Official Columbia University 2016 RD Results

inkblotch
Wed, 16 May 2012 21:29:11 +0000

Decision: Waitlisted - CC

Objective:[ul]
[] SAT I (breakdown): 2280 - 720 CR, 790 Math, 770 Writing
[] ACT:
[] SAT II: 730 US History, 760 Math II, 770 Chemistry
[] Unweighted GPA (out of 4.0): 3.972
[] Rank (percentile if rank is unavailable): 10/577
[] AP (place score in parenthesis): World History (4), Statistics (5), US History (5), Chemistry (5)
[] IB (place score in parenthesis):
[] Senior Year Course Load: AP Literature, AP Calculus BC, AP French V, AP Computer Science, Human Physiology and Anatomy Honors, Economics Honors (semester 1), AP Government (semester 2)
[] Major Awards (USAMO, Intel etc.): umm, I have a few for wrestling, but I’ll save those for later. Not sure if AP Scholar with Honor counts as “major”
[/ul]Subjective:[ul]
[] Extracurriculars (place leadership in parenthesis):
Animals, People, Earth - community service club (secretary)
Unitown - a week-long camp at a place 3 hours from Phoenix. It was a program about various prejudices in society, ways to avoid violent confrontation, and learning more about different cultures. Was an interesting experience but I hardly think that this contributed something substantial to my application.
Wrestling (co-captain senior year) - Varsity wrestler all four years. 4th in region as a freshman, 3rd in region as a sophomore, 2nd in region as a junior. Participation in the state tournament sophomore and junior years. Some awards I had were Freshman MVP, Most Technical Falls in a Season (which is winning by at least 15 points in a match, which is also if you’re unfamiliar with wrestling, quite a bit) as a sophomore and junior. I also didn’t get a chance to put this in my application but I was undefeated my senior season.
FLAMES (sales manager) - a club on campus that makes an end of the year literary magazine with poems, art, and short stories. We get submissions from classes and write ones ourselves, take a blind vote on which ones to pick during meetings.
Science Club (vice president) - meetings after school with mock Science Bowl games. We participate at a local science competition and the National Science Bowl (we’ve been close, but we’ve never made it past state haha)
[] Job/Work Experience: Had an internship at a software company in Azerbaijan (which is where I’m from). Pretty much talked with employees and helped them make a presentation about business opportunities in the developing markets of Azerbaijan, which were under the control of the Soviet Union until early 90s, but I digress. Got a letter of recommendation from the president of the company.
[] Volunteer/Community service: Interact - another community service club. I had weak community service overall, I think it was somewhere like 25 hours.
[] Summer Activities: Internship I listed above
[] Essays: I thought my common app essay was great. My supplement ones were okay, 2 were generic, 1 was good, and 1 was really good (or so that’s how I felt)
[] Teacher Recommendation: Both teachers liked me a lot. One was my AP Chemistry teacher, who is just brilliant and has lots of experience writing them. He’s taught for a long time and has gotten lots of people into good schools. My second one is where I probably made a mistake. He was my sophomore english teacher, and although he’s also a pretty smart guy, he included the name of another Ivy on it (…I facepalmed myself hard when he showed it to me)
[] Counselor Rec: Probably decent, don’t think it was amazing since he doesn’t know me particularly well. He’s also really weird.
[] Additional Rec: Written by the president of that company I interned at, it was really solid and probably made up a lot of other areas I was lacking in
[] Interview: Didn’t have one

[/ul]Other[ul]
[] State (if domestic applicant): Arizona
[] Country (if international applicant): Azerbaijan (graduated in US, but not a US citizen)
[] School Type: public
[] Ethnicity: Turkic
[] Gender: Male
[] Income Bracket: 100k-150k
[li] Hooks (URM, first generation college, etc.): Don’t really know what might classify as a hook, but being from Azerbaijan also probably helped. I speak 3 languages fairly fluently. [/li]
[/ul]Reflection[ul]
[] Strengths: Internship, wrestling, grades, and I guess my SAT wasn’t too bad
[] Weaknesses: community service, lack of participation in scholarships and domestic internships, and should’ve put in something about my violin playing, and that one teacher recommendation (as if using a sophomore teacher was bad enough…)
[] Why you think you were accepted/waitlisted/rejected:
Could’ve filled out my application better. My essays were good but I don’t think they stood out. For the most part, I didn’t have too many holes in my application, but the ones I did were big. Also, I am technically classified as an international student and applied for financial aid, so that puts me in direct competition with a lot of other really smart international applicants also applying for aid. Honestly, I can’t really pinpoint a reason.
[] Where else were you accepted/waitlisted/rejected:
Accepted at Arizona State University, Barrett Honors College (part of ASU), U of A
Rejected at Harvard, Stanford, Princeton
Waitlisted at WashU

[/ul]General Comments:
Meh. A little disappointed but still keeping my fingers crossed!

Congratulations to all the people who were accepted, that’s quite an accomplishment! If you weren’t, I guess the best thing is to just forget and look forward to the next major thing… Grad School!

To all you future seniors… good luck! Don’t underestimate any little thing you can put on, pay special attention to the essays, and learn as much as possible about the school before starting!