<p>Today, decision letters went out to applicants for Columbia University's class of 2015. For those that got in, congratulations, and welcome! This year was the hardest year to get into Columbia EVER. The admit rate is 6.9% for 2015. You all are phenomenally lucky to get into what is now the second most selective school in the US. Congratulations!</p>
<p>If you have any questions about Columbia, join the class of 2015 facebook group. Good luck to all those that weren't selected (don't feel bad--it's like winning the lottery. If you didn't get in here, you will end up at the school which is best for you. You're still amazing, I'm sure. Trust me.)</p>
<p>Now go have fun with what is left of senior year, forget about SATs and college essays, and I hope to see you on campus next year! And come to Columbia!</p>
<p>Columbia College ~ 1 applicant accepted for every 15 people who apply
School of Engineering and Science ~ 1 applicant accepted for every 10 who apply</p>
<p>^ Yup! I’m glad I applied this year, and only had to be one of 10 for SEAS. Next year it will probably be even worse! Good thing the world is ending in December anyway:)</p>
<p>Columbia had a 9.5% acceptance rate last year after waitlists, not 9.16%. On top of that, Columbia has <60% total yield (for SEAS and CC), and given that it had a huge jump in applications this year after switching to the Common App, it seems very possible that Columbia got a lot of applications from students who are likely not going to attend. So the yield might drop a few percent, meaning they have to accept more students off the waitlist. Once that happens, Columbia’s acceptance rate will probably be closer to 7.5%. Still very low, obviously, but all this “Columbia has a lower acceptance rate than Stanford, Yale, and Princeton, and lower than Harvard’s rate last year!” is premature.</p>
<p>I can’t cite this right now, but I think on the Washington Post or NYTimes there was something saying that the population for this class of students will be the greatest for the next few years and thus, will be the hardest class as well. So based on this knowledge, I’d have to assume that the acceptance rate following this year would have to get easier.</p>
<p>You’re speculating too much here. A change to the Common App has negligible effect on Columbia’s yield - if anything, because of the USNWR rankings, it is more likely that CU’s yield will increase. Each college knows it will never achieve an 100% yield and thus always overbooks the class, so I’m not buying the theory that it will jump to past even 7%. </p>
<p>And HYPS (especially Y and P) have similarly lower yields than H and S. No doubt their admit rates would rise too?</p>
<p>Why is the accept rate news? The physical number of seats hasn’t changed. All was needed was the # of applications. The low accept rate is evidence of a spike in applicatoins. Big whoop.</p>
<p>Remember NYU’s spike in apps when the Olsen twins matriculated?</p>
<p>anyhow phantasmagoric: even if columbia had its worst yield ever (in recent member that was in 2008, the year that H and P dropped early and it was unclear who was in their regular pool), it would admit another 125 student still leaving it with a 7.29% or lower than Yale.</p>
<p>i know this means a) columbia has a huge app total, b) it doesn’t quite solidify the rise of columbia into the top 5/6 conversation. but i think the point and the reason columbia folks are emphasizing it, is the sense that, 8 years ago, when bollinger said he wanted to make columbia a top 5 school, when we were languishing out of the usnews top 10, and doing poorly in other measurements, people scoffed. i think the concerted effort by the university - putting more money into admissions recruitment, slowly beginning to morph the university structure to bring the undergraduate colleges closer together, improving alumni relations, improving faculty resources - is being recognized. the idea that columbia gets to this point doing business as normal is not realistic. so i don’t think you will hear people talk about CHYMPS, with the C being columbia, just yet. but it is certainly more likely now than it was 8 years ago. </p>
<p>the admit rate affirms things that many of us have already felt for some time. columbia is among the elite of the elites.</p>
<p>Crazy how hard admissions are getting. If you look at the results threads you’ll see results like: Accepted Harvard, Rejected Northwestern. I wonder how top schools even decide whom to take these days, the process seems much more random now than even a few years ago.</p>
<p>alma - why do you say that? i think the reason it seems random is that we have staid notions that somehow selectivity should match up with our ideas of ranking.</p>
<p>on an individual student basis there are many reasons why someone might impress at harvard (that has a pretty large class size) and not at northwestern. nw is a great school and its large applicant pool lets them be discerning.</p>
<p>plus no two admissions officers get tickled in the same way. there is a lot of variation in the admissions process, and there always has been. with increase in applicant pools it allows for more crazy combinations, but it is not as if the seeds for that were not implanted many years ago.</p>
<p>yeah I’d say the excessive numbers make it a little more random and less linear. Accepted: Harvard, Rejected: Northwestern can be understood, but I think this is happening much more often today than even 5 years ago. </p>
<p>I think there are positives to schools having too many qualified students and caring more about fit factors and achievement outside the classroom. In my books the difference between national debate champion and school debate captain is more significant than the difference between 2200 and 2380. You can display a passion much more strongly in a research lab, school club or non-profit than you can by getting a 4.0 instead of a 3.8 or a 36 instead of a 33.</p>
<p>1) I think that for a lot of the academic superstars who are obviously more lenient towards academic than extracurricular pursuits, admittance is a lot more straightforward than those who rely on extracurriculars (but of course must still have acceptable grades). Whether a particular college believes that a debate champion will add to its diversity is very subjective. Northwestern, known for its stellar debate program, may have reviewed 10 applications with debate as a focus (just an example) and thought the 11th person trite, while Harvard picks up that same person 5 minutes into the review session and sees the person as fresh</p>
<p>2) from what ive observed, some selective colleges look for different things? besides the fact that MIT obviously weights science/math a lot more than humanities, a school like stanford and yale have differences too. I had two friends last year - one EA’ed to stanford while one EA’ed to yale. Both got rejected; the one that EA’ed to stanford was a US chemistry olympiad finalist, while the one that EA’ed to Yale was a nationally ranked debater. In the regular round, one that got rejected from stanford got in yale, and vice versa. So yeah, even if two accomplishments are equally noteworthy, different colleges might weight it differently.</p>
<p>For those who think the Columbia yield will drop: today the administration sent an email stating that some upperclassmen may need to give up their housing next year to make room for the new class. The email explicitly announces that, even though it’s only been a couple of days, the number of acceptances to date from admitted students is far exceeding expectations.</p>
<p>Sent an email to who…? This is the first I’ve heard about it, and it’s not on spec or bwog…</p>
<p>EDIT: Nevermind, it is on spec. Get on your game, bwog! And wow, that’s ridiculous. I hope this doesn’t mess up housing even more (but of course it will).</p>
<p>EDIT EDIT: Pretty sure it’s an april fool’s joke from Spec. Freshmen in Broadway, that’s a laugh.</p>