What are my chances at Columbia?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Columbia University
1

<p>Hiya! I was wondering about my chances at getting into Columbia, UChicago, Dartmouth, UPenn, Boston U, Wake Forest, Duke, and/or UVA.... My stats:</p>

<p>Name: Nicole
State: Georgia</p>

<p>High School: one of the best public schools in the state
Course Load: most rigorous
Class Rank: 5/480 at the moment
GPA: uw3.95, w4.47</p>

<p>SAT: taken twice, 2140 and then 2290 (780m, 730cr, 780w)
SATII: math II 770; us history 710; physics 670
AP: sophmore- Chem (3); junior- Calc BC, Spanish, Physics C, US History (pending scores); senior- Literature, Government, Economics, European History, Pyschology, Physics B</p>

<p>Extra Cirriculars:
+National Honor Society 11, 12 (treasurer, exec board): We run one major event per month (meaning 300-600 in attendance), coordinate the community service reach involved with the club (I personally coordinate our work with the local YMCA), and seek to change the environment of the school for the better (we run the recycling for the school and are responsible for the annual wordsearch, waffle wednesdays, backwards day, etc).
+Drama: Lighting/Sound Crew 9, 10, 11, 12 (Head of Tech Crew in 9 and 10)
+Volunteering at the YMCA 11, 12
+Foreign Language Club 9, 10, 11, 12
+Key Club 11, 12
+Renaissance Honor Society 11, 12 (board member): We do the honor roll, honor night, and the honor festival before Spring Break.
+Spanish Honor Society 11, 12: nominal
+Thespian Honor Society 10, 11, 12: nominal
+Math Honor Society 10, 11, 12: nominal
+Girl Scouts 9 (Silver Award)
+Odyssey of the Mind 9 (1st in State, 27th in World)</p>

<p>I have some other awards, but they're a bit dull (academic stuff), so I won't bother listing them for you all.</p>

<p>Intended Major: Mathematics</p>

<p>I can no doubt write an essay to knock their socks off, but are my tests/extracirriculars good enough? I recently had lunch with a family friend who is an admissions person at Columbia, and he said I should have no problem in the interview after talking with me and offered to write an additional recommendation for me. I plan on applying for early admissions at Columbia.</p>

<p>Also, should I retake the SAT or SATII in October?</p>

2

<p>You said, "I recently had lunch with a family friend who is an admissions person at Columbia, and he said I should have no problem in the interview after talking with me and offered to write an additional recommendation for me." </p>

<p>Your family friend presumably also gave you his opinion on other aspects of your contemplated application. So, why are you asking for our opinion? He appears to be the font of knowledge.</p>

3

<p>Because he works for my father. I'm not sure if he's biased or not. I wouldn't think he would just tell me what I want to hear, but my dad, him, and I all were at lunch when he did that. So I'm looking for an non-potentially-affected opinion.</p>

4

<p>uh...he's an admissions person who works for your dad? Meaning either your dad works in the admssions office or his friend interviews candidates? I'm asking you because although you'll get a non biased opinion on here, he may be a good person to critique what you do.
Your stats are decent, I think you have a strong chance, but I'm a little skeptical of your AP chem and SAT physics scores, particularly you want to be a math major. Also, are you planning to take the SAT 2 in math?</p>

5

<p>He interviews candidates and is also a lawyer for my dad's company. We talked about math and philosophy mostly, though, and so we didn't get into extracirriculars and scores.</p>

<p>Eh, yeah, the AP Chem test I didn't really care about. I was a sophmore, what did I know? My teacher was also pretty lousy. The AP Physics test I am also assuming a 3. I try, but the AP classes at my school aren't all taught toward the AP tests. For Chem and Physics, we did absolutely no AP test practice. It didn't help that my physics teacher was very anti-establishment. He kept talking about the corrupt machine behind the college board, haha.</p>

<p>I want to do a pure math major, though, not an applied math, so are the science scores still that influential? In AP Calc part 1 I had a 98, part 2 a 99, and I'm pretty sure I got a 5 on the AP test.</p>

<p>And I already took the math SAT II--it's up there. 770. Should I retake some of the SAT IIs do you think? Which ones?</p>

6

<p>sorry, yeah I missed that. Um, that Physics score makes me nervous. physics requires pure math as well as applied math. Regardless of your preference, you're going to start at the same basic level that is used in physics, certainly SAT physics. I suggest retaking that one.</p>

7

<p>Are you applying to the college or SEAS?</p>

8

<p>I think you have a strong shot. Why Columbia?</p>

9

<p>I think I'm applying to the college, since the applied math major is through the SEAS and the pure math is not. I asked at an information session what the actual difference was, and he said that as far as course work goes, there's a lot of overlap, but eventually the applied mathematicians work more closely with the physicists with current math, while the pure math majors do theoretical work to improve the math used by the physicists.</p>

<p>Why Columbia? I love the campus, I love New York, and I love the emphasis they put on producing well-rounded, cultured people through the core requirement. Being around people who have all read Plato, Machiavelli, Dante... it's just the environment that I'm looking for. Columbia is also the place to be for matematicians, it seems. Brian Greene, who developed the string theory, works there. String theory is the new idea in the math circuit; it explains how macro- and micro- physics can coexist through the presence of a fourth demension made of string loops. I read his book "The Elegant Universe." He really aims the book on how math explains life and beauty. After you get to a point in math past the numbers, it becomes about how you see the world. Do you believe that there are only three dimensions? What is in the fourth one? How can a point on a graph not have dimension, not take up a unit of space with length, but still exist? We can't see it, so is it just intuitive, or does it even matter how we know it's there? Is it there? It's fascinating stuff, really.</p>

10

<p>you definitely seem to me to have a pretty good shot. although a lot of people don't really like to admit it, there's kinda a push to get more women in math, and since you have the SAT's and SAT II's in math to back up your claim that you wanna be a math major, that should definitely help. Also, definitely mention what you wrote about why columbia in your "Why Columbia?" essay that they have on the application, that sounds really good and it's great you're talking about the profs at columbia in the department in which you wanna major. just remember though that nothing guarantees admission, every year it gets harder and harder to get into columbia.
good luck w/ your application, and if you have any more questions about math at columbia feel free to ask, i'm a math major going into my jr yr in cc.</p>

11

<p>Metsfan makes a really good point. THere's a push to get more women into the science in general.</p>

12

<p>Hey Nicole5178, I definitely think you have a great chance at all of those schools, and i am sure they will look over the Chemistry AP exam if your inteded major is in Mathematics. Columbia: Low Reach/Match.</p>