How to Get Into Columbia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oy_KjiMt0c

Welcome back to our How to get into every college series. Today I’ll be talking about the most urban Ivy of them all. Specifically, how to get in. 

Now Columbia is unique in that it’s one of the only top colleges to clearly articulate the 5 key points it wants students to hit in their application. Honestly, I wish other schools did this so props to Columbia admissions for making this so crystal clear: 

Academic Preparation

Let’s start with academic preparation. But we can’t talk about academic prep (or knowledge of Columbia for that matter) without referencing Columbia’s Core Curriculum. 

Loved by some, hated by others, the Core Curriculum is truth be told, kinda controversial. I know a friend who transferred out of Columbia because she didn’t like it very much, and I know former students we’ve worked with that love the Core because it teaches you the foundations to critical thinking, logic and rhetoric. 

One thing is for certain. You have to write about the Core Curriculum. It’s a fat red flag if you don’t mention it at all! 

So what is the Core in the first place? Well according to this admissions officer, “it’s a series of named courses and general requirements taken over four years.” 

To get even more nitty gritty, let’s talk about some of the classes within the core. One of the most famous is Literature Humanities, or Lit Hum, for short. One Columbia student said that in this course she read - I kid you not - 15-20 books over the course of a single semester. And these were hefty works, like Homer’s Iliad, stories by Plato, Dante, Jane Austin, Virginia Woolf, and Toni Morrison, just to name a few. 

How does knowing what the Core Curriculum is actually help us get into Columbia? Well, one of the core tenets of the core is engaging with primary sources and thinking for yourself. 

So in those Columbia supplemental essays, be sure to mention a time where you didn’t just read other peoples’ interpretations of historical events or data, but analyzed the information yourself. You could also mention how you’ve read stuff like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and Song of Solomon but are now looking for a chance to actively discuss the ideas you found in these texts with your peers. In fact, don’t be afraid of mentioning these titles in the short Columbia supplement that asks you to “List the books you’ve read”! More on that later. 

Another way to hit curiosity, academic preparation and knowledge of Columbia is to pull up the Columbia Course Catalog. Find classes you’re interested in, not just within the Core, but outside of it too. Be sure to hone in on courses only offered at Columbia, not ones that every school has. A good example would be something like Political Analytics, while a bad example would be Intro to Philosophy. 

I’ve mentioned this in a previous video, but a really key concept in all college essays is to use threads. Articulate how what you want to study is an extension of something you’ve already studied, or something you’re currently studying. Perhaps in your free time you listen to TedTalks about stoicism while you go on morning jogs, or maybe you recently completed a statistics project related to the effect of TikTok on South Korean democracy. Whatever it is, be sure to connect the dots. 

Curiosity

Columbia wants curiosity, which many students have told me can be quite challenging to convey. Luckily, Columbia makes this super easy for you with this short essay where you’re able to list content you enjoy! 

List a selection of texts, resources and outlets that have contributed to your intellectual development outside of academic courses, including but not limited to books, journals, websites, podcasts, essays, plays, presentations, videos, museums and other content that you enjoy.

I can’t stress this enough: be the fish that swims against the current. This is how we stand out and get in. Include a mix of more well-known publications like the Economist but also quirky YouTube channels about lesser known topics you genuinely find interesting. Each text or book you mention is an opportunity for the application reader to understand how you feed and nurture your curiosity. 

Engagement With Others

A superb way of showing how you can engage with others is through Columbia’s diversity essay and/or their unexpected challenge/adversity essay! We’ve already established that Columbia loves thinkers, so showing intellectual engagement with others would be a phenomenal topic to cover in your supps. 

Two strategies I recommend: The first is to write about a time where you combined curiosity with selflessness – two aspects of our VSPICE rubric that helped seniors get into every top 20 college last year by the way. Talk about how you taught a difficult academic concept like anthropomorphism or nuclear fusion to your younger cousin or group of elementary students. 

A second perhaps even better strat is to write about a debate since Columbia loves intellectual discussions. So talking about a controversial issue where either you grew, or you helped someone else grow, would be an awesome response here. It serves as a double whammy since it wouldn’t just show your engagement with others, but also your personal growth and intellectual curiosity!

Individual Voice

Next up, we have voice. One student I worked with last cycle wrote about how they were legitimately insulted for pursuing STEM as a girl. Not only did she describe how she gracefully handled this rough interaction, but she was so moved by the experience that she started a group to empower girls in STEM, even going so far as to host weekly events and invite other successful female role models to help inspire the new community she’d built. 

Take note of this formula: first, you introduce the problem, then an initial individual solution, then a bigger more systemic or systematic solution that helps the community at large. This is a sensational way to demonstrate how you use your voice not just to be heard, but also to amplify and uplift those around you!

Knowledge of Columbia

The final thing Columbia wants to see in applicants is knowledge of Columbia itself. Probably the easiest way to begin is by familiarizing yourself with traditions at Columbia and mentioning them in your “Why Columbia” supplement. 

There’s literally a bunch on their website here so be sure to do your homework and check them out. 

For example, let’s say you enjoy cooking, food and cooking food. A simple but powerful little tactic would be to connect your passion to Columbia’s Midnight Breakfast, which is a tradition during finals where students eat breakfast at midnight to destress. If you have a cultural breakfast dish you’d like to share, like congee or pao de queijo, that would also be sweet to mention! 

Perhaps you could even include a short one or two sentence anecdote where you explain how you once spent hours researching the perfect congee - that’s another clever way to highlight your curiosity! 

With all of that in mind, it’s important to note that Columbia also wants you to talk about New York City too. You’re in the greatest city on Earth! How are you going to take advantage of that?

For instance, if you’re into cooking, you could connect volunteering at Midnight Breakfast with volunteering as a chef at somewhere like the Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen, or by starting a food blog about hole-in-the-wall restaurants found in Harlem or the Heights. If you’re into shows, write about how you want to work at or contribute to theaters around town. Get hyper specific though! Talk about which musicals or plays have caught your eye and mention why they resonate with you. 

Whatever it might be, make sure to show that you also have knowledge of NYC in addition to Columbia itself.

Until next time, my dear virtual little siblings!

Peace!

Kevin