I'm certain this is the best cycle to apply to Columbia University

Most Ivy League colleges are self-selecting especially if you are an ALDC, recruited athlete, legacy, development candidate, or child of faculty. For hooked applicants like Black, LatinA, Indigenous, low-income, and first gen, it's a matter of who is going to give them a full ride so many are applying to more than one. For everyone else, it's a complicated matter where to apply because you don't want to waste your time and effort. You want to stack your odds.

If you are thinking of applying to Cornell, Dartmouth, UPenn, Duke, Vandy, Rice, JHU, UChicago, Brown, WashU, Notre-Dame, and NorthWestern early, I would urge you to consider Columbia this cycle. Why? Because I think some families and HS seniors really care about clout, prestige, and bragging rights so they are going to opt out of applying to Columbia this cycle because US News and Niche dinged them down to #18 and #12. So there will be a layer of applicants like 10% that are going to focus on Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT and then skip Columbia and replace it with Brown, Duke, UChicago, and UPenn. I think this is what college counselors are telling wealthy White and Asian clients.

So I think there is going to be less demand during ED and RD for Columbia because perhaps 10% really focus on clout, prestige, and bragging rights. 10% is like 6600 applications.

I personally think that Columbia is better than Cornell, Dartmouth, UPenn, Duke, Vandy, Rice, JHU, UChicago, Brown, WashU, Notre-Dame, and NorthWestern but what do I know?