<p>"Only" 34 colleges? Wow, now Columbia can join the ranks of such prestigious universities as Whittier and wherever the hell Reagan went.</p>
<p>It's admit rate is low because it can only offer admission to a select few, duh....</p>
<p>Anyway, people keep falsely assuming that Columbia's popularity is due to being in NYC. Don't forget that for everyone who wants to go to college in NYC, there are probably 2 students who would never want to go there for that very same reason. Hence, if it was just right outside NY, who knows what the application numbers would look like...</p>
<p>The school has plenty going for it, including a roster of prestigious faculty (every year there seems to be a new nobel), and definitely benefits for being in NYC. This allows it to be the stomping ground for high-profile world events. </p>
<p>IMO, Columbia strikes me as a school that is pretty sure of itself, without the need to toot its own horn.</p>
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"Only" 34 colleges? Wow, now Columbia can join the ranks of such prestigious universities as Whittier and wherever the hell Reagan went.
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<p>muerteapablo, you're just upset you didn't get into Columbia.</p>
<p>"Sure, the faculty is great, but that doesn't explain the undergrad, which is not on the level of HYP anyway"</p>
<p>How the hell not?</p>
<p>For some reason, many folks seem to be envious or jealous of Columbia and want to attack it or otherwise put it down. Perhaps they feel by trying to knock Columbia, they are somehow improving the standing of another school. Everyone knows that Columbia is among the handful of top schools in the country. Without a doubt, Harvard is the undeniable top school, but Columbia is not that much far behind. </p>
<p>Interesting...</p>
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"Only" 34 colleges? Wow, now Columbia can join the ranks of such prestigious universities as Whittier and wherever the hell Reagan went.
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<p>You're totally tight. Before having seen this, I just posted the same thing on another thread. Reagan went to Eureka. LBJ went went to some Southwest Texas State.</p>
<p>Producing a president does not a good school make.</p>
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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.
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<p>Nope, because the NYT never fools its readers with totally made up garbage... Jayson</a> Blair - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>
<p>NYC is the reason. Many kids go to school within an hour or so of where they live, and Columbia falls within a very highly populated circle with a radius of travel time with that. It is also a school with a top rep. So, of course, it would get a lot of applicants. What would be interesting is how many apps do they get outside of the 50 mile radius.</p>
<p>C2002 - generalizing about the NYT based on the Jayson Blair incident, especially when the stats you're calling into question are obviously nothing like the circumstances of Jayson Blair's plagiarism, is just stupid. Your posts blur the line between legitimate, valuable contributions and simply lame attempts to pick pointless fights. Ditch that purposely contrary attitude. It's getting annoying.</p>
<p>Viennaman, there was not a rush to apply to Eureka College when Reagan won his landslide election.</p>
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C2002 - generalizing about the NYT based on the Jayson Blair incident, especially when the stats you're calling into question are obviously nothing like the circumstances of Jayson Blair's plagiarism, is just stupid. Your posts blur the line between legitimate, valuable contributions and simply lame attempts to pick pointless fights. Ditch that purposely contrary attitude. It's getting annoying.
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<p>The point -- which you are apparently to dense to pick up on -- is that something isn't legit just because it appears in the NYT. The NYT is full of all sorts of BS, with the Jayson Blair incident simply being the most notable example. Here, the NYT simply passed on a junk science study that someone else conducted.</p>
<p>CC and SEAS combined is 8% according to the dean, austin quigley</p>
<p>In the company of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Georgetown, Amherst, Williams, West Point, Annapolis and Stanford.</p>
<p>@raiderade</p>
<p>The dean might be misinformed or mixing information up: Admission</a> Statistics | Columbia University Office of Undergraduate Admissions</p>
<p>Hold up there thebeef, Columbia2002 did not pick a fight with the president/college remark, so he's not as contrary as you might imagine (Columbia2002, feel free to quote me on this in the future). </p>
<p>I would, however, say that the Jayson Blair incident is not germane to this discussion, which attempts to ascertain the study's informativeness, not its veracity, which seems indubitable.</p>
<p>I am also, it appears, having a love affair with commas and conjunctions.</p>
<p>Overall rate is 10.05% for the class of 2012 raideraid. Hate to burst your bubble.</p>
<p>^ now that just makes it a safety, don't it? :-)</p>
<p>Regardless of C02's anti-NYT screed, the data muerteapablo cites is from the well-known Revealed Preference Rankings, which use established game theory and applied math technique to distill the true preference levels based on a 3200-person survey. It took 3200 "high-achieving" high school students from across the country, tracked where they got in, and where they chose to go - and modeled a "chess-ranking-like" tournament structure based on that which produced rankings similar to the ELO rankings used in chess.</p>
<p>But note: The NYT article cited is from 2006, but the data underlying the study was from 2003. link</a> to original study.</p>
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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.
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<p>Since the 2003 publication date, Brown has gone way downhill in its preference strength relative to its peers. The other schools have shifted as well. Columbia, in particular, has been getting more selective in every other statistical metric.</p>
<p>I wish the Revealed Preference Rankings people would update the study, since I'm sure we would all be fascinated. But I think it's tough to argue based on statistics that are now 5 1/2 years out of date.</p>
<hr>
<p>If you'll grant me the above, I would further hypothesize that Columbia's increased popularity is due, in descending order, to:</p>
<p>1) Everyone loves New York City (certainly far more want to live in it than specifically DON'T want to live in it, which is why rents are so high and keep going higher)
2) Columbia's faculty has been getting recognized recently, from Brian Greene to our new nobelist, the Chem-E dept chair
3) CU gets lots of media attention, partly for its student events and the events it hosts (like the Ahmadinejad thing), partly just because it's so easy for the major national media outlets to cover it just by driving the truck uptown
4) Columbia has been making significant investments in the undergrad curriculum and in the campus itself. New housing, a new campus planned, new core classes, etc. Bollinger's been busy</p>
<p>I think your explanation lies somewhere in the middle of all those factors.</p>
<p>uhmmm, what bubble...I'm only saying what I heard at the convocation, I don't even go there...</p>
<p>I miscounted. Only 24 (out of 2200) colleges have actually given a first degree to a US President since of the 43 Presidents, nine did not graduate from any college,and since there were multiple Presidents from Harvard, Yale, W&M, Princeton, and West Point. I apologize for the error and salute Eureka, Union and Bowdoin along with the others mentioned before.</p>