EssaySnark

Columbia’s new Early Decision process (is lame)

by EssaySnark - Discusses ,

We’re a big fan of Columbia Business School – great school, great connections, great city. What’s not to love? Except for the fact that CBS’s tuition is nearly $10k per year more than most other schools – it’s even more than Stanford, whose tuition is one of the priciest (and c’mon, who’s foolin’ themselves, a…

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Here's what others have said about this:

  2. No offense but your post is inaccurate, wrong, and idiotic. I applied to CBS for ED way back in 2006, when Linda Meehan was calling the shots. I was deferred from ED to RD and ultimately was dinged. So much for your claims about the "new administrative regime" at CBS, as they most certainly used to do deferrals in the past. This has nothing to do with Mary Miller being the new director. Also, they most certainly do NOT require you to adhere to the ED terms once you are deferred to RD. Not only do they acknowledge that you are applying to other schools, they actually encourage you to do so, and simply ask that you let them know if you still wish to be considered in RD – pretty standard waitlist management and nothing "unfair" about it. BTW, I am currently a student at CBS so deferrals may actually boost your position as a re-applicant.

  3. @Guy, no offense at all! We love it when our posts are called idiotic! 🙂 We also appreciate hearing your report – except for the one-off last Dec, this is certainly not something we ever encountered before in our X years of helping CBS applicants, but clearly we aren't privy to everything that goes on and everyone's outcomes. It had seemed to coincide with the other recent changes that we feel are not applicant-friendly. (And again, while we love getting your take, nothing you can say is really going to change our impressions because you went through this 4 years ago – we're discussing recent changes.)

    Maybe it was handled differently for you back in '06 but the fact is that today, the CBS adcom does not address the "binding" commitment at all when notifying an ED applicant of the "deferred" status – at a minimum you would think they'd be proactive about communicating this. If they did in the past, that's good, but they're not doing it now. Nor are they "encouraging" these kids to apply to other schools – please let us know where and when they do that?

    Why do they call this a "deferral"? They have a "waitlist" for the J-Term – what's with the nonstandard terminology? The website says "Final decisions can be admission, denial of admission or wait list. Decisions can be rendered at any time and all decisions are final." Why have this "deferred" loophole? It does not engender trust.

    Also, whether or not this is a MM change or it predates her arrival, doesn't it very much reduce the value of this "Early Decision" process, if you actually do NOT get a decision until February? February seems awfully late in the cycle. Last year we saw someone strung out till late Dec or Jan. But Feb.? Come on. The least they could do is to spell this out as an option on their website. There is NO mention ANYWHERE on the CBS website about this (and yes, we definitely call this "unfair") — if you know of one please point us to it!

    We remain disillusioned with the new CBS adcom.

  4. I second the motion after having been just "deferred" to RD from ED. Strong recs, great scores, even uncommonly good essays (for me). Was hoping to hear a yes or a no…this is definitely unfair. I'll apply to 5 additional schools now. It costs at least a grand, and may be completely unnecessary.

    Does anyone know what the odds are of being accepted after a deferral from ED to RD?

  5. @Category6 – sorry to hear you're also on the "D" list! Nobody will be able to answer your "what are the odds" question – even if someone can say what's happened in past years, it's totally irrelevant today since so many processes have been changed under the new adm dir. Our client last year who's ED app was deferred in Dec. found out in Jan. that she was rejected. Her app wasn't that strong so we weren't terribly surprised. No idea how things will play out this year. Good luck with those other apps!! And if you want to send your CBS essays over, EssaySnark would love to review them – and possibly post a critique – anonymously of course – if you're up for it! (it's [essaysnark at gmail] in case you were wondering)

    And who knows, maybe CBS will come back with a 'yes' – they could do so at any time, right? Miffed as we are by this process, we're not giving up hope for any of our peeps.

  7. @Ganesh, EssaySnark doesn't have direct access to the Columbia processes, however in reading through that discussion, it's only a second-hand report about there being "two" deferrals. This is our first-hand experience with clients: after interviewing, J-Term applicants might get offered to go on a WAITLIST with a final answer promised in December (maybe sooner); after interviewing, ED applicants might get offered a DEFERRED DECISION which puts them in the regular round, with an answer promised by February 1 (maybe sooner). The language in the communications from the adcom to these two types of applicants is different – J-Termers get waitlisted, ED applicants get deferred. (Regular-round applicants might get waitlisted too but that doesn't start happening until March probably.)

    Luckily most of EssaySnark's clients are getting accepted outright and so our dataset on the WL/D-list stuff is tiny. However we doubt that there are two types of deferrals for ED applicants. We suspect that the report that one poster's friend who was deferred will get a final answer in December was actually for a J-Term applicant (unless the adcom changed their process halfway through when they realized how bunk the "deferral" nonsense is!). However, all is up in the air at Columbia; we don't know anything for sure either.

    Please keep us posted @Ganesh – we're rootin for ya!

  8. Just an FYI. I got deferred from the ED round. I then let them know I would like to get reconsidered as an applicant and they let me know right away that because of the deferment, I was no longer bound to the ED contract.

  9. @Anonymous, thanks for that – yes we've heard that they've been clarifying this to other applicants too upon expression of interest in the DD process, however you'd think they'd state it right up front in the original deferred-decision "invitation"!!