rankings (toward Penn) or 2)old prestige/NYC (towards Columbia). At this level, choose for fit! Neither one will afford you more bragging rights.</p>
<p>Muerte - no worries at all, and I apologize again if I come off as biased against Penn. As I’ve said before, I did my grad work at UPenn and my undergrad at U of Chicago, and I think some of my writing in the past was just colored by my natural affinity to my college, which happened to be very very different from Penn CAS. Again, I think this is natural - people tend to have strong feelings about their college. In any case, I think of late, I’ve tried to take care in being more objective in my posts. </p>
<p>Also, of late, I’ve done more research on the subject of yield, and some of the conclusions presented have been pretty interesting. Even the NY times chart I posted above, which now contains data from 5-6 years ago, presents some interesting anomalies. First off, I think after HYPS, you have a large cluster of schools that all have roughly the same wealth and “prestige”: Columbia, Duke, Chicago, Penn, Dartmouth, and Brown (well, Brown isn’t as wealthy, but always seems to be quite popular). </p>
<p>With all of these schools, and other schools that are similarly situated to one another, you’d expect the yield to be roughly similar. That’s absolutely not, however, the case. For example, Brown gets nearly 80% of the cross-admits with Duke, Brown gets 65% of the cross-admits with Penn, and Columbia gets 60% of the cross-admits with Penn. What this implies is, for schools that looks similar on all quantitative levels, and generally have a similar level of status (Brown and Duke don’t seem to be overwhelmingly different in terms of finances, exit options for grads, etc.), something else is at work when the yield becomes so skewed. </p>
<p>The general thinking has always been that students go to the “top rated” school they get into. This argument falls apart a bit when you look at roughly comparable schools (such as Yale and Princeton or Duke and Brown), and see such disparities in yield. (Yale takes 62% of the cross-admits with Princeton.)</p>
<p>All this implies that their is significant “emotion-work” that goes into making a final decision about college, and belies the thinking that ranking or status is the most important factor. There are certain factors that exert pull on students that have very little to do with differences in status. For example, Columbia’s location in NYC probably pulls a lot of Penn admits away from west philly. Brown’s generally laid-back, celebrity-infused status exerts a great pull on the minds of 18 yr olds. Chicago’s reputation as an intense, academic school, or Duke’s location in the south probably act as detriments to these two institutions. </p>
<p>For more info on the “emotion-work” behind yield, I suggest reading Mitchell Stevens’ excellent work, “Building a Class.” I think people point to yield too much when establishing a pecking order of schools, and don’t account for all the other (non-status oriented) factors that go into this decision for hs students. </p>
<p>So, Muerte, I agree, fit should be the way to determine what college to attend. I also think people should realize how determining yield - especially yield between 2 similarly ranked or strong schools - can be such a problematic endeavor. </p>
<p>Finally, I still think that Columbia probably takes the lionshare of cross-admits with Penn, but not because of either rankings or perceived prestige. Rather, NYC seems to exert a tremendous pull on applicants, and most would prefer NYC to Phila, even though Columbia does not have a particularly good reputation for student life.</p>
<p>Penn’s predominantly in East Philly, isn’t it?</p>
<p>No, there really isn’t an “east philly” so to speak. Penn is in West Philly, right next to Drexel U.</p>
<p>Yes, but it’s not in the “in west philadelphia, born and raised” area. You’re not going to get shot up every day.</p>
<p>… what? Penn’s more or less in the area Will Smith talks about in the Fresh Prince intro. I’m assuming where ever he was “born and raised” in West Philly wouldn’t be more than 10 min from UPenn.</p>
<p>UPenn isn’t in a dangerous part of Philly. I mean obviously if you go lurking out at 3 AM by yourself in a large city, it’s not like nothing will happen. The way you’re describing UPenn is as if it’s set in the ghetto of Philly.</p>
<p>When I visited, it wasn’t in the really bad part of Philly, but a few minutes west you’ll see the ghettoness.
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-pennsylvania/830433-now-ed-decisions-out.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-pennsylvania/830433-now-ed-decisions-out.html</a>
It’s still my top choice though, hehe. :)</p>
<p>Cue7, don’t get too carried away with that NY Times table. It’s not based on actual cross-admit data, but is instead based on the so-called “Revealed Preference Ranking”–an academic paper that used statistical models to predict preference outcomes based on sampling of specific groups of high school students:</p>
<p>[Revealed</a> Preference Ranking of U.S. Colleges and Universities by Christopher Avery, Mark Glickman, Caroline Hoxby, Andrew Metrick](<a href=“http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105]Revealed”>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105)</p>
<p>So, the preference percentages provided in the NY Times table are highly dependent on (1) the accuracy of the statistical modeling and (2) the accuracy of the data on which the modeling was based.</p>
<p>Additionally, the sampling data on which the Revealed Preference Ranking–and hence, the New York Times table–was based is now about 10 YEARS OLD (see section V. at bottom of page 18 of the abstract–data was collected from high school seniors who were to graduate from high school in 2000) :</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID930714_code20387.pdf?abstractid=601105&mirid=1]Revealed”>http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID930714_code20387.pdf?abstractid=601105&mirid=1]Revealed</a> Preference Ranking Abstract<a href=“click%20%22Download%22%20at%20top%20of%20page%20to%20see%20.pdf%20of%20Abstract”>/url</a></p>
<p>Much has transpired in the last 10 years that could significantly change the outcomes of that study, not the least of which is that Penn has now been ranked by US News at 4-7–and above all other Ivies except HYP–for each of the last 13 years. Additionally, over the last 10 years, there has been a tremendous transformation of Penn’s campus, surrounding neighborhood, and undergraduate academic and extracurricular programs and experience that began in earnest under President Judith Rodin in the 1990s.</p>
<p>So especially as related to Penn, statistically predicted “revealed preferences” based on sampling data collected from high school seniors in 1999 are, at this point, of extremely limited value.</p>
<p>^ nice info 45</p>
<p>But in that table, Tufts got ROASTED lmao</p>
<p>
I try. :)</p>
<p>Unfortunately, a lot of what is posted on CC–and especially about Penn–is unadulterated hearsay and/or speculation with no basis in fact (I don’t mean to include Cue7’s posts in this–his are generally quite thoughtful and informative). It takes a lot of time and effort to set the record straight, but I try to do my part. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>45 percenter - thanks for all the clarification. Actually, I was referring to the main argument in both the Revealed Preferences study and the NY times article - both these articles argue that revealed preferences can serve as a rough proxy for perceived prestige. </p>
<p>Other scholarship, however, (such as Stevens’ “building a class”) argue that yield really just can connote more of the “emotion work” that goes into making a final decision about college. So, in the study, if Columbia wins 60% of cross-admits with Penn, the authors would argue that this correlates to Columbia’s higher perceived prestige than Penn. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I and a good number of scholars would argue that this disparity in cross-admit winnings does not in fact indicate Columbia’s higher perceived prestige, but would instead indicate something else entirely. What that something is is hard to quantify or identify without taking a detailed survey of the cross-admits and the reasons behind their choices. Prestige may be one factor, but I’d think that Columbia’s location and the pull of NYC are greater factors. </p>
<p>So, overall, while I agree that students generally go to the “top-ranked school that accepts them,” when comparing quite similar schools, like Columbia and Penn or Brown and Duke, other factors beyond prestige go into the decision. Ultimately, this makes the very idea of creating a pecking order based on revealed preferences very problematic.</p>
<p>To the OP: I don’t think admission to Penn is related to a potential admission at Columbia. Both are great schools, and many admitted to one will be rejected by the other. Some are admitted to both. Good luck with both applications!</p>
<p>That’s actually a great point, 45 percenter - if the data is that old, it’s worthless for comparing Penn and Columbia admits to Brown, which had only recently been a top-10 school while Penn and Columbia had both just been #13 and #11</p>