<p>I do have faith that truth finds its way to the surface.Good luck to all of you and I wish you the best of luck in the school of your choice.</p>
<p>It's actually 10.3 %, and some people would even include Barnard( I won'y because it's not actually Columbia but it almost is). The 8.9% is only for regular decision(Do the math). It only goes to show you that Penn students read the fine print</p>
<p>Actually it meant Columbia college, not regular admission. You guys disregard SEAS. It's like if Penn only counted Wharton, it would be in the sub 10 numbers as well.</p>
<p>Actually some Penn guy tried to estimate the admit rate for Wharton based on the data he got since Penn doesn't publish the specific admit rates for it's school. He said it should be around 10-12%. Can we please let this thread die now?</p>
<p>truazn8948532 - i am sure you love columbia, as does s snack and SOOOOO many of the other rabid posters on this site. But your obsession with driving Columbia to the nirvana of Harvard-dom is a bit pathological. It's so bad it's laugable. </p>
<p>Pointing to the fact that Columbia is exceedingly selective to justify it's worth as an institution is stupid. That's the only word for it. </p>
<p>Here are a couple of stats for you ALL to think about:</p>
<ul>
<li>Chicago admitted 3628 of 10408 students, a 34.9% rate</li>
<li>Berkeley admitted 20.2% of its applicants</li>
<li>Stanford was at a 10.3% rate</li>
</ul>
<p>All three schools are academically, if not in entirety, superior too most schools in the Ivies (and my statement certainly includes Columbia), and balanced somewhat by Yale and Princeton. Only Harvard can truly claim to rival Stanford and Berkeley. Based on the reasoning i see all over this thread, Chicago would be turned to farmland given that it accepts 35% of applications; "why it MUST be a waste of a school with stats like", right CU boosters??? That's the logical conclusion of your contorted thinking. NOT!!!</p>
<p>You want so bad to be like HYP, you feed the common belief that your school is mostly populated by rejects from H-Y-P. If you check the Penn, Cornell, Brown, Stanford and Chicago sites, you see nowhere near the pretentious dribble about how their institutions' are just an admit away from HYP. </p>
<p>Get over yourselves. Think about the times you live in: the 10.4% rate you love is a combination of sheer demographics, and the new found love for cities students have who are entering college life. All urban schools are benefitting from this trend. And worse, the demographic bubble will deflate in 3-4 years. Then imagine what'll happen to your precious rates.</p>
<p>And for the record, stop quoting 8.6% as the admit rate for CU; that's for CC; that's like Penn quoting 9% for it's admit rate, when that's supposedly the rate for Wharton. It's just an absurdity.</p>
<p>Two other things-</p>
<p>The TRUE metric of a quality of a school's admit process is it's regular decision yield. This factors out the early decision games which Penn, Columbia, Yale, Brown and Cornell practice in large measure (ED admits > 30% of a class). And the yield proection which Princeton uses to boost itself against Stanford and H Y is even worse. But back to RD yields ---- I think CU's is still sub 50%, which is the second WORST in the Ivy League!!! If someone has stats for the Class of 2010, I would love to stand corrected, if anyone can prove me wrong:-) </p>
<p>Finally, regarding the fiction that this admit rate makes CU an equal to Harvard/Yale/Princeton. Hah. Now you guys are truly ridiculous. The true differences between the schools lies in (....where should I begin......):</p>
<ul>
<li>At least $5 billion of endowment wealth, which grows consistently at 15%+ per year; whereas CU's best year in the last 10 years was abt 16%</li>
<li>Grad schools which are ALL on average among the top 5 in their fields (CU doesn't come close)</li>
<li>alumni giving rates in the 40%+ range; again, CU doesn't come close</li>
<li>A proportionaly high % of it's faculty in the National Academies; CU's % is much smaller</li>
<li>Significant research programs (CU is strong here, but only in the middle of all the elite schools)</li>
</ul>
<p>Admit rates are nice, but all these schools are sourcing from the same global pool of students. At this level (sub-20% admit rates), it's a crap shoot for all the applicants and for the schools too. The student bodies are all great. The only rough generalizations & stereotypes you can make (assuming self selection vs parental/legacy factors are):</p>
<ul>
<li>Harvard kids love the name as much as anything else</li>
<li>Yale/Princeton kids go there to become self-consciously intellectual</li>
<li>Columbia students just wanted to be in NY anyway</li>
<li>Penn students wanted to have fun as much as get an Ivy degree</li>
<li>Cornell & Dartmouth students wanted Books in the Woods</li>
<li>Brown kids love freedom, freedom and more freedom (ie. life as a P/F option)</li>
</ul>
<p>Here's to the top 20% of high schoolers everywhere</p>
<p>pearfire wharton has a 9% acceptance rate according to a penn admissions officer so it's actually lower than that. red&blue I like your rant. You had some very good points a tht every end, but I don't completely agree with you in the mid part</p>
<p>Red&Blue, your points on why HYP still reigns supreme over Columbia are extremely valid. I'm not going to contest the points on UChicago, Berkeley, Stanford vs Columbia because all are great schools but I don't agree with two out of the three schools listed. But that's just my opinion.</p>
<p>Wharton may have a 9% acceptance rate, but that's out of 3.5k applicants. When you are choosing the top 9% out of 18,000 (CC) vs 9% out of 3,500, IMO I think there's an inherent distinction. But with that said, I agree wholeheartedly that if you know you want to do finance, Wharton is right up there with Harvard and definitely is higher on the totem pole than Columbia- a point that was never in contention. As a side note to this-- I believe that Penn, Duke, Columbia and all schools with essentially separate admissions practices should split up it's schools stats up because it's misleading to potential applicants when you tell them you have a 15% shot at Wharton when in effect, each pool of candidates for each school is split up.</p>
<p>Now to really address your HYP Points. I really don't know where you are coming up with some of these. </p>
<p>-Princeton doesn't have a Medical School, Law School, nor Business School
-Columbia Law is ranked consistently in the top 5, usually #4 after HYS
-Columbia Business school is consistently ranked top 10, Yale isn't even close
-Columbia Medical School is consistently ranked top 10 with Yale always #8 or 9. Harvard of course takes the cake on this one
-Columbia Teachers College is consistently ranked #1
-Columbia Engineering is higher than Harvard and wayyyy higher than Yale.
-Columbia SIPA (International Studies) consistently ranks above Yale and is more or less tied with Harvard and Princeton (woody-wood)</p>
<p>So you see... with all your "Grad schools which are ALL on average among the top 5 in their fields (CU doesn't come close)" I'm inclined to believe you are making crap up off the top of your head.</p>
<p>As per your "research" point and national academies, Columbia consistently brings the #1 amount of revenues from University Patents. Columbia has more Nobel Prizes than any other university in the world- way more than Princeton or Yale. Columbia does not lose in the research department by any means... and it's only true rival among the Ivies is Harvard. </p>
<p>Alumni giving at CU sucks. No contention there. </p>
<p>As for RD yield. I think another way, probably more accurate is looking at the cross admits. Beyond HYP, Columbia only loses marginally to Brown. The majority of all other Ivy cross-admits choose Columbia including Penn. More importantly however, is that among the HYP-other Ivy cross admit battles, Columbia wins the most relatively. 15% at Yale, 22% at Princeton, 21% at Stanford, 20% at MIT, and 9% at Harvard choose Columbia in the cross admit battle. Is it still very low? Yes. But it still is higher than any other Ivy cross admit rates. Additionally, Columbia has an overall yield of 62% last year. Considering Princeton had a yield of 69% and Yale 72%, it isn't that low at all. Last year's Prniceton RD yield was 55% and Columbia's was 47%. And finally, I'd argue that Columbia probably has more cross-admits with HYP than any other of the Ivies which results in a lower yield. Princeton's yield is lower than 70% for precisely that reason. </p>
<p>Okay and as for Endowment it brings me up to my last and final point. Columbia lags significantly behind HYP in endowment. But Columbia realizes this and has started it's $4billion endowment campaign with $1.6+bln already raised. The point is however, that Columbia recognizes the gap that has been wedged between itself and HYP. But historically, before the 1960's Columbia had the largest endowment in the country.</p>
<p>Red&Blue, I respect some of your points. The point on this thread is not to demean other Ivies- rather many of us prospective, incoming, and graduated Columbia alumni would want to see Columbia finally reclaim the prestige it's name once commanded. Indeed, as is well documented if you take a look in the periodicals of that age, before the 1960's Columbia and Harvard were the two most respected institutional in America- a cut beyond Yale and significantly more prestigious than Princeton. This thread is meant to reaffirm ourselves once again, through this record-low admit rate of any Ivy, that Columbia is indeed rising in the ranks and becoming more and more respected as it was previously. As history dictates, lower selectivity mirrors an increase in prestige (rightly or wrongly). Everyone wants what they can't have. Columbia becoming more selective will result in a higher caliber student body and will inevitably attract a stronger student body. Again- I for one am sorry if this thread offended any other schools- but I, as I believe many of the people on this thread believe, that in the relatively near future (1-2 decades), if Columbia continues on this trend as we believe it is doing (M'htan ville expansion, endowment growth, selectivity increase), it will one day be among HYP again. Does our "obsession" over wanting to be HYP define us? Of course not. We are Columbians. But still, having one's school recognized and respected as where I at least believe it should be never hurt anyone.</p>
<p>But in the end, who the hell knows what'll happen. There's no need however, to just come onto this thread and rain on our parade because it in no ways affects Penn (which I presume you are advocating for).</p>
<p>guys - and especially truazn, johnnyK, pearfire and others - I really need to protest here.</p>
<p>This thread, if you read it objectively, has been (for a while!) little more than a "my school can beat up your school" whine-fest. Sure, you might be doing it with supposed statistics and arguments and opinions disguised as facts (such as rankings), but it's still whining. And it should stop. Why? Because it makes us all look like prestige-obsessed tools. Prestige may be important to the value we get out of our education. But you don't need to prove it to everyone who walks by, and you sure don't need to try to convince "True Believers" of other schools, because that's pointless. That's like trying to talk someone out of a religion.</p>
<p>I think we'd all rather have threads around here with people talking about why they LIKE COLUMBIA, as opposed to why other schools suck. That's why the admissions office tells interviewers to resist the temptation to do just that. It's called "taking the high road". It shows maturity, and confidence. Can we please try it?</p>
<p>Please?</p>
<p>yea... this thread should just die now =)</p>
<p>agreed and columbia people should stop bashing on Penn. I think columbia's a great school and was even considering applying to it but it just wasn't for me. It's only going to end if arrogance and stubborness on both side is stopped (including myself). For me Penn is not only better than columbia but any other school, but I do agree that that is not an absolute fact. </p>
<p>In fact education is not absolute but only depending on the student. I'm sure you guys think that Columbia is the best and that's cool, jsut don't try to bring down penn to try to feel better about yourselves (and vice versa) </p>
<p>In the end they are in the Ivy league, and let it remain that way. Have it be a league of top schools not just 3 or 4 top schools.</p>
<p>TRUAZN8948532 we all have opinions, and I respect that fact. I just have much more respect for opinions that are based on facts, not hype or fantasies. Although I agree with other posters that (i) this thread should end soon and (ii) it serves no purpose to tear down other schools [if for nothing else, because those institutions don't really care about the rants in this site:-)], I do want to CONTINUE to set the record straight on a few of the items you posted.</p>
<p>1) Re Wharton's admit rate -- you are completely missing my point (in a self serving way may I add]. I emphasized the fact that Columbia is the only institution that proactively reports admit rates for portions of it's undergraduate program, and goes so far as to deemphasize the engineering school. It's quite silly actually, given that the Fu students have higher SATs. Without them, CU overall would look less elite than it does vis-a-vis board scores</p>
<p>And more importantly, 9% is 9%. I dont crow about Wharton's admit rate, primarily because its a super self-selective group. It's also not representative of Penn's undergrad overall. That's precisely why Penn doesn't market that fact either. </p>
<p>Nor does ANY other elite school. </p>
<p>And finally, the logical conclusion of your thinking is that each university should post admit rates to each of their majors to give students' a realistic picture of their chances/ Hahaha. Go propose that to an admissions officer, you'll be laughed out of the room. There's no point to doing that when 25-40% of all college students change their majors at least once. That data is pointless (and your recommendation is - yet again - self serving)</p>
<p>2) H-Y-P have excellent graduate programs (I wrote schools, which it seems you took to mean ONLY the professional programs). They are all - as I stated - on average Top 5. There are obviously exceptions: Yale business, Harvard Engineering are perhaps the most glaring. </p>
<p>But judge for yourself; this is (admitedly dated info) from the last National Research Council ranking of PhD progams in the US. It is FAR and AWAY the most objective and respective review of its kind. If you doubt that, ask ANY faculty member of senior administrator at CU. The updated rankings are actually due this fall. As you can see from both tables, HYP are all above Columbia. </p>
<p>TOP 20 UNIVERSITIES IN FACULTY QUALITY
BY NUMBER OF PROGRAMS IN TOP 10
Based on Results from
Study of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States
National Research Council
September 1995
Number of
Programs in Total Percent in
Rank University Top 10 Programs Top 10
1 UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY 36 37 97%
2 STANFORD UNIVERSITY 32 43 74%
3 HARVARD UNIVERSITY 26 30 87%
4 PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 22 29 76%
5 MASSACHUSETTS INST OF TECHNOLOGY 20 23 87%
6 YALE UNIVERSITY 19 30 63%
CORNELL UNIVERSITY 19 37 51%
8 UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 18 30 60%
9 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 15 36 42%
10 UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SAN DIEGO 14 29 48%
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 14 34 41%
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON 14 39 36%
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 14 41 34%
14 CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 13 19 68%
UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-LOS ANGELES 13 36 36%
16 UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON 11 39 28%
17 U OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 10 37 27%
18 JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 9 34 26%
19 DUKE UNIVERSITY 8 33 24%
20 UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN 7 37 19%</p>
<p>TOP 20 COMPREHENSIVE UNIVERSITIES IN FACULTY QUALITY
BY AVERAGE RATING OF ALL FIELDS
Based on Results from Study of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States
National Research Council
September 1995
Average Number of Rank University Rating Programs
1 MASSACHUSETTS INST OF TECHNOLOGY 4.60 23
2 UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY 4.49 37
3 HARVARD UNIVERSITY 4.40 30
4 CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 4.29 19
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 4.29 29
6 STANFORD UNIVERSITY 4.21 43
7 UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 4.13 30
8 YALE UNIVERSITY 4.08 30
9 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 3.95 37
10 UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SAN DIEGO 3.93 29
11 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 3.92 34
12 UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-LOS ANGELES 3.85 36
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 3.85 41
14 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 3.79 36
15 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON 3.70 39
16 UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN 3.63 37
17 UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON 3.60 39
18 NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY 3.58 30
19 CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY 3.56 15
DUKE UNIVERSITY 3.56 33
JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 3.56 34
U OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 3.56 37
NOTE: Institutions with fewer than 15 programs with ratings comparable to comprehensive universities
in the top 20 are:
Average Number of
Rating Programs
ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY 4.10 4
UNIV OF CALIFORNIA-SAN FRANCISCO 3.94 9
BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE 3.87 6
PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 3.84 1
HEBREW UNION COLLEGE 3.71 1
ALBERT EINSTEIN COLLEGE OF MEDICINE 3.69 6
U OF TEXAS-SOUTHWESTERN MED CTR 3.64 7</p>
<p>Another reference - <a href="http://books.nap.edu/html/researchdoc/researchdoc_intexp.html%5B/url%5D">http://books.nap.edu/html/researchdoc/researchdoc_intexp.html</a></p>
<p>While Columbia has great programs especially in law, education and Intl Affairs(hence it's reputation as a giant among universities) CU is NOT H or Y or P or S or M. And it's not Berkeley or Chicago (which you inferred were inferior schools). </p>
<p>Check my post in the Columbia vs Penn thread. I state clearly what I think are CU's strong points. It is a great school. It's simply not at the high which you like to claim is it.</p>
<p>3) Research -- did you actually quote Nobels and patent revenue as a proof of research expenditures. The two are completely unrelated!!!! You are clutching at straws. Here's relevant data (apologies for the formatting):</p>
<pre><code> 2004 2005
1 Johns Hopkins U., 1,229,426 1,277,292
2 U. WA 625,218 606,317
3 Stanford U. 541,667 574,675
4 U. MI all campuses521,339 554,516
5 U. WI Madison 434,423 477,582
6 U. CA, Los Angeles 461,145 469,889
7 Univ. Penn 435,343 465,284
8 U. CA, San Diego 465,629 463,946
9 MIT 427,552 457,235
</code></pre>
<p>10 Columbia U. 406,576 453,188<br>
11 U. CO all campuses 414,986 449,366
12 U. CA, San Francisco 418,944 438,988
13 U. Pittsburgh all campuses 394,444 420,281
14 Washington U. St. Louis 371,043 400,699
15 Harvard U. 399,764 395,906
16 Duke U. 347,896 376,568
17 Cornell U. all campuses 339,107 365,694
18 PA State U. all campuses 347,996 358,569
19 Yale U. 330,837 332,702
20 U. Southern CA 312,589 330,126 </p>
<p>So, Columbia is a major player in research. That is clear. But it's in the pack, not #1 which you'd like for people to believe. </p>
<p>4) Re Natl Academy membership -- just check the Center's ranking and rationale. You can disagree but you can't dispute their logic of the efficacy of their metrics. It just won't show Columbia as #1 so I am sure you won't care for the data at all:-)</p>
<p><a href="http://mup.asu.edu/research2006.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://mup.asu.edu/research2006.pdf</a></p>
<p>5) Cross admits -- CRAP CRAP CRAP. The numbers are what they are. What is a schools RD yield when you exclude the effects of ED. It's very simple. The real pecking order is determined there. That shows true prestige and overall demand. And the RD yields are roughly.... Harvard (by a mile), then Yale/Princeton, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth/Columbia, Cornell. You can check any number of sites to verify RD yields. </p>
<p>Same goes for graduate schools; these facts are NEVER disputed for grad schools so it's silly for you to try to claim some mysterious exemption for CU undergrad. The data you provides only goes to prove the point I wanted to make - CU has a 47% RD yield, which is about 6th or 7th in the Ivies. </p>
<p>But I do congratulate CU on not doing what Princeton does to boost its yield (ie., preemptively rejecting students who it thinks it'll loose to H-Y-S to goose its yield).</p>
<p>6) Endowment - I am shocked you continue to write things like "..before the 1960s, Columbia has the largest endowment in the country". SOOO silly for SOOO many reasons: a) that is not true, Harvard has ALWAYS has the largest endowment in the country. ALWAYS. b) before the 1960s.....are you really hanging your claim on data that's over 60 years old. HAHAHAHAHA. c) CU has over 6 billion today, but MIT, Stanford, UCal and UT passed it long ago. Penn, UMichigan and Emory are close if not about to pass CU. And all the big schools are in campaigns or about to start campaigns. Whatever benefit CU gets from it's $4 bn drive is going to be neutralized by that fact that all of it's peers ARE DOING THE EXACT SAME THING. </p>
<p>And in point of fact, Cornell + Penn + Yale + Stanford all have raised a higher proportion of their fundraising goal than Columbia BEFORE they announced their respective campaigns (Penn had $1 bn raised a full year before announcement of their campaign which will be Oct '07). </p>
<p>7) Finally, you finish on another 1960s rant. Come on - give it up. (S Snack should too). CU is a fine school and it'll hopefully get alot better. You guys point to self serving stats that support your own insecurities about ranking. You fail to recognize how brutally competitive higher ed really is and the fact that ALL of the elite schools are investing and positioning themselves for the future. It's not only CU which is doing that. If you guys would focus on helping CU improve its attractiveness to students and donors and become a more efficient institution, that would do alot more for its stature that your web posts.</p>
<p>And yes I am a very loyal Penn alum. But I don't let that fact blind me from what the raw data abt academic accomplishment and shortcomings indicate. Nor do I ignore tha fact that - as wonderful as Penn is - it can do better. </p>
<p>I use these posts to inject a dose of reality into these pro-CU, pro-Brown, pro-Yale etc. etc. rants. Interestingly, Stanford boosters almost never rant about their school. They don't have to. And debating with Harvard kids would be a waste of time LOL.</p>
<p>Jiminy, red&blue! Who in the world HAS that much time???</p>
<p>Hope you feel better. :)</p>
<p>"Jiminy, red&blue! Who in the world HAS that much time???"</p>
<p>Jimmy is bored at work, :D.</p>
<p>But honestly guys, this is just a wild guess but I don't think you'll be able to convice each other of your respective opinions. This debate is futile and we should end it.</p>
<p>Yeah everyone knows Columbia's better than Harvard.</p>
<p>Just stop feeding the trolls, guys. that's all there is to it. red&blue isn't going to respond to his own posts, at least not forever.</p>