Please provide feedback/advice on behalf of a friend
Message:
Hello, honestly idk what really happened but i'm asking for opinions after taking a day to accept the rejection (columbia engineering). i'm just curious why i didn't even get waitlisted, and i'd appreciate any feedback.
international cs major freshman at a small tech school. 3.85 first semester GPA, about 3.9 on the midterm report. test optional, but i reported top <1% math score from national university entrance exam in brazil (enem) among 3 millions of test takers, pretty last minute before decisions came out (they confirmed that it was added to my application in may 1)
founding engineer for a fairly large gaming analytics platform since high school, has scaled to hundreds of thousands of monthly users and more than 10k of concurrent connections. i framed myself as a builder who wanted stronger theoretical foundations on my essays
Fluent in three languages (english, korean, portuguese)
Selected as one of only a few freshmen to join my school's endowment investment fund (<10% acceptance rate)
participated in columbia hacking hackathon earlier this year, and two model un in high school. three volunteering experiences.
1 club-led research and 1 faculty-led research
Taking 20 credits this semester, plus the investment fund commitment, which is treated like a serious extra workload.
a gold medal in a national astronomy olympiad in my country, 1st place in an international competition, and a silver medal in a national math olympiad.
why transfer: while i'm genuinely grateful for things i've given at my current school, it doesn’t really have the structured cloud/infrastructure engineering pathway i'm looking for. i think this part of my application was probably weaker compared to the rest.
why columbia: mentioned a columbja professor's research that aligns with my intended career path
My guess is that it was mostly because i was need-aware and applied for financial aid as an international student. i also think my essays showed my philosophy, but looking back, they probably weren't the best possible version, as a few parts might have sounded a bit too polished or AI-ish, even though the ideas were mine.
I knew it was difficult to get aid as need aware international, so I didn't expect an easy acceptance. but honestly i think i'd feel a little better if i had at least been waitlisted.