With Columbia’s rolling admissions for their MBA applications, when is the best time to apply to Regular Decision? Do you need to apply really early? Is January a good time to submit? There is a sweet spot for most people to send in their Columbia application and it’s not when many believe it to be.
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bostonbound says
Is this still true? I have a hard time believing that the pseudo-deadline for “Round 1” Columbia is the mid-November still.
essaysnark says
Hey bostonbound! Yes – totally still true!! As a good target for most to aim for. This was first written in an era of increasing competitiveness at all the schools, and this season actually is likely to be semi-similar in terms of how the landscape plays out.
If past patterns apply this year (which we expect that they will), the Columbia adcom won’t be even peeking at apps till end of November-ish, and even then, that’s not when most applicants submit, so this is a great timeframe to aim for. (Especially because when we offer such guidelines, they often get implemented as mid-December submits by many BSers!!!)
Not sure if you were thinking that you need to submit earlier? Definitely not — there’s even possible risk to doing so, where you could end up on the waitlist instead of an outright admit. (A post is coming on that topic soon.)
So yeah, we stand by this advice — and, it’s a fair question indeed, especially for posts from the ‘snarchive. Feel free to challenge us if you see stuff that looks wrong! We appreciate the chance to revisit the advice and help you navigate this maze of confusion that is MBA apps. 🙂
ETA: This answer was written in response to the main messaging on the parent post up top – which is advice on timing for applying to Columbia Regular Decision, which has a formal deadline usually in April and an informal Fellowship Consideration deadline in early January that most applicants consider to be “Columbia Round 2” (a misnomer but an understandable way of thinking about it). With that line of thinking, then Columbia Early Decision is a quasi-Round 1 — however nothing in our answer is about submitting to Early Decision, because that cycle at Columbia has a deadline in October, so there’s no way you could submit to a “Columbia Round 1” after that point. Just wanted to clarify!