Columbia Reports a Boost of 7000 MBA Applicants during COVID 19

Grad schools postponing their application dates due to the pandemic is nothing new, and Columbia Business School too was nothing distinct. But a drastic elevation of its MBA applicants was witnessed when it prolonged its application days by 51 from its actual application duration of April 10 - June 1.

Columbia Business School class of 2022 experiences an upsurge in their class intake with a rise in MBA applications from 5,876 in 2019 to 6,917 which is almost a boost of 18.6%. CBS is stated to have dropped its acceptance rate to 16.2% from 19.1% by admitting 1,130 from 1,122. CBS’s regulations are quite distinctive from other B-schools which has two intake sessions, the august one saw an increase from 551 to 571 and January one from 203 to 211 students.

This is not the end of good news, CBS also experienced a rise in women population in their MBA intake of 40% which made it regain back the position in the elite B-school benchmark. In fact, its international intake, despite the Covid-19 outbreak and US’s animosity towards immigration has been 44% (with a trivial decrease by 3%). The UG GPA was also constant at 3.60, but there has been a cutback in the GMAT score to 726 from 727 which is even lesser than the 2018’s GMAT score732.

CBS’ Stats Remain Untouched

Linda Abraham, founder of MBA admissions consultancy ‘Accepted’ has stated in this regard how CBS is experiencing advancement in their MBA class intake when the situation is nothing but ‘unprecedented’ and there have been no fluctuations from the 2019 class intake. She considers this boost in the application volume as a ‘glaring exception’ and righteously. Columbia’s extending the application deadlines by around 50 days along with its dates for score submissions to July 1 has been celebrated by Linda and she has further stated that the act is “testimony to the effective work of the CBS admission team in getting out the word that they welcome COVID round applications,”

With a trivial difference like a drop of GMAT scores from 727 to 726, GPA being stagnant. Age and experience of the intake are also surprisingly identical. These are not the only analogous stats, the GMAT score range in 2019 was 560 - 790, in 2020 it is 580 - 780. The average work experience condition was 5 years in 2021 as well as at Columbia Business School of 2022. The count of US minorities was 33% for both instances, it is for this level that Columbia was marked 3rd in the top 25 schools list. In fact, last year Columbia welcomed both 21 and 51 old candidates, but this year the upper age ceiling was 41.

Coming to the most astonishing part, during this time when the US government has been constantly objectionable towards the approaching of the international students - CBS has totally conquered that part too where there has been no dearth in the intake of international students.

“International citizens went down from 47% to 44%,” Abraham stated. “That fairly small drop is impressive considering the anti-immigrant rhetoric in the U.S., consulate closures, and difficulty in obtaining visas that many international students face. I suspect that CBS’s hybrid or ‘Hy-Flex’ approach played a major role in keeping that number as high as it is.”

Consistency in Work Experience and UG major

The intake of 2021 noticed the maximum number of candidates hailing from the financial services sector with 29%. It shouldn’t come as a surprise as it is Wall Street afterall, the consulting services composed 23% whereas the marketing and media housed 15%. While the tech was at 3%, healthcare displayed 5%. CBS had students from the military or government spheres at just 4%, followed by real estate at 3%, energy at 2%, and the manufacturing department at 1%.

This year like always, Wall Street provided the majority of candidates to Columbia Business School amounting to around 30% intake from the respective industry. Consulting stayed constant, but media and marketing witnessed a slight setback to 14%. Technology and healthcare displayed contrasting figures with the former rising to 8% and the latter falling to 4%.

The fall of 2019 noticed students majoring in Columbia programs with business (22%), Economics (19%), engineering (17%) and social sciences (14%), and humanities (8%), sciences (7%), and technology (1%). The present year saw business topping with 29% majored in it, followed by economics at 20%, engineering at 17%, social sciences at 14%, humanities at 8%, and sciences at 7%, and lastly, the tech was noticed to rise to 3%.