Columbia College is the undergraduate liberal arts college of Columbia University, and SEAS is the undergraduate college of engineering. The university is home to nearly 35,000 students, 6,700 of whom are in Columbia College or SEAS. There are a little over 1,000 international undergraduate students between the two colleges, or about 16% of the students enrolled.
If you are an international student considering applying to Columbia, you should also know about the College of General Studies. This college is an undergraduate opportunity for 2,200 non-traditional applicants who’ve taken time away from school, including military veterans, professional athletes, actors, entrepreneurs, and later-in-life students. Many prospective international students qualify for Columbia GS automatically because of mandatory military service in their home country. Students in the College of General Studies pursue the same course of study, with the same requirements and expectations, as traditional undergrads and having a military helicopter pilot, a former professional ice skater, and an 18-year-old traditional undergrad sitting next to each other in class is part of what makes Columbia unique. 24% of Columbia GS students are international.
If you don’t qualify for GS or are simply more interested in going the standard undergraduate route, that’s totally okay too — but we like you to know your options.
Whichever college you apply to at Columbia, it’s important to know that the university is staunchly committed to the liberal arts, and they have one of the strictest sets of distribution requirements in the country. For some students, this may be a turn-off, but Columbia students love the CORE because it creates a shared foundation while requiring them to gain broad knowledge of the classics. Every student takes courses like Art Hum and Music Hum, which improves in-class discussions across arenas because you can, for example, reference work by Handel (the composer) or Bruegel (the painter) and everyone ‘gets it.’
The acceptance rate for Columbia College and SEAS combined is only 3.9%, making it one of the hardest undergraduate programs to get into in the country. In this post, we’ll break down what international applicants need to know to make their application stand out positively among a sea of other super bright and highly-qualified candidates.
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What is Columbia looking for in International Students?
The big picture is that Columbia is looking for the same thing in international students as they are looking for in every application they read. They want the best of the best — but how you show that you’re a top caliber candidate does take nuance and care if you’re an international student.
Courses + Grades
What Columbia wants to see when they look at your transcript is that you’ve received the best grades possible in the hardest classes you have access to. They understand that access to high level courses varies based on type of school and location (it varies in the US, too, so you’re not alone in this), but they want to know that you’ve pushed yourself to the max available at your school. If you want to go even further, you can also look into taking courses at a local university or through an accredited online program. Many students also supplement their transcript with summer academic intensives, which isn’t a bad idea especially if your school lacks depth in a particular area.
A broad academic transcript is especially important for Columbia because they require a comprehensive course distribution to be eligible for admission. This isn’t true of all top-tier colleges. Many simply recommend that you take a diverse array of courses, but Columbia requires it.
This is what they demand:
English/Literature: 4 units (units = years, most of the time)
Mathematics: 4 units
Science: 3 units with labs
Foreign language: 3 units
History: 3 units
And they require electives that go beyond these minimums
Academic electives: 3 units
If you will not have completed this checklist, at minimum, by the time you graduate from secondary school, you do not fit the requirements for admission to Columbia College or SEAS, the college of engineering. So, it’s helpful to know this requirement well in advance so that you can calibrate appropriately.
Your grades are the most important factor when it comes to coaxing Columbia into giving your application more than a passing glance. If you don’t have exceptional grades — near perfect, really — they will not consider you seriously as a candidate for admission. Of course, there are always outliers. But outliers do not define the rule. 95.7% of first-year students in the fall of 2022 were in the top 10% of their graduating class before attending Columbia.
There is no minimum GPA to apply to Columbia, but we see that students with more than one or two “B” level grades on their transcript struggle to get in unless they have a really good reason for a blip in their grades, such as a medical leave or family emergency — and they must have bounced back from it. But high grades aren’t enough to get into Columbia. That’s just the starting point.
Extracurriculars
Once you’ve jumped the grade hurdle, the next challenge is differentiating yourself from other applicants through extracurriculars inside and outside of school. Everyone applying to Columbia who has a chance of getting in has amazing grades, and that’s still far more students than they can accept. So, what you do when you’re not working for a grade is the next filter.
Columbia wants to see students who are collaborative team players (and not just on sports teams), who are passionate, and who pursue what they care about as far as they can reasonably take it…and then maybe a bit further. Ideally, you’ll have some honors, awards, or recognitions to go with these pursuits.
When choosing which of your passions to lean into, take a deep approach rather than a “spray-all” one. They are more interested in students who lean into what they care about than those who do a little of everything. We recommend pursuing (and highlighting on your application) 2-3 activities that are distinctly different from each other. For example, one could be a sport, another a school club or organization, and a third a long-term internship, job, volunteer position, or less-structured but similarly time-consuming passion. If you love writing, start working to get published. If you are an artist, ask a local café if you can do an installation or show. If you love building things, find an internship with an engineering or architecture firm in your area. Don’t expect these roles to be flashy. Expect to file papers and take notes at meetings — and that’s okay. Columbia also knows that international students often have different levels of access to extracurriculars than students in the US might have, but they want to see you taking full advantage of what opportunities are on offer, and then finding additional ones. For example, if your school doesn’t have a newspaper, you could start a school blog.
Columbia wants to see you striving, learning, and absorbing experience and expertise. Keep a journal of struggles and triumphs, too, as that will give you lots to write about when it comes time to draft application essays.
Standardized Tests
Standardized Tests are in many ways the big bad wolves of college admissions. They are daunting, they are annoying to take, and it’s still unclear how much value they offer colleges in actually accessing a student’s skills or college readiness. And yes, there are there and so we must face them.
Columbia is SAT and ACT optional for undergraduate applicants, but we write that with some major caveats. Standardized test scores can be really useful in underlining your academic achievements, and so Columbia likes to see scores that line up with what they see on your transcript. This is especially true if your school does not offer a wide range of high-level courses. In the end, and even though the tests are optional, most undergraduate students who enroll at Columbia do submit an ACT or SAT score — 69% in the fall of 2022.
And what’s considered a ‘strong’ score by Columbia? Either above 1540 on the SAT or a 35 or above on the ACT. This doesn’t mean you can’t get in with lower scores, especially if you are from a poorly resourced area as they’ll take that into account when comparing your scores against applicants with more resources, but you want to score as high as you possibly can.
Final Thoughts
Oh! And we almost forgot to mention where Columbia is located — on the island of Manhattan in New York City. The university has a strong collegiate feel with a defined campus, while being within minutes of some of best food, shopping, cultural institutions, and even urban parks in the world. Being in New York City isn’t Columbia’s main selling point, and this says a lot about how much Columbia has to offer. International students benefit from diverse cultures and communities, dynamic cuisine, and access to three international airports within 1 hour of the front steps of their dorm.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Columbia supports international students once they enroll, check out the International Students & Scholars Office, which assists students will visas, travel, tax forms, and more.
If you’re applying to Columbia from outside the United States, the process of differentiating yourself can be daunting. We can help.