Fall 2009 Applicants A Quick Look Inside the Numbers COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY - SIPA Admissions Blog

Fall 2009 Applicants A Quick Look Inside the Numbers COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY - SIPA Admissions Blog The Admissions Committee still has a lot of work to do and decisions have not started to go out yet (early March has always been our goal) but I took a break from reading recently to play with some numbers in Excel.   I am kind of a data hound and as funny as it may sound, running Pivot Tables in Excel relaxes me. I like to think of Excel as a video game for an Admissions Director.   Young people have a Wii or PlayStation, this middle aged manager has Microsoft Office (cue Apple commercial making fun of PC guy).   Although our I.T. department did just upgrade us to Office 2007 and getting used to a new interface is a challenge . . . but I digress. I just thought I would provide a bit of information on the make up of the applicant pool for this year.   Here are a few miscellaneous facts regarding the applications we are now pouring over. Citizens of 102 different countries applied this year.   We also have a large number of U.S. Permenent Residents so the total number of countries people have a connection with in the pool probably well exceeds 120. Applicants have attended well over 900 different colleges and universities. 59% of the applicant pool is female.   Using my adroit quantitative abilities that means 41% is male. The average age of the applicant pool is 25 years and 5 months.   The average age of newly enrolled students in past years has been approximately 27 and 4 months. That is a quick update.   Now its time to put away my toy and get back to reading applications.