Columbia is a big deal, and that is an understatement. As a top university in the United States and member of the famed Ivy League, Columbia also has the bonus perk of being located in one of the most famous and popular cities in the world: New York City. For international students, it isn’t just the allure of the top academics and bright lights, though — it’s also the three convenient international airports. Students coming from abroad who want to be able to go home are often surprised to learn how far many top universities are from a major airport with any chance of offering regular direct flights. For many, it’s hours of driving, or a mix of trains and busing, to even start getting home. From the Columbia Campus on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, it’s as little as 30 minutes to your terminal.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the combination of reputation and location has led to Columbia being one of the most competitive institutions in the country for international undergraduate admissions. For the fall of 2023, Columbia received just over 13,000 applicants from international students and accepted 2.6%. The acceptance rate for U.S. citizens and permanent residents was, by comparison, 4.4%. Overall, Columbia received over 60,000 applications and admitted only 3.8%. In the realm of top school admissions these types of numbers are so common that they become a little abstract and even lose their edge. To bring back the bite, imagine a room full of 100 students. Then everyone walks out except three students. That’s Columbia admissions.
Now that the odds are clear, let’s break down a few more details. 17% of the Class of 2028 were accepted as international students, representing 93 countries. The countries outside of the United States that were most represented were Canada, South Korea, China, Italy, the UK, Hong Kong SAR, Mexico, India, Germany, and France. The Columbia admissions team doesn’t have quotas for each country, though, and applicants are not at a disadvantage because of their country of citizenship as long as they have an impressive application. In this post, we’ll break down three key steps that go into creating an impressive and impactful application that increases your chances of admission.
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Applying to Columbia can feel like playing a game of roulette, but an acceptance isn’t random. An acceptance letter from Columbia is the result of three key steps that any potential international applicant needs to be taking starting today. Below, we break each one down to help students beat the odds. This is a peek at our playbook, so save it, refer back to it, and get in touch.
Step 1: Start Now
Whenever now is, this is the moment that an international applicant should be starting — with very few exceptions. If the applicant is younger than 13, it’s a little too soon to start seriously planning for college. There are things, of course, that a young student can be doing to open up their opportunities in the future, but we advise international applicants to start seriously strategizing by 14 or 15. If the applicant is older than 15, the time to start is today.
Of course, writing college essays will start months before submitting, not years. However, collecting stories for essays and augmenting an application needs to happen far in advance of starting a draft. This is why starting early is so critical, as is getting the right advice on what to be spending time on. Picking courses and activities with a Columbia-caliber institution in mind, benefits from expertise. Test prep, too, benefits from, well, preparation.
As students navigate planning for a Columbia application, it helps to have a more specific goal in mind — which brings us to the next step.
Step 2: Target Specific Programs
Columbia publishes the admissions and international data for Columbia College and Columbia Engineering lumped together into one set. We wish they broke it apart as there is likely, looking at norms across other top universities, a strong bias towards Columbia Engineering among international students. The two schools also have different acceptance rates, even if they aren’t published, and we’d expect to see that it is harder to get into Columbia Engineering as an international student than it is to get into Columbia College.
This doesn’t mean that an applicant should avoid Columbia Engineering, but if they are dead set on Columbia and less firm on the major, we do recommend seriously considering submitting an application to Columbia College — and doing the work to craft a competitive Columbia College application well in advance.
The first step towards this, of course, is zeroing in on a major to focus in on. Unless a student has deep experience, or even expertise, in a super niche subject, we recommend looking at what major departments at Columbia are the largest, and so would have ample room to accommodate international students. The largest major programs in recent years, based on graduates, are Computer Science, Economics, History, Political Science, and Psychology. These programs are the largest by far, each holding hundreds of students compared to, say, the 6 students who graduate with a degree in Urban Studies in 2023, or the 2 who graduated with a degree in Archaeology. Picking a large program to angle an application towards doesn’t make Columbia an easy in, but it does open up opportunities for international students.
Step 3: Keep the CORE in Mind
As far as top-tier and Ivy League universities, Columbia has something unique to them: the Core Curriculum. The Core is more than just a list of types of courses to take, or what most colleges call distribution requirements. The Columbia Core Curriculum is predominately comprised of courses that every student who graduates from Columbia has to take. These include courses like Art Hum, Lit Hum, and Music Hum, and set a foundation for shared understanding that puts students on a shared playing field.
Knowing this about Columbia is crucial because it shows applicants what the admissions office wants to see in applications. They want exceptionalism, but not except(ionalism). They want students who have deep passions and specific interests, but not at the expense of other subjects. Strong applicants must not just say that they appreciate the liberal arts ethos, but show it.
While preparing to apply to Columbia it is important to pursue a diverse course list, even as an international student emphasizes their target subject area of major. This means not dropping subjects that an applicant doesn’t like. It is also not ‘okay’ to have lower grades in subjects that an applicant doesn’t enjoy or puts less value in. For STEM-minded students, art, and literature matters. For humanities students, math, and science matter. Basically, everything matters. Keep this front of mind if Columbia is the goal.
Final Thoughts
For Columbia, there is one more thing that international students should seriously consider. Take a look at the College of General Studies at Columbia, which has a much higher international student acceptance rate (28%) yet provides the exact same degree. GS does have other requirements for applicants, though, like having been out of school for a year or more. Simply leaving school for a year doesn’t make an applicant competitive, though. The college tends to attract current and former professionals, including actors and athletes, as well as military veterans. If you meet the GS requirements, it can be a strong alternative way into Columbia for international students.
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