<p>The environment seems to completely disagree with the admissions information.</p>
<p>Columbia loses most cross-admit battles with Harvard, Yale and Princeton, and only wins about half of the cross-admits to the middle ivies (Penn, Dart and Brown). It does do well against Cornell, of course.</p>
<p>If that's the case, how is Columbia's admit rate so preposterously low? Why do they simply have THAT MANY applicants? That's the real question, ultimately. They have more applicants than every Ivy except for Harvard and Cornell. Is it New York? I have no idea.</p>
<p>I think it has to do w/ New York for sure. It's just a great location.</p>
<p>If it had a class size that was double (the same size as Penn) it would have a similar acceptance rate to Penn. The low acceptance rates are given the fact that so many apply to Columbia regular decision. The chances of getting into Columbia College early decision are significantly better with 2,000 applicants applying for 400 spots. For regular decision it is 17,000 applicants applying for 1200 spots. The overall acceptance rate is an average of the two.</p>
<p>It's a phenomenal school. If any Ivy could be said to have faculty that were as prestigious as HYP--through most of its schools and departments--it would be Columbia.</p>
<p>It's also in NYC, which is a huge draw. You'd get a lot more people applying to Columbia and NYU because they <em>have</em> to be in New York than you would kids applying to Harvard and BU because they <em>have</em> to be in Boston.</p>
<p>Also, Columbia College is teeny tiny, at only 4100 students, it is smaller than Brown, Princeton, roughly the same size as Dartmouth...</p>
<p>Sure, the faculty is great, but that doesn't explain the undergrad, which is not on the level of HYP anyway. A similar situation would be U. of Chicago, which has arguably the most esteemed and prestigious faculty of any university in the entire world, but an undergraduate program that is not on that level. However, that university does not have 20,000 applicants per annum; would that they could.</p>
<p>So, New York? That seems to be the big draw. Can't say I disagree in the least.</p>
<p>In Europe Columbia has the same prestige as Harvard. Most international students consider Columbia because they want to be in New York City. Columbia has more international students and is more diverse than the other ivy league</p>
<p>As much as I love Columbia, I have to disagree collegeboun5. Many Europeans who know of Harvard have never heard of Columbia, and I really don't think there's anywhere near as great a number of Europeans who've heard of Columbia but don't know Harvard.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Columbia loses most cross-admit battles with Harvard, Yale and Princeton, and only wins about half of the cross-admits to the middle ivies (Penn, Dart and Brown). It does do well against Cornell, of course.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I question the premise of your post. Do you have numbers to back this up, or did you make it up?</p>
<p>I did not make it up, but you may be right.
I am basing my statement on the fact that at elite prep schools like Exeter, Deerfield, Choate ect, there are a very large number of international students. Asian students for example from four or five countries make up about 30% of the school population at many of these schools, and that does not include other international students. Most of these Asian students apply to Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Princeton and University of Pennsylvania. These are the ivy league schools that seem to talked about by their parents on parents and college counseling weekends. At least in Asia, Columbia is very highly regarded. Unfortunately many Asian parents who send their children to American prep schools think it is terrible if their child does not go to an ivy league school. It is ridiculous when there are many great American schools that are not ivy league. In their countries however, it is a sign of great prestige to send your child to Harvard, Yale and Princeton, and yes, Columbia</p>
<p>To Columbia2002:
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/weekinreview/17leonhardt.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/weekinreview/17leonhardt.html</a>
Or, more specifically:
The</a> New York Times > Week in Review > Image > Collegiate Matchups: Predicting Student Choices</p>
<p>Admittedly, the data is around 4 years old; the numbers might be slightly different. By this, I mean that Brown has by now lost the cross-admit battle of the middle-Ivies, which have probably evened out.</p>
<p>I would agree regarding collegebound5's Ivy League/Columbia sentiment. This is indeed the case among all of the Asians that I have met.
The Columbia/Penn recognition is disproportionate in the Jewish community, as well; historically, they were among the first Ivies to accept quota-less proportions of Jews, and consequently huge numbers of pre-eminent Jewish scholars from the first half of the 20th century were educated there.
E.g. Noam Chomsky (Penn), Lionel Trilling (Columbia), et al.
This is true of Cornell, to a lesser extent, which produced Steven Weinberg, Sheldon Glashow, I I Rabi, and of course Harold Bloom.</p>
<p>Now that HYP is (seemingly) indifferent to the race issue, the best almost unequivocally end up there.</p>
<p>Two things are shocking to me; that Duke and Georgetown evenly split the applicants (I would expect Duke to handily win them), and that Brown beats out Penn/Columbia/Dartmouth. At my high school, the decision would have been between Penn and Columbia, and maybe Dartmouth if you were a gigantic WASP.</p>
<p>All Ivy percentage rates are pretty low. Brown/ Dartmouth are getting close to Columbia (13% vs 10%).</p>
<p>
[quote]
To Columbia2002:
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/we...leonhardt.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/we...leonhardt.html</a>
Or, more specifically:
The New York Times > Week in Review > Image > Collegiate Matchups: Predicting Student Choices
[/quote]
</p>
<p>In other words, you're citing a cute little survey. Do you have the actual data on cross-admits?</p>
<p>^^ If you actually read the article, you would realize that this "cute little survey" is actually part of a published scientific paper. If you don't think that that's "actual data," I don't know what you call "actual data."</p>
<p>And yeah, they use surveys to collect data. Who'd a thunk?</p>
<p>Seriously. Do you think that the New York Times publishes "cute little surveys" and then dresses them in order to fool readers? The Spec might do that, but not a real newspaper.</p>
<p>Because Barack Obama has a diploma from there. Only 34 undergraduate colleges have produced a US President.</p>
<p>columbia is not 10% its 8% based on their statistics from last year. it seems minute but it makes a difference</p>
<p>^^ Depends how you're counting. Are you just talking about Columbia College or Columbia SEAS and Columbia College combined? Columbia College is around 8%. SEAS is around 18%. Combined is around 10%.</p>
<p>And it's better to consider the combined when comparing because all the other admit rates do not differentiate between their Arts & Science schools and their other schools. So it'd be really unfair to talk about Cornell's relatively high admit rate when you're also talking about 5 different schools.</p>
<p>Then again, it's also much easier to switch between the different schools at Cornell than at Columbia.</p>
<p>But ideally, kids shouldn't be applying to the agricultural school just to get into Cornell to switch into the Arts & Sciences school right?</p>
<p>After Obama it will be more like 5%.</p>