AnAthlete

Stats:
SAT: 800CR, 770 M, 800W
SAT IIs: 790M2, 780 US History, 800 Bio
UW GPA: ~4.0
W GPA: ~5.0
Rank: #1, 2, or 3 out of ~500 kids in class


Subjective:
Essays: idk, excellent, i guess
Teacher Recs: Excellent
Counselor Rec: Excellent
Hook (if any): three season all-city Athlete; taught myself three languages; organized and led a one-month service trip to help those affected by hurricane Katrina; wrote a few political editorials in established newspaper; organized youth rally for democratic party, math wiz (one some local competitions, but ****ed up big time on the SAT..argh )

Location/Person:
State or Country: CA
School Type: public
Ethnicity: White
Gender: Male

Other Factors: None

If Columbia is not a sure thing, where else should I apply to? I was thinking NYU or Fordham?

ilovebagels

I believe by 'one some local competitions' you mean 'won'

Columbia is not a sure thing for you, or for anyone whose last name isn't Bollinger.

But with an attitude like that I certainly hope Columbia is a sure thing for you, lest you end up at my school and make it that much less enjoyable.

AnAthlete

Yeah I was just kidding about Columbia being a safety.

Obviously, Columbia is not a safety for anyone. Did any of you read an article in TIME about a girl who got into Stanford, Brown, Williams, Vassar, Cornell, Princeton, Dartmouth, and Duke, but got waitlisted at Columbia?

I was just amused about how kids on the Columbia forum were saying that schools like UCLA, Cornell and Georgetown were safeties for them, so I just wanted to see the reaction when I said that Columbia was my safety (which is just as ludicrous).

confidentialcoll

^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

jleung612

i really don't think any schools in the top 20 should be considered safeties. colleges look for different things. i got into columbia while rejected from dartmouth and hopkins (wasn't expecting that but heck, it happens). go for NYU as a safety

AnAthlete

I don't even think NYU is a safety. People on CC have been rejected with my kind of stats. Maybe Fordham.

Duper

LOL @ safety.

Denzera

If you're valedictorian of Philips Andover and/or national debate champion, national chess champion, hold 5 patents, or have published meaningful scientific research in peer-reviewed journals, by age 17, Columbia *might* be a safety for you. Or at least not a reach.

Aside from cases like those, a little extra hard work and dedication can only help. Because nothing is guaranteed.

SATs and GPA are not guarantors of anything. they can keep you out, but they can't get you in all by themselves. Same is true of athletics, aside from recruits.

wmmk

What does all-city athlete mean? If "city" means L.A., that's really impressive. If your city is just a big-ish town, the athletics are obviously less of a boost.

WindowShopping

While we build a new institution fit for your academic needs, I first suggest you check in on the meaning of inflammatory.

collegebound5

What a lot of people dont realize is that one can have stellar statistics and extraordinary academic achievements, and be in the top 75% or higher range of who those schools accept and these schools would still be considered reaches. They are reaches not because the applicant does not have the criteria to be accepted but just because there are so many extraordinary applicants amongst the 20,000 or more who apply. None of these schools could be considered a safety. There are applicants who get accepted to Harvard but not Columbia. Accepted to Yale but not Brown. Accepted to Princeton but not Dartmouth. There is no way to know.

ramaswami

collegebound, I disagree. The very fact that someone gets into H but not Columbia suggests he/she is at the top, enough to be guaranteed acceptance at one of the Ivies. There are only 1600 or so SAT scorers above 2350, only 250 at 2400, very few with that plus 2400 in SAT 2s. When colleges say they turn away thousands of 800s they don't say that they do not turn away thousands of those who got 2400s in both sets of tests.

In other words, if you have truly stellar testing, stellar grades in the toughest courses at your school, and you did not one EC you are practically guaranteed one of the Ivies.

You won't know which one.

collegebound5

Yes, I agree that you should be guaranteed into at least one or more of the ivies, but you are not guaranteed to get into Columbia. Therefore Columbia is not considered a safety. You are guaranteed to get into anywhere from one or more ivies, but there is no way to know which one. Therefore none could be considered safeties.

AnAthlete

WindowShopping, according to merriam-webster, inflammatory is "tending to excite anger, disorder, or tumult"...which is what I was trying to do (b/c it's a stupid question that was asked in response to comments made on another thread that were just as ludicrous).

Guys, I just want to reiterate that, in my inexperienced opinion, Columbia is not a safety for ANYONE. Neither is any other top 35 school.

thank you

ramaswami

collegebound, we are in agreement, yes, you should normally get into one (although that Indian kid in Dallas proves the exception, not one Ivy after perfect SAT and ACT, so rarely it could be so) but since you don't know which one, none is a safety.