IvyGate's Guide to Admissions: Part III

Your dream school is Columbia, but your intuition (or that flaccid rejection letter) tells you that you're not Columbia material. What is one to do, aside from attending NYU? In this five-point guide, we explain how to gain that coveted admissions letter from this neoclassical jewel on the hill. But be forewarned: Columbia is known to induce extreme feelings of academic inadequacy, general sleep-deprivation, and a social life (and for some a sex life) that revolves around the Butler library.

1. Do well at another school (read: get straight A's and suck up to profs who will write your recommendation letters) and re-apply as a transfer. This is the obvious choice, and the choice that has the least stigma. Transfers, especially those to CC, make other CC students feel good about themselves. Every time they see a transfer they think to themselves, "See some people do want to be here." And if you've transferred from Yale, say, or Harvard, it helps prove to them that hey, so what if I got rejected to them in high school, I live in New York City and it's omfgawesome. But it doesn't really qualify as a backdoor since it's also the hardest way of getting in. For this year's freshmen, Columbia College's acceptance rate was 8.68% and SEAS's acceptance rate was 17.6%, for an overall admit rate of 10.04%. The acceptance rate for transfers is even lower. Out of 1,401 applicants to the College and SEAS, only 112 students were admitted, or 7.99%.  It's a shot in the dark, but maybe, if you really hate the school you landed at and you act like annoying grade-obsessed gunner in all your classes you might as well give it a try.

2. Apply as a freshman or transfer to Columbia-affiliated Barnard College. The women's college has been a source of endless debate and angst ever since Columbia College went coeducational in the early eighties, after years of failed discussions to integrate with the University at large. No one, not even the president of Barnard, seems to really understand the school's tangled relationship with Columbia. On one hand the Barnard website touts the fact that "Barnard has its own campus, faculty, administration, trustees, operating budget, and endowment." On the other hand, Barnard students receive Columbia email addresses, have full access to Columbia classes and student organizations, and earn degrees signed by both Barnard and Columbia presidents. Most gripes around Barnard center around the fact that its students get in easier but are de facto Columbia students. (The acceptance rates for this year's freshmen and transfers were 28.5% and 29.1%, respectively). Angsty prestige-driven Columbians should be more concerned about recruited athletes, don't you think?

More backdoors after the jump.

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