<p>^ calm down. He was just estimating</p>
<p>true wowboy.</p>
<p>fastfood - i think the argument for columbia’s popularity is two twin realizations, and also vastly improved services that make it up to par with the best.</p>
<p>1) columbia has always been a great uni. even during the dark ages of the 70s and 80s it retained some of the best professors and conducted groundbreaking research. of universities in this country i would argue there are only 4 that have excellence at the breadth of columbia (harvard, berkeley, chicago and stanford), a few that come close (prinecton and penn come to mind) and a few more that in select disciplines are better than the solid 5 (jhu in sciences, mit in engineering and some disciplines, yale in humanities), but are not as strong across the board. so when you see it like that, and historical data supports - think of the 95 NRC rankings - columbia is a pretty rocking place. i think that there was a sudden realization of the pure academic power of the place and a better job selling that power to the country. in a sense the reality was there, it was just never really harnessed. students might not consider columbia to be as prestigious as other schools, but most universally acknowledge it is top tier in terms of academics.</p>
<p>2) the real improvement in the quality of life for folks in new york city. less crime, better lifestyle, other people flocking to new york, death of bad stereotypes. in many ways the fortune of columbia is tied to the fortune of the city. so long as it can avoid a death spiral, columbia will always be top. and further here is why: cities were in the 50s-80s anathema to american culture and life, consider suburbia as the typification of american life. but since then it is clear that the resources of cities as well as some pretty bad backlash against the excesses of suburbia (big house and big car culture now dying), i think great cities are here to stay. so columbia’s fortune looks to have some security.</p>
<p>3) columbia really wasn’t a great place to its students a few decades ago. combination of columbia being a predominantly commuter school through the 80s and the high cost of living was a detriment to campus life and in many ways instituted some of the historical problems that columbia is slowly getting itself out of these days. the culture of your college very much mirrored the culture of the high schools that fed your college. columbia attracted top city elites, and after those students began to diversify to HYP it was very much the home for the elite jewish day schools and city publics. commuterism was big in the high school and by extension in the college arena. whereas a place like Dartmouth is in many ways a quintessential new england college fed by quintessential new england boarding schools. it wasn’t until the late 80s and into the 90s that columbia started to put significant resources toward making the uni fully residential and providing the services that were found in the more remote college settings. seth low back in 1896 believed that between the model of commuter schools and residential schools, commuter schools would win out and columbia the shining example. he was wrong, and in many ways that is what got columbia off the path. but it has since invested a lot to catch up. at this point basically offers the same services students expect at peer schools…not always all the way to that level - the dorms are not palatial - but it is a firm commitment to providing a unique urban campus feel that honestly is only about 20 years old. i think that this concept of the truly urban campus has a niche in it that appeals to those that want the city, but want the amenities of campus life that you would fine in a rural school where the uni is the only game in town. and as the remnants of commuterism die down, columbia will only further be able to offer a product that in kind is without question very different than anything else out there and attract more students. very few schools can say you will get one of the best educations in the world’s greatest city.</p>
<p>shuaishuaishuai, I wish you luck but I would also look closely into your Canadian safety schools.</p>
<p>Your odds are slim as a Canadian.</p>
<p>I’m not trying to be mean, but you might have to settle for less than an Ivy League education.</p>
<p>I consider ourselves pretty lucky though, we have McGill, Queen’s, and UToronto; all good schools that you would be a shoo-in at.</p>
<p>admissiongeek- when you say my chance for Columbia ED is borderline, do you mean that i’ll be at the lower end of the whole group of applicants who are applying or that i’ll be at the borderline of being accepted? <that’s a big difference.</p>
<p>Columbia is super selective - but so are the other Ivies. Columbia’s acceptance rate is now 9.82%, Brown is 10.8%, and Dartmouth is 12.0%. I would argue that Dartmouth is probably more self-selective overall. Not much of a difference between any of these.</p>
<p>When considering the rise in Columbia’s popularity/selectivity, you have to take into consideration the decision to admit women in 1983. That action essentially doubled the applicant pool. In my opinion, that fact, combined with the increasing popularity of the urban environment and the media, and real improvements in NYC (making the school more acceptable to parents) are the factors that have done it. Columbia has always offered a fantastic education and a first-rate faculty (now if they could only do something about the dorms).</p>
<p>do you think there are will more or less applicants this year? personally i think there will be less since the low acceptance rate probably will scare a lot of people away, but it will still be so damn competitive though.</p>
<p>^they say that every year, this past year they said it because the previous year Columbia initially accepted below 10%. The fact that the acceptance rate is low is hardly ever a deterrent. If anything, a low acceptance rate pushes students to apply to more colleges and pushes more students to apply early. I’d bet that Columbia apps continue to rise consistently, the school keeps getting better. </p>
<p>F.A. was upped in the downturn, our endowment fell slightly less than the rest, we don’t rely on our endowment as much as peer schools, we were ranked slightly higher in US News. There’s the Obama effect, more people are realizing that NYC is the safest big city, and that Columbia is in one of safest precincts in new york. All round we’re doing better than before. If you are moving towards choosing the safer and easier colleges then you probably don’t belong at Columbia anyway.</p>
<p>^good point good point. I guess i will try nevertheless but i will write a controversial essay in hope of sparking some interest in my application.</p>