Columbia Waitlist

[miragesea]

A friend's daughter who is waitlisted at Columbia called the director of admissions last week to check on the list movement. She contacted him several times by mail and less frequently by phone call in the last couple of mos. She had also sent 1 email.
Last week he (I believe Dr. Franz) told her that her chances of getting in are 'absolutely nil' and that she should not send him any emails because 'it is a chore' for him to respond to them. Isn't this a terrible way to treat students who have invested so much time, energy and emotion into this process?
I told them to complain to the dean of the school, anyone know who the dean is?

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[Habari]

dean fishbach is the head of p&s. your complaint will not even be considered, much less acted upon. consider your friends daughter lucky.

 

[medstylee]

A friend's daughter who is waitlisted at Columbia called the director of admissions last week to check on the list movement. She contacted him several times by mail and less frequently by phone call in the last couple of mos. She had also sent 1 email.
Last week he (I believe Dr. Franz) told her that her chances of getting in are 'absolutely nil' and that she should not send him any emails because 'it is a chore' for him to respond to them. Isn't this a terrible way to treat students who have invested so much time, energy and emotion into this process?
I told them to complain to the dean of the school, anyone know who the dean is?

The guy is just a total shmuck. I agree that she shouldn't waste any energy trying to complain, even though I think it's out of line for him to say that. It's not worth it - she's better off going to whatever school she got into besides columbia anyway.

 

[miragesea]

dean fishbach is the head of p&s. your complaint will not even be considered, much less acted upon. consider your friends daughter lucky.

that's really unfortunate. why should she be considered lucky?

 

[medstylee]

that's really unfortunate. why should she be considered lucky?

In my opinion, at least, she's lucky because she knows that she can stop trying to do the whole song and dance bit to impress frantz. he told me to stop trying to in a reply letter to an update i sent about a month ago. apparently, he told another poster that, at this time, he's only actively considering a very small number of waitlisted candidates. unfortunately, it doesn't seem like he has notified the others about that. so, these people with essentially no chance are probably still sending letters. and, it sounds like he's replying one by one and telling people to stop. i think it would be a lot more considerate of him to just send a letter to everyone who he is no longer considering. sure, it's a "chore" for him to respond, but doesn't he think it's a chore for us to write these letters to him? he would save everyone, including himself, a lot of time if he could just bother to write out a form letter and send it to all those who no longer have a chance. anyway, that turned into my rant.

 

[CalBeE]

that's really unfortunate. why should she be considered lucky?

Habari's gf has a bad experience with the administration at P&S, so he has a negative opinion about Columbia.

The most recent letter I got basically said that it didn't look like things will work out favorably for me, but I'm still under consideration, just in case things turn out "unexpectedly"

 

[TheFlash]

It is done. I called Dr. Frantz and officially withdrew from the waitlist today. I've washed my hands of Columbia and the groveling, especially since I'm going to another great institution in Manhattan. He did say that this was an "unprecedented year and nil movement to come" and that they're still "overbooked by 3 or 4 students." He also went on to surmise reasons for this, including "a lot of our students did not seem to have other viable options, so they held onto our initial offers of admission." I found that interesting.

I think the face of Columbia's class is going to be very different from now on since they've moved to AMCAS for the coming cycle.

Ah well, good luck to those who are dedicating themselves to waiting.