S4E32: Applying to Columbia: How to Write Your 2025 Supplements For Success

Hello, and welcome to the Admittedly podcast. My name is Thomas Khalil. I'm the former director of MBA admissions and financial aid for my alma mater, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In this podcast, I don't promise easy answers or quick fixes, but I will use my decades of experience to help you achieve your education goals. Now let's get started. Let's talk about the Columbia supplements. There are six questions that you need to answer. The first one is kind of complex, so we're going to address that one first and then go into the remaining five. So the first question is list a selection of texts, resources, and outlets that have contributed to your intellectual development outside of academic courses, including but not limited to books, journals, websites, podcasts, essays, plays, presentations, videos, museums, and other content that you enjoy. You have a hundred words or fewer to answer this question, but let me give you some guidelines from the Columbia application. For the list question, you want to have a list of items separated by commas or semicolons. They do not need to be numbered or in any specific order. It is not necessary to italicize or underline titles of books or other publications. No author names, subtitles, or explanatory remarks are needed. This is very important. They truly just want a list. Now, what kind of list do they want? Well, I always recommend balancing your academic interests, right, evidencing your academic interests. So are you seeing going to seminars, presentations, reading books, journals, websites that pertain to your field of study? That's great. But I want you to step back and think about Columbia as a whole. One of the core elements of the Columbia experience in education is the core curriculum. They believe very strongly in this liberal arts model. You're going to have to take classes outside of your comfort zone that are going to make you uncomfortable. So they want to see, do you challenge yourself? Do you go explore things? Are you curious about art, theater, other things that are not necessarily lined up with what you're doing? Because they want a well-rounded individual. They want students who are going to come be comfortable in a core curriculum and expand their horizons and go get involved. Are you going to go see your friends in their acapella group? Are you going to go to your friends sports games or art exhibit or lecture? These are really important parts of the process in the community. So don't over complicate it. Again, pay attention to the directions. No authors, no playwrights, no artists. Just list very briefly the the actual things that you're reading or being impacted by and list them out and leave it at that. Number two, tell us about an aspect of your life so far or your lived experience that is important to you and describe how it's shaped the way you would learn from and contribute to Columbia's multi-dimensional and collaborative environment. So this is an element of the diversity background question. You want to talk about something that's unique to you, something that's meaningful to you. You want to talk about your lived experience. You want to talk about an element of diversity in your life that is informing who you are and how you're going to show up for the Columbia community. Number three, at Columbia, students representing a wide range of perspectives are invited to live and learn together. In such a community, questions and debates naturally arise. Please describe a time when you did not agree with someone and discuss how you engaged with them and what you took away from the interaction. This is a very interesting question, especially for Columbia. They were rocked by protests. They had a lot of divisiveness on campus. It's been a topic of a lot of discussion, a lot of news stories. What they're trying to get at in this question and the next question. I'm going to read the next question to you. In College University, students are often challenged in ways they could not anticipate. Please describe a situation which you have navigated through adversity and discuss how you changed as a result. These questions are trying to get to you are going to be faced with opinions and thoughts inside the classroom and outside the classroom that you disagree with. In some cases, you might disagree with them on a very cellular level. What they're trying to understand is how will you respond to that? Education is an area where you should be uncomfortable. You want to be exposed to ideas that are very different than yours because that's how we learn and that's how we grow. What Columbia is trying to get to here is, tell us about times that you've been challenged and tell us how you dealt with that. There does not need to be a resolution. This should not be an essay about how you persuaded somebody to change a deeply held belief because, quite frankly, nobody believes that. This should not be a happy ending kind of a situation. They want to know how did you process that discomfort? How did you sit in that discomfort? How did you move through it? Did you agree to disagree? How did it change the way you perceived yourself for others around you? Again, we don't need a huge transformational moment here, but we do need learning. We need awareness and we need to understand how you deal with conflict and adversity because you can't go through a university experience and not feel uncomfortable and not feel challenged by new ideas and new perspectives. Number five, why are you interested in attending Columbia University? We encourage you to consider the aspects that you find unique and compelling about Columbia. Now, the next question, question number six, asks you what attracts you to your preferred areas of study at Columbia College or Columbia Engineering? And so the way that I would break this down is I would look at number five as kind of culture and community. How do you want to be involved outside of the classroom? Because question number six specifically asks you about your academic journey. So that's where you're talking about courses, professors, seminars, access to different advantages in the campus. But question number five is more about extracurricular activities, the community. One thing I really want to be cautioning you here is a lot of students will say, oh, well, it's part of New York and I want to use the city of New York. Keep in mind that Columbia is not NYU. NYU is integrated directly into the fabric of Manhattan. Columbia is up in Harlem. It's north of Manhattan. And so it's not like you step out and you're in Wall Street or you're in the theater district. So it requires tremendous effort for you to get out of campus, get out of the bubble and go integrate into the city. So be intentional about the way you talk about this. Don't just throw out, oh, I want to live in New York because that's very non-specific and vague and AOs for Columbia really get kind of touchy about that because it's such a trope at this point. So be specific about how you be involved in and contribute to the community and then how you will use your academic experience and opportunities that are specific to Columbia to achieve your goals. A Columbia education experience can be extremely powerful. And I encourage you to use these essays to really dig deep and learn more about your experience. Also, insider's tip, don't forget about the swim test. Learn about it. It's a real part of your experience. Stay tuned. We got more coming. Thank you for joining us today. Please take a moment to subscribe to the admittedly podcast and download this episode. I welcome you to share your thoughts and questions with me. You can find us on social media at admittedlypodcast. I look forward to continuing our journey together. [Music]