Columbia MBA Application

How to Get Into Columbia Business School: A Flight Plan for the Columbia MBA Application

Columbia Business School (“CBS” for short) was put on the map by alumni investing titans like Warren Buffett, CPG royalty like Valerie Mars, and asset management visionaries like Sallie Krawcheck. Boasting one of the largest enrolled business school class sizes at 900 students per year, CBS receives nearly 6,000 applications on average. The Columbia University acceptance rate is 15%, which is similar to its Philadelphia-based competitor Wharton (14%), and noticeably higher than its M7 peers Harvard (12%) and Stanford (6%). Stats from the Columbia MBA class profile like the average GMAT score (730), GRE score (322), undergraduate GPA (3.5), and percentage of the class who is international (47%) illustrate why Columbia Business School remains a top choice for all MBA applicants globally, and a particularly strong target for management consulting hopefuls given its strategic location in the heart of New York City, where it is a recruiting hub for MBBs.

The Columbia Business School application recognizes those who can clearly articulate a thoughtful and realistic career plan with viable short-term and long-term goals, as well as concretely define how they will co-create meaningful experiences with classmates during the two-year business school journey. Don’t worry, however, if you are only just beginning your Columbia MBA application journey and aren’t yet deeply familiar with the nuances of the Columbia MBA application process, or why CBS students, faculty, and staff are so proud of their new buildings Kravis Hall and Geffen Hall. Below we have assembled the intel you need to move from a 30,000-foot cruising altitude view of the school, all the way to an on-the-ground insider’s perspective, so that you can optimize your chances of calling the Oracle of Omaha’s alma mater home the next two years.

The insights shared in this article demonstrate only a taste of the expertise, care, and attention Fortuna Admissions brings to each current and prospective client we meet. Keep this in mind as you scroll the page, and don’t hesitate to schedule a free brainstorming session with us if CBS truly is your dream school. Even if you’ve done some preliminary research, you likely haven’t had a one-on-one conversation yet with a coach who will keenly listen to your story, hear your fears about potential flags in your profile, and above all else evaluate your why for a Columbia MBA. Our award-winning coaches, who have served as Associate Deans of CBS Admissions, led CBS MBA Career Education, sat on the CBS Admissions Committee, or earned a Columbia MBA themselves, look forward to serving as co-pilots on your admissions journey.

Behind-the-Scenes Secrets: What is Columbia Business School Really Looking For?

Our aim here is not to spend time rehashing CBS MBA common knowledge like the curriculum of study and award-winning faculty, or highlighting Columbia’s rockstar alumni entrepreneurs like Ju Rhyu, who exited her company Hero Cosmetics for a jaw-dropping $630M. A book could be written just about Ju’s story alone! Instead, we’ve assembled a toolkit of tactical admissions strategies and advice from our 10+ years working with clients. Everything shared below aims to comprehensively answer the question, “How do I actually get into Columbia Business School?”

We begin with a high-altitude view of the school, then share advice sourced from our team of Columbia MBA experts that includes alumni like Karen Hamou and Cassandra Pittman, and former CBS senior AdCom and Associate Dean Michael Malone, who each bring deep knowledge from their time as part of the Columbia community. The admissions secrets they share below are intentionally tactical. They’re on-the-ground. They’re brought to you by members of our team who rode NYC’s iconic A Train to campus themselves. You will find, as you progress through this flight plan, that the CBS AdCom is uniquely interested in where your career goals and community impact intersect–like two MTA lines in the heart of Manhattan–and how your pre-MBA experiences inform the journey you envision ahead.

Columbia MBA Program at 30,000 Feet:

Located in New York City, Columbia Business School highlights that it is at the very “center of business,” helping bright students think like entrepreneurs and develop into thoughtful, people-centric leaders. The symbiotic relationship between CBS and the business world is a major program benefit, and each year many business leaders visit the campus to speak to business school students and to teach classes. “More business leaders visit our campus than any other top business school,” CBS proudly proclaims in promotional materials. Because of its NYC location, the school attracts 100+ real-world practitioners as adjunct faculty, which gives its elective offerings as much breadth and depth of any other business school in the world, including Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton.

While fortifying Columbia’s strength in finance, CBS has made experiential learning, entrepreneurial thinking, and global perspectives the cornerstones of its MBA program. If you
look closely at the school’s employment report, you’ll notice that consulting is the primary reason students attend, with 42% of second-years taking offers at MBBs and other well-known consulting firms. You can expect peers who dive into case prep the first few weeks on campus as they prepare for late-fall and early-spring final round consulting interviews. Finance is the second most popular career concentration in the Columbia MBA Class Profile, with 35% of the typical class going into IB, PE, or another related field–no surprise given Buffett’s influence and the Value Investing Program. Another defining characteristic of the Columbia MBA class profile is its international student population, which made up 47% of the class in 2023. This percentage is higher than any other top business school, and means CBS can say it is truly “global” in ways its peer schools are not. You are likely to meet and befriend more students outside your own cultural bubble here than perhaps any other school.

Even with its strong international community of students, in past years Columbia Business School has also sometimes been described as “a commuter school,” since many current New Yorkers end up matriculating, attending, and not needing to stretch outside their social comfort zones. To offset this, the Admissions Committee is actively seeking prospective students who are intentional about building and maintaining community. They specifically ask in the application essay how you will “co-create” your Columbia MBA program experience, and we expect this verb is one they have workshopped at length internally and place great emphasis on. New York City can be an overwhelming place, especially for newcomers, and so the AdCom is seeking prospective students who integrate rather than isolate, communicate rather than sit quietly in the background, and draw energy from bringing people together to celebrate success and accomplish seemingly impossible goals with their classmates.

Columbia MBA Class Profile Key Stats:

• Average GMAT Score: 730
• Average GRE Score: 322
• Average Years of Work Experience: 5
• Average Undergraduate GPA: 3.5
• Average Age of Students: 28
• Number of Applications Received: 5,895
• Columbia MBA Acceptance Rate: 15%
• Total Cost of Tuition Per Year: $84,496
• Columbia MBA Graduate Average Starting Base Salary: $175,000 
• Columbia MBA Full-time Employment 3 Months After Graduation: 84%
• Top Recruiting Companies at Columbia Business School: McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company, BCG, Google, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Evercore, and Visa

Columbia MBA Program at 20,000 Feet: Strategies to Get Accepted

Below Fortuna coach Karen Hamou shares her top four strategies to convince Columbia Business School’s Admissions Committee that you are an ideal fit. After graduating from CBS, Karen served as Deloitte’s on-campus recruiting representative at the school for many years, guiding hundreds of Columbia MBA program students through the consulting recruiting process.

1. Work Experience Is Prioritized by the CBS AdCom – When In Doubt, Work Toward that Next Promotion Before Applying

On average, CBS students come into the Columbia MBA program with five years professional experience, and most have at least three years. If you have less than three years of full-time work to your name, it will be that much harder to get admitted. You will have to demonstrate to Admissions that your professional experience is either unusual or differentiating–or that you have had some significant achievements, despite your shorter professional experience. If you’re eager to earn a CBS MBA and light on professional experience, it is likely best to wait 1-2 years to build a more competitive Columbia MBA application when you are more polished and “client ready,” as the management consulting industry describes their ideal post-MBA hires.

2. Be Strategic When Selecting Your Interviewer

Columbia Business School candidates typically get to choose who they want to be interviewed by from a list of alumni who live in NYC or are located in a time zone that is convenient for international applicants. It’s advisable to choose someone with similar career interests, if at all possible. The interviewer will only be able to see your resume, so will not have your full application to review. There will be the standard questions related to “why b-school, career goals, team work experience,” etc. But you are likely to be asked a perhaps surprising question as well: Why would you choose Columbia over other top programs? Columbia sometimes loses out to competitor schools in the M7, and so before they offer acceptance want reassurance that your intentions to gain acceptance and matriculate are sincere and grounded in goals and reasons beyond their M7 status and yearly ranking.

3. Location, Location, Location!

Columbia Business School knows that one of its unique advantages is being (as they put it) “at the very center of business.” The Admissions Committee wants to admit applicants who will utilize the full resources not only of the school, but also New York City, during their MBA experience. From Wall Street to media, consulting to real estate, the school has faculty expertise and Centers of Excellence that reflect the diversity of the Big Apple. The Columbia Startup Lab launched in June 2014 in NYC’s Silicon Alley, helping CBS students and alumni develop their new ideas and pursue their ventures after graduation. The city is fast-paced, cosmopolitan and decisive, and so the CBS AdCom will want to know how you fit into Columbia’s uniquely Gotham-grounded culture. Be sure to find space to work evidence of this into your Columbia MBA application essays, and to ask your recommenders to reinforce it in their appraisals of you as well.

4. Think About If J-Term Positioning Makes Sense for You

The Columbia MBA Program is alone among the top US business schools in offering a January intake. So if you are determined to secure a place without waiting until the following September, this could be a great option for you. But there are a couple of aspects of the program for you to be aware of that could influence your admissions success. First, the “J-Term” at Columbia replaces the summer internship with a semester of study. You pretty much have the campus to yourselves, before joining up with the Columbia students who are returning to complete their second year.

The program is not really intended for career switchers who need a summer internship to open up new career pivots. The J-Term class also tends to be dominated by consultants who will be heading back to McKinsey, Bain or BCG, people from family businesses, and entrepreneurs. So when Columbia asks you why you are pursuing an MBA at this time, you’d better get your career story straight. If it’s apparent that you are looking to make a major shift that requires an internship, the admissions office may well feel you are not best suited to this program format. The J-Term is also very international, with US citizens making up less than half the class. So if you have professional or academic experience outside your home country, it will be worth pointing to a global mindset that will ensure you thrive within the J-Term’s New York melting pot.

Columbia MBA Program at 10,000 Feet: Tackling Each Application Element

Below we have provided our key insights and advice for tackling each major component of the Columbia MBA application process in the order that our successful clients typically complete them:

1. Columbia Resume: The CBS Admissions Committee will look for many of the same traits as any other top business school: demonstrated leadership, leadership potential, concrete results you have achieved, demonstrated impact within your workplace that leaves a legacy even after you depart, and formative professional and life experiences that add something truly singular to the incoming class.

These might take the form of work in an isolated or unique setting, a cross-cultural professional experience that deeply shaped you and those around you, a study abroad experience in undergrad that got you out of your comfort zone and tested you linguistically, or even a distinct hobby that serves as a conduit for you to give back to the communities you belong to in some way. There are no hard-and-fast rules for “Columbia-specific” resume elements to include, but all accepted applicants will have track records of promotion at work–often on accelerated timelines–and often times have a unique “superpower” that recurs throughout their highlighted professional experiences.

This superpower could be lifting up others and having a knack for coaching interns to high rates of full-time return offers, or individual contributions to a team that drove not only the success of your business vertical’s quotas and priorities, but the broader economic engine of the company. Columbia Business School is looking in particular to build a class of high-potential future leaders who are “client ready” given its popularity among management consulting hopefuls, so be sure to include bullets that tell stories around any truly singular impacts you’ve had working with clients. Maybe you unearthed significant cost-savings by going above and beyond while reviewing financial data no one else wanted to roll up their sleeves and analyze. Or perhaps when a key client made a difficult ask with an impossible deadline, you moved heaven and earth to fulfill that request.

2. Columbia MBA Recommendations: CBS takes an approach to recommendation submission that may initially surprise you–they only require one recommender instead of the traditional ask of two by most other schools. Your Columbia recommenders will be asked to reflect on these key questions:

• How do the candidate’s performance, potential, background, or personal qualities compare to those of other well-qualified individuals in similar roles? Please provide specific examples.
  
• Describe the most important piece of constructive feedback you have given the applicant. Please detail the circumstances and the applicant’s response.

Only having one recommender means it is all the more critical to select someone who you think of as a “sponsor” at work–ideally but not necessarily your boss–who not only has your back but also can speak in concrete detail to your performance based on their direct work with you. Resist the urge to select someone who you are friendly with but who hasn’t “seen you in action” delivering on projects, speaking up in meetings, etc.

Since the Columbia MBA application’s recommender questions are repeated across many other schools, you may be able to re-use some of the vignettes and key moments of impact you share with your recommender that you want them to highlight, which is a nice plus.

It is worth drawing attention to an interesting “back door” for secondary recommendations that we have located on the CBS website, which notes in the FAQ section that CBS alumni and current students can submit supplemental letters of support for you by emailing them as attachments to apply@nullgsb.columbia.edu. If you’re wondering, “Should I submit a second letter?” our response would be, “Is your secondary writer both a) passionate about your candidacy and b) an engaged CBS student or alum? Then yes.” Keep in mind that you likely don’t want to submit more than one supplemental letter, out of respect for the AdCom’s time. You also should wait to submit your supplemental letter until after you have finalized your application, so it can be attached without any issues on the AdCom’s end.

For a deeper dive into who to select for your recommendations, read our long-form article, “How to Secure the Best MBA Letters of Recommendation.”

3. Essays: Columbia MBA application’s three essay questions don’t offer much room to be linguistically inefficient, as their word counts of 500 (Essay 1), 250 (Essay 2), and 250 (Essay 3) lend themselves more to concise business writing than the free-form, more creative format of, say,  Stanford GSB. But they also stand out in their singular approach to wanting to learn more about your specific short-term and long-term career goals than any other M7 school. Note that Essay 1 doesn’t include any mention of where Columbia fits into your career goals:

• Through your resume and recommendation, we have a clear sense of your professional path to date. What are your career goals over the next three to five years, and what is your long-term dream job?

We often see clients make the mistake in initial drafts of spending crucial real estate in this essay trying to list off professors and classes they want to take, but if Columbia’s AdCom wanted to know, “Why Columbia?” they would include the question in the prompt.

Essay 2 is focused on inclusive leadership, and gives you a variety of potential prompt paths to walk down focused on either creating a welcoming environment, managing intercultural dialogue, addressing systemic inequity, or understanding identity and perspective taking. These are all variants of a single question in our minds: In groups of people, how do you show up as a confidante, promoter, and protector of others in tangible ways? Your answer might look different depending on your own identity and where it intersects in the workplace and broader world. There are no wrong answers, but remember that the Columbia AdCom is trying to solve for the unengaged commuter reputation mentioned earlier, and that you’re trying to display evidence of how you’d actively show up in class and other functions, whether you already call NYC home or not.

Essay 3, “How would you co-create your optimal MBA experience at CBS?” seems straightforward enough on its surface, but note that this is followed by “Please be specific” in the actual prompt language. We suspect there is a reason for this . . . and the reason is candidates tend to speak in generalities in this essay. If you think of CBS as a triangle of engagement points–academic, cultural, and professional–this may help you ground your writing content-wise. But the best way to truly make it sing will be to research, research, and then research some more so that your level of demonstrated understanding of the school approaches the level of a current first-semester MBA student who is about to attend their fall classes. You’ll need to concretely back up your research efforts with specific examples, packing as many as possible into an effectively executed final draft.

For an exceptionally comprehensive deep-dive of all three CBS essays, read CBS alumna and Fortuna coach Cassandra Pittman’s article “How to Tackle the Columbia MBA Essay Questions” on Fortuna’s blog.

4. Columbia Online Application: We often see two types of approaches to this portion of the app–overthinking and underthinking. The overthinker scrutinizes whether they should list a significant high school achievement (the answer is typically “no”–keep things focused on college or later), while the underthinker neglects to remember and report that they won an award for their work with an Employee Resource Group they’re particularly dedicated to at their company. It is best to split the difference between over- and underreporting yourself and your accomplishments and strike a balance.

5. Columbia Interview: The questions you will be asked in your CBS interview will most likely revolve around conveying your story, your short-term and long-term career plans, and your unique goals. As we mentioned earlier in this article, it is likely that the person conducting your interview is a CBS alum, as the school has historically relied on alumni to complete the bulk of their interview slots each year. Know your resume inside and out–you should be able to answer these questions clearly and in a focused manner:

• Tell me about yourself, or walk me through your resume
• Why an MBA?
• What are your career goals?
• Why this MBA?
• What will you contribute to the school’s community?
• Provide examples of your leadership/teamwork experience.

Practice aloud until you feel comfortable, and you are not looking for your words or struggling to express yourself.For more Columbia interview prep guidance, watch the video below featuring former Columbia Business School Associate Dean and Fortuna coach Michael Malone, as he shares strategic tips and guidance to help you bring your best self forward on interview day.

Columbia MBA Program on the Ground: Hear Directly from our CBS Experts Class:

These “best of” Columbia-focused videos come from our team’s collective experience as admissions staff and alumni of CBS, as well as our past decade of work helping many Fortuna Admissions clients secure their spot at this dream school. Listen in as our coaches dispel common Columbia MBA program myths and provide tactical takeaways you can implement in your Columbia MBA application:

• M7 Admissions Masterclass: Columbia Business School & MIT Sloan
• MBA Admissions Essay Masterclass : Columbia, MIT Sloan, Kellogg, and Chicago Booth
• M7 MBA Interview Advice: Focus on Columbia Business School

These “best of” articles include our strongest thought leadership on Columbia Business School application tips and strategies:

• How to Tackle the Columbia MBA Essay Questions
• How to Get Into Columbia Business School: MBA Application Requirements
• CBS Ends Rolling Admissions and Early Decision
• 10 Tough MBA Interview Questions & How to Handle Them
• Mistakes to Avoid Before, During, and After Your MBA Interview

Columbia Ready to Take a Research Break and Start a Conversation:

Our team of former Columbia Business School staff, alumni, and coaches with decades of client experience is ready to meet you, discuss your profile, and demonstrate our deep knowledge firsthand. Schedule time with us for a free, no-strings-attached brainstorming session. Just type “Columbia expert please” when you fill out the consult form so we know you’re Columbia-focused, found us through this deep-dive article, and read it all the way to the end.

There is a reason our free brainstorming sessions are rated as the best in the admissions consulting industry. We take the extra time to truly listen, strategize, and reflect with you instead of briskly selling you a coach. Schedule time today and see for yourself. Your Columbia MBA journey to Kravis Hall, Geffen Hall, and New York City’s bright lights and unlimited possibilities begins with that first free call.