US domestic (US citizen or permanent resident) or international student
State/Location of residency: US citizen
Type of high school (or current college for transfers): Competitive suburban, sends dozens of kids to T30s and ivies every year
Other special factors: (first generation to college, legacy, recruitable athlete, etc.) Dad worked at Columbia med as a researcher a few decades ago.
**Intended Major(s)**Philosophy on premed track
Unweighted HS GPA: 3.85 UW (3 B’s in English, Math, French freshman year, straight A’s since).
Weighted HS GPA: 4.6 weighted (kids who get into ivies from here usually have 4.75+).
Class Rank: No official rankings but probably top 20% based on weighted GPA
ACT/SAT Scores: 36(36,36,36,35)
List your HS coursework
9 AP 8 honors. Hardest courseload except I am taking Calc BC, not multivariable calculus, and in 10th grade I took history honors instead of APUSH.
Awards
1st place in a national debate competition
National merit semifinalist
3rd place in state level science research competition
AP Scholar with whatever
National honor society
Extracurriculars (Include leadership, summer activities, competitions, volunteering, and work experience)
President of school political union
Captain of debate team
Co-editor in chief of school newspaper
Completed research at Columbia with a professor over the summer
Varsity soccer
Volunteer math tutor
Mentor in local orchestra
National honor society
Recreational skiing
Cooking, lol
Essays/LORs/Other (Optionally, guess how strong these are and include any other relevant information or circumstances.)
Without getting too in-detail I wrote my essays about my science research at school, my science research at columbia, my time living in a shaolin temple and some other cool stuff. I think they’re 9/10 but everyone probably says that on these posts.
My LORs are probably solid too. I got one from my science research mentor at Columbia.
Schools (List of colleges by your initial chance estimate; designate if applying ED/EA/RD; if unsure, leave them unclassified)
Thanks! What I believe my school does is send a chart of the past year’s graduating class’s GPAs, ranked in deciles (ie. what percent of kids got a GPA of 4.25-4.5, 4.5-4.75 etc.). I am not officially ranked but I’m guessing Columbia could compare my GPA to the past year’s class to see how I fit in.
A few decades ago was 30 years ago. I doubt this will factor into your application now.
You have applied…now just wait and see. You have done very well…and could very well be one of the accepted students.
If not, just make sure you have your other applications either submitted or ready to submit.
Your school counselor will send a school profile for your class which usually includes the range of GPAs in the class. The adcoms can glean a lot from that in terms of where you rank. They don’t care at all about previous years classes from your high school.
I’m assuming this is your optional LOR, and you also sent academic references…typically colleges want on humanities and one STEM teacher who have had you in their class as a student.
Thanks! The annoying thing about the chart, which I just checked, is that I can either fit into the top 20% group or the top 5% group. There is no granular %ile stuff. Looking on Naviance, there was a kid who was waitlisted at Columbia with my GPA, lol, and some kids accepted to other ivies with it.
Just FYI, some school profiles do show the eight semester stats of the previous year’s class in the school profile. Commonly that might include ACT/SAT scores, median GPA/mid 50% GPA range/GPA deciles, and AP test scores (including senior year results).
Here’s an example of a 2024-25 profile that shows SAT test scores and GPA distribution for class of 2024.
Here’s one that splits the data (ACT/SAT for class of 2024, AP scores for all classes combined but generally only juniors and seniors can take APs, and 6 semester GPA for class of 2025.)
This one shares no GPA or AP test score data for any class, but does share ACT/SAT scores for 2022/23/24 classes but not 2025.
So, these are inconsistent and can be less than helpful, and….it’s quite possible OP’s school profile shows class of 2024 data on the 2024-25 profile.
Based on everything you described in terms of your school’s recent history of college placement and where you fit in, it sounds like your grades place you sort of on the fringe of Ivy+ admissions chances for unhooked applicants.
And while this is not exactly insightful, that could be better, and it could be worse! Which I assume you already had figured out yourself in fact.
Assuming your family can comfortably afford Columbia, it is your favorite, and you would have no interest in comparing offers (including merit scholarship and/or honors offers), I don’t see a problem with you choosing to ED Columbia. Again I assume you are aware that Columbia gets a LOT of ED applications, and only a small percentage of those will end up admitted to Columbia. But under the conditions above, there is no harm in giving it a shot.
Of course if you don’t get admitted to Columbia, I am confident you could still get admitted to many great colleges, indeed possibly with merit/honors if you choose to pursue such offers. So hopefully you are prepared to apply to a robust list of such colleges in the event Columbia rejects or defers you.
Depends what info an AO has…assessing whether the student can do the work and is a fit at a given school can be more important than their relative standing in the HS (there can be lots of game playing with GPA and rank for example.)
All the applicants from a given HS who apply to the same college can be compared with each other, but if the school profile doesn’t give info for the current class (GPA, rigor, rank, etc), additional context can be impossible to access. Schools can of course look at historical admits from the HS and some track college performance by HS as well. AOs can also call HS counselors for more info, but IME that’s relatively rare.
I wish OP good luck thru the admissions process and hope they have a well balanced list of schools. They will know about Columbia ED soon enough.