Columbia University faces new trouble as top admissions consultant says students won’t accept offers — ‘brand has been tarnished’

By Rikki Schlott | March 31, 2025, 4:17 p.m. ET

College acceptance letters are rolling in — and, suddenly, some applicants don’t even want to hear from Columbia.

An admissions consultant who helped 10 clients get accepted to the Ivy League school’s Class of ’29 told The Post that not a single one plans to attend.

“This would not have been the case three years ago,” Christopher Rim said. “The actual brand has been tarnished.”

As for September’s incoming freshman class, Rim said: “I think it’s going to be the students who didn’t get in anywhere else.”

This comes as the school has mishandled pro-Palestinian protests and the Trump administration has threatened to pull some $400 million in federal grants.

On Friday, interim university president Katrina Armstrong resigned her post amid allegations that she had told the federal government she would implement a mask ban for campus protests — but privately promised faculty it would not happen.

“There’s so much up-and-down craziness, and Columbia doesn’t seem stable at all,” said Rim, who is the CEO of Command Education.

Instead, he explained, his clients who were accepted to Columbia during this year’s regular admissions cycle are headed to schools like NYU and Duke.

One Command advisee chose Washington University in St. Louis over Columbia, Duke and the University of Pennsylvania.

A second Columbia-accepted client, who grew up in New York City and wants to stay here, opted for NYU. Another picked Duke.

The rest are yet to select a school — but have all already eliminated Columbia, Rim said.

It’s even extending to legacies.

Ethan, a Manhattan high-school senior and client of Command Education, was accepted to Columbia — which both of his parents graduated from.

“We were hopeful that the new president at Columbia would turn things around, which is why Ethan applied,” his mother, who asked to withhold the family’s name for privacy reasons, told The Post.

Rim talked the family out of applying to the Manhattan Ivy during the early decision round — which requires a binding commitment with acceptance.

“He would be taking a gap year now if he [had applied early],” his mom said.

Ethan has narrowed down his choice to Harvard and Stanford, and he also got into Yale, Princeton and Duke.

“He won’t be distracted and disturbed by all of the nonsense protesters [at Columbia], and he will get a much better education,” his mother said.

Rim’s only two advisees currently committed to Columbia were accepted in the early decision round. But now that campus protests are ramping up again, both want out.

“They wanted Columbia initially, but we’re going to work with them” — for free, Rim said — “on transferring because they don’t want to go there, they don’t feel safe, and I think it’s the right thing to do.”

Their parents, he added, “don’t really trust the university to protect the students. The leadership at Columbia has not been so trustworthy, and they feel like it could be violent.”

Rim says these students are also worried about what might happen if the university gets defunded by the Trump administration.

“They are concerned, like, ‘What does this mean?’ Trump is still going to be president for the next four years — and four years is college,” he said. “Anything could happen.”

Columbia’s acceptance rate for the current admissions cycle is 4.29%, up from 3.86% last year. The applicant pool also shrunk slightly, from 60,248 to 59,616 students.

Given the ding to the school’s desirability, Rim predicts it might become easier and easier to get into.

“I think the second tier of students — maybe they had four Bs in all of high school — who weren’t necessarily going to get into Columbia are going to have a much easier chance, because the top tier students will have more choices and choose other schools,” he said.

Given his own clients’ universal decision to forgo the school, Rim also expects Columbia’s yield rate — the percentage of kids accepted who actually show up in the fall — will be down considerably.

“If you were waitlisted at Columbia,” he noted, “you might be getting a call in the next few weeks from the admissions office saying that they have a spot for you.”

Originally published on The New York Post on March 31, 2025