<p>This from an article in the Washington Post:</p>
<p>"Well-endowed Columbia University, which admits domestic students on a need-blind basis, is adding 50 seats to its fall 2010 freshman class."</p>
<p>I thought the class size was expanded by 50 students last year. Are they doing it again, or is the author simply off by a year?</p>
<p>I sure hope they expand</p>
<p>no that is off. it was 50 students last year and it is not a temporary raise so the columbia college class will be at about 1070 for the next few years (not going higher, or lower). note the increase didn’t effect SEAS.</p>
<p>columbia has wanted to increase their class for some time (and was a recommendation of the task force for ugrad education), in a weird way the economic incentive and the availability of a building gave them an excuse to start that movement. my guess is they will increase the class again if and when they can get another dorm in the works. so not anytime soon pbr.</p>
<p>It’s too bad even the Washington Post cannot afford effective fact-checking anymore. Journalism is in a sad state.</p>
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<p>actually last year, Columbia college had a higher than expected yeild so 1155 instead of 1070 enrolled to Columbia (they had an increase of 140 instead of an increase of 55). This year the target class size might decrease from 1070 to 1000-1015 to compensate for last year’s miscalculation. They will also have to compensate for higher yeild, so I would expect 100-200 fewer acceptances than last year.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.columbia.edu/cu/opir/abstract/admissions_all.htm[/url]”>http://www.columbia.edu/cu/opir/abstract/admissions_all.htm</a></p>
<p>miscalculation is a bit harsh bud - no one knows how kids are going to react to admittances, particularly in the post-ED world for Princeton and Harvard. add into the bubble the financial crisis (year 2) and you can’t predict with any certainty students’ desires. there is a great set of articles from the spring in the Times’ The Choice blog that talks about the ‘dartboard’ feeling that some admission directors have in setting admission targets.</p>
<p>nevertheless, i don’t think we know what admissions has in mind, i’d be cautious before i went around saying columbia would decrease their admittances for first-years (you know how anxiety filled these kids are). they could shift the decrease around to transfers or 3/2 kids and not just have it impact first year admissions. or maybe columbia has other thoughts in mind. i guess we’ll find out in april.</p>
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<p>yes exactly, this is precisely why the admissions office will accept fewer kids than last year (we were over-enrolled last year). They were not conservative enough last year, admitting too few kids is always better than admitting too many, because if you are below size, you can always take people from the waitlist, if you are over-enrolled you better start looking for more dorm space, class space somewhere. My post was based on facts from last year: what Columbia said their admissions target was and what actually happened, it wasn’t just some conspiracy theory to spook applicants. All this fluff about financial crisis and no H/P EA was all present last year, I’m not saying I know how many they are going to take or what our yield is going to be, but I’m giving a best guess, instead of blindly saying they’ll defacto take as many as last year (that too is a guess). Had conditions been the reverse, I would have said they are likely accept more kids.</p>
<p>Finally in terms of hurting applicant feelings, what do you think hurts more: Telling them there should be the same number as last year and seeing less, or telling them there’s going to be less and seeing more acceptances. I refuse to give people unreasonable expectations if that “lowers stress” or keeps them happy.</p>