College Discussion - View Single Post - Not to be inflammatory, but is Columbia a safety?

confidentialcoll · 04-26-2008, 11:52 AM

^what makes columbia less of a safety than those schools, is that for one thing they all have much higher acceptance rates and also because columbia, i've heard, tends to be slightly less numbers based. If a school has a track record of getting 40-50 students into columbia each year, and you are better qualified than almost all of them last year, then it could be a safety for you.

This is what many on this board don't understand: there are a few high schools out there which take a set of the smartest students, prepare them very well and work them very hard. and might have like 30-50% getting into the ivy league. if you're one of the best there and your councellor has a good rapport with columbia admissions, you can almost be guaranteed entry if you write normal (don't need to be spectacular) essays. A topper at stuyvesant (per se) who leads a few clubs and has taken a few initiatives, with high sat scores, could be such a character.

that being said, hyp, stanford, brown, wharton, mit, columbia, caltech, amherst, swarthmore, williams, maybe even dartmouth, upenn (other) and duke would very rarely be safeties, because either the applicant pool is extremely competitive (cal tech) or the acceptance rate is very low

04-26-2008, 11:52 AM	#4
confidentialcoll Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2007 Posts: 1,008	^what makes columbia less of a safety than those schools, is that for one thing they all have much higher acceptance rates and also because columbia, i've heard, tends to be slightly less numbers based. If a school has a track record of getting 40-50 students into columbia each year, and you are better qualified than almost all of them last year, then it could be a safety for you. This is what many on this board don't understand: there are a few high schools out there which take a set of the smartest students, prepare them very well and work them very hard. and might have like 30-50% getting into the ivy league. if you're one of the best there and your councellor has a good rapport with columbia admissions, you can almost be guaranteed entry if you write normal (don't need to be spectacular) essays. A topper at stuyvesant (per se) who leads a few clubs and has taken a few initiatives, with high sat scores, could be such a character. that being said, hyp, stanford, brown, wharton, mit, columbia, caltech, amherst, swarthmore, williams, maybe even dartmouth, upenn (other) and duke would very rarely be safeties, because either the applicant pool is extremely competitive (cal tech) or the acceptance rate is very low Last edited by confidentialcoll; 04-26-2008 at 11:59 AM.