Columbia 2013 (CBS) - Calling All Applicants

Perhaps you can speak to a new responsibility at work or a new leadership role either inside or outside the workplace. Just remember to also reaffirm your interest in the school (have you attended any admissions events recently or sat in on a class?)

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If anyone has questions, please feel free to give me a ring.

I feel you. Your result should come some time today, right? Good luck with it!

Any of the J-Term dinged applicants planning on reapplying to CBS for the September class start? I'm just wondering. I'm most probably not but just wanted to know what others were planning on doing.

I'm curious - has anyone seen this work before? I'd imagine a J-term applicant would have been interviewed and then realized on their own or through conversations with interviewer or adcom that they'd be better served with the full 2 years and summer internship?

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I am 99% sure I've read on the CBS site that this is not possible.

Soooo...I just want to throw this out there to see if anyone else has thought of this or if I am just crazy. I applied ED to Columbia on 10/3 with the hopes that an ED application would give me a small boost in chance of admission, but late enough that I could stretch out the admissions process to coincide with RD1 decisions from HBS, Wharton, & Kellogg. I got the interview invite from CBS 10/19 but I still haven't communicated with the interviewers because I don't want to speed it up too much and have to make a $6K deposit decision before knowing from the other schools. Can this work? We'll find out.

The short answer is no, this cannot work. ED is binding, no matter where else you are accepted. That's the whole point. Best case scenario you get interview invites everywhere. You will still have to interview with Columbia before you hear back from HBS. So even if you get accepted to HBS before Columbia you will still owe Columbia $6,000. The only way this could work is if you got accepted to HBS or Wharton before interviewing with Columbia and intentionally bombing the Columbia interview. But the timing won't work that way. You can always game the system using ED to boost your odds. People do it every year. The consequence for doing so is burning any bridges with the Columbia network and you forfeit $6,000. There is no way out of the deposit, that is how they make ED binding.

I recently got invited to interview, and am wondering how closely applicants hew to the instruction to first contact the Ambassador at the top of the list (they must mean business, as there's an underline involved). The third Ambassador they offered is an alum of my college, and I'd like to reach out to her first instead. Is this really discouraged (not seeking out fellow alumni, but not reaching out to the Ambassadors in order of appearance)?

I emailed the 3rd person on the list. I found him on linkedin and saw he works in the field I want to switch careers into. I would contact whoever you think will give you the best interview chances. I'm really not sure why the email puts them in a particular order but I promise it isn't a trap.

Thanks for the response. I guess my thinking is that the $6K is not actually due to CBS for 2 weeks after you've received the admissions invite. So, conceivably, you could interview and gain admission to CBS on 12/10 then hear back from Kellogg on their notification date of 12/17 and choose to enroll at Kellogg. But that's only if you stretch the admission to CBS back to the notification dates of other schools. Granted, you would not be living up to the ED agreement of enrolling there and withdrawing all other applications, but it's not truly a "binding" agreement and you only lose the $6K if you pay and then decide to enroll somewhere else.

any idea whats teh selection rate for teh ED applicants who have been invited to interview?

That's tough to answer with our small sample here. Especially because people are less likely to post on here when they get dinged vs an admit. That being said, it looks like so far for ED those who were invited to interview the yield has been 70% or maybe even a little better. Most of the dings people have reported were Denied Without Interview. I only recall 2 or 3 who interviewed and were dinged subsequent to that.

Historically the overall yield is around 50% if you get an interview invite. ED tends to have a higher admit rate than RD but not significantly. I would expect that if you were able to look across all ED applicants the reality is closer to 60% of ED interviews convert to admits. The rates are usually a little higher on GMATClub than the overall applicant pool just because those of us taking the time to be on this site tend to be overly motivated(or maybe we're just OCD).

thanks mappleby.. your reply gives me the hope that it might work out after all.. need to continue on this journey

you seem to have hit the nail on the head with the ocd bit (used to check my mail every hour prior to getting the invite)

anyway, best of luck to all out there for the interviews!

Got the call last night!

Applied ED on 9/6, interviewed on 10/11, feedback submitted 10/15, accepted 10/26

27 years old, male, white
GMAT 740 Q50 V39
GPA 3.10
WE 5 years at an online brokerage in the back office.

Congrats man!

Big Cong! it's awesome! Lend me some luck!