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| Vol. 24, No. 16 | March 4, 1999 |
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| Vol. 24, No. 16 | March 4, 1999 |
FIRST-YEARS WILL BE MOST SELECTIVE CLASS EVER-AGAIN
BY A. DUNLAP-SMITH
This year Columbia again received a record number of undergraduate applications, crowning a near decade-long admissions boom and likely pushing the admit rate to below 14 percent for the first time ever.
Columbia's Office of Undergraduate Admissions reported 12,950 applications for the College class of 2003 and 2,283 for the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science. The figures represent a 5.7 percent and a 3.9 percent rise, respectively, in applications above those recorded in 1998, which was also a record year.
"The reality is that with a combined total of over 15,000 applications for the College and the Engineering School, the admission decisions are extremely difficult given the strength and depth of the applicant pool," says Eric Furda, director of undergraduate admissions; "nevertheless it affords us the opportunity to sculpt a class of tremendous academic ability and far-reaching talents."
Although still too early to know exactly, Furda expects the selectivity rate of the College to improve this year also. It will drop to between 13.4 and 13.8 percent from a selectivity rate of 14.2 percent for 1998, he estimates.
The selectivity rate is the ratio of applications to admittances. As the number of applications to the College rose during the '90s-indeed, they have nearly doubled in the past seven years-the selectivity rate has dropped, which simply means Columbia has become harder to get into. For the past several years, Columbia's selectivity has ranked third in the Ivy League: behind Harvard and Princeton but ahead of Yale and Brown.
The Engineering School's selectivity rate has decreased as well, to 30 percent last year from 50.9 percent in 1993.