Calling all Columbia Applicants for 2009!

ZOMG! This is really badtastic news. Did your second recommender face the same problem Tieny?

I can only hope that their antiquated applications system is having some server hiccups and still showing the J-term recommendation questions because the application isn't officially ready for submission yet.

My other recommender didn't remember anything... he didn't notice a difference in the number of questions. He said he didn't even pay attention to the questions and just started pasting his pre-written answers (since i had supplied him this year's 8 questions previously).

Here's the wrinkle now... I just got off the phone with my first recommender who reported the problem. He said he just logged in again to submit his revised answers to the different set of 10 questions... and he said this time, there are only 8 questions!!! Crazy. He said that he is 100% positive that the questions are different from when he logged in yesterday... so it sounds like Columbia's system is inconsistent with the questions it provides your recommenders. So my first recommender is fine now... he is reading all the questions and his answers again before submitting.

I am just worried about my other (less careful) recommender... he might have answers that are completely irrelevant to the questions in his app. Or he may have completely ignored two questions. Or he may have done it correctly. Impossible to say if the questions change each time a recommender logs in... i'm going to call CBS adcom on monday to ask. I guess my advice to everyone is to get your recommenders to actually read everything! :/

That's interesting Tieny. And weird.

By the way, do you remember if your recommenders received the "Columbia Recommendation Request" e-mail as soon as you checked that "Send" box on the "Recommendations" section of the online application?

Thanks very much - by the way you know if that Excel transcript upload is a hassle you could use their "alternative transcript upload" and send them a PDF instead. That's what I'm doing - I don't use MSOffice at home and it's a little too cumbersome to use their transcript template on OpenOffice.

And welcome to GMATClub! Nice blog, too.

Hey Solaris,

Thanks for the welcome- I've actually followed this thread for two weeks but didn't start posting til now. GMATclub certainly appears more helpful than the BusinessWeek forums.

I have some more insight regarding the dynamic CBS recommendation. My first recommender tried again for a 3rd time tonight and he thinks he's figured out why there are different sets of questions. There are two options for recommenders: they can either submit their rec via a template (download, complete, then upload) or via an online form. He noticed that when he used the template, he got the 10 question set that was used last year. When he pasted directly to the online form, he got the 8 question set that we originally anticipated for this year's app. So if you don't want any unpleasant surprises, I would recommend that you tell your recommenders to paste directly into the online form (and ignore the template).

Now if I can only finish up these essay drafts...

Folks, are you keeping things short and sweet on the "Employment History" section of the CBS application - let's say to correspond to a resume one-page in length?

I know the admissions committee said there's no limit to how much information you can provide on that section, but considering the general consensus is to keep resumes to one-page in length, I'm a little unsure of how exactly to approach this.

At this point I don't know how different my "Employment History" section is going to be from the resume upload for fellowship consideration.

What do you guys suggest?

Hey Solaris,

For the employment history, I believe the adcom when they say any length is fine. After all, they are very clear when it came to the 400 character limit (including spaces! this is verified by Christina on the BusinessWeek thread) for the Activities section. So I guess you can write as much or as little as you think is necessary to provide a clear explanation of duties and the reason for leaving. I know that doesn't help so I can say that I plan on taking about a paragraph or so. And yes, they will be very very close to my Resume's description. I believe this is completely okay because the resume is optional. It appears that the resume is only for the Fellowship Committee to award grants, aid, etc. So it sounds like the resume isn't even considered by the Adcom when making admissions decisions thus I'd think it's okay to provide repeated information. But then again, maybe I shouldn't assume Either way, that is what I'm planning on doing until someone tells me I'm an idiot.

Best, TienyChesney

I'm just copying and pasting from my resume for the post-college stuff, since they don't look at the resume anyway. For college internships I'll probably be more brief (I'm thinking 2 bullets) but I still need to write those

Cool - thanks, guys!

So if it seems fairly obvious that none of those fellowships on offer at CBS really apply to me, then I can just skip the resume upload altogether, right?

Right now I'm leaning towards just copy/pasting my one-page resume into the "Employment History" section and adding a line or two each for the jobs I held through college (which are not on my resume anymore).

This is the approach that I used last year and I plan to do the same this year (allthough my current position will be slightly updated with work activities since January).

Two sentences for internships/college work is plenty.

You guys all done with essays?
I am still lost in the essay forest that I haven't looked at things like EC & work history, etc....

BTW, talked to my recommender yesterday, and he said back in the 60s he only gave the business school his college transcript and he was in! Unbelievable... schools have become more and more demanding over the years, I guess.

Heck no! I'm only sort of done with essay 1 in the sense I have a draft I'm reasonably happy with. I know what I will write about in essays 2 and 3, but haven't actually done any writing so far.

I just realized that people are going to start turning in their ED applications in 2 more days, so I'm trying to get all this other stuff organized during office downtime.

One more question (Tieny?) - is the 400 character limit on the EC's determined by 400 characters as counted by the application system or 400 characters as counted by my word processing program? I get different character counts!

which one gives you more characters? I would probably go with the Columbia systems count. I'm wondering if we can use the +10% rule here....

Same thing happened to me. I'm going with the CBS word count to be on the safe side.

CBS showed that I had used more characters than in MS Word.

I'm more of a follow the rules kind of guy and not a proponent of the +10% rule in general. I think you can get away with it on a CBS essay (read: not EVERY CBS essay should be +10%) because they say "recommended" word count. My waitlist manager confirmed that they do not count words and it's "OK if you go a 'little' over."

I'd stick with 400 CBS characters for the EC's. I think the bottom line is that they want to know when you did them and what your main role is/was. For instance, if you were the Treasurer for your fraternity, you don't need to go into detail saying "responsible for collecting payments, leading fundraiser campaigns, etc." A broad one sentence overview is all they are looking for in that section. If you can bring things up in your essay that reflect your EC's and why it is important for the school to know MORE, then do so.

I guess we all should use Columbia's system count. I figured out the different character counts happen because the word processing programs don't count each space as one character.

Ugh! The name alone of one of the organizations I was involved with in college is 50 characters long!!

Perhaps you can abbreviate it? For instance if it is the Department of Redundancy Department try:
Dept. Redundancy Dept. (That saved 13 characters!)