AtomicMind's Founder, Leelila Strogov, speaks to Bloomberg as "Columbia Heads to Summer Break With Reputation Scarred by Tumult"
By Francesca Maglione, Claire Ballentine, and Nacha Cattan with assistance from Myles Miller
Columbia University is typically one of the most popular schools among Leelila Strogov’s clients. But this year, the head of New York-based college counseling company AtomicMind says applications plunged.
To her, the issue is simple: Parents paying nearly $100,000 a year want to know their kids will be able to go to college uninterrupted, without worrying about protests and libraries being taken over.
It’s not just Strogov’s view. As the Manhattan campus empties for the summer after a commencement ceremony Wednesday, conversations with more than 20 students, professors and college counselors lay bare the battering Columbia’s reputation has taken after two years of tumult.
The campus atmosphere has turned increasingly fractious in the aftermath of the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, and the school has struggled to navigate the culture wars gripping higher education. It’s also squarely in the middle of the Trump administration’s attack on elite universities, with the president accusing Columbia of failing to protect Jewish students amid a wave of pro-Palestine protests.
With perceptions about the university tainted, founders and executives at college counseling firms are witnessing the damage firsthand.
Mandee Heller Adler in Florida said there was a significant decrease in applications to Columbia from the students she works with — 38 in this cycle, down from 52 two years ago. In Short Hills, New Jersey, David Blobaum, co-founder of the tutoring company Summit Prep, said he’s currently helping two students transfer to other schools.
Elizabeth Stone, president of Top Tier Admissions, had a student pick Duke over Columbia this year because of concerns over federal funding for research, while Chris Rim, founder of New York-based Command Education, said many of his students who got into Columbia this year are opting for other schools.
“Overall there’s extreme fatigue now over this impacting student learning,” said AtomicMind’s Strogov, adding that she believes the school will recover as the controversy fades. “I would say that Columbia’s valuation is down at the moment — but I do think it’s still a great value.”
Read more: Columbia Head’s Shock Exit Flashes Warning of More Campus Tumult
Despite all the controversy over the past two years, Columbia remains one of the top universities in the US and competition to get into Ivy League schools has never been more intense. The school received nearly 60,000 applications for the class of 2029 — one of its largest pool of applicants — and its acceptance rate is below 5%. College counselors also noted that, in most cases, if Columbia is the best school a student got into, they will likely choose to attend.
That was the case at North Shore Hebrew Academy, a Modern Orthodox school in Long Island, where head of school Jeffrey Kobrin fielded questions from concerned parents of students accepted at Columbia, including from some who attended the university themselves. But ultimately, the kids decided to attend.
“The parents were not concerned about physical safety so much as just kids being able to comfortably learn there,” Kobrin said.
The scene at Wednesday’s commencement spotlighted the tricky road the school faces as it tries to move past the tumult and controversy. With rain soaking the students and their families, a heavy police presence monitored a group of about 100 pro-Palestine protestors gathered across Broadway from the locked campus, directly in front the subway exit many families were using on their way to the ceremony.
Read more: Columbia Head’s Shock Exit Flashes Warning of More Campus Tumult
Some alumni burned their diplomas, while students still in their baby blue graduation gowns — some wearing keffiyehs — joined once graduation ended. Two people were taken into custody and issued desk appearance tickets, according to a New York City Police Department spokesperson.
New President
Columbia improved its reputation over the last two decades, capitalizing on its location in a safer and more desirable New York City to boost its endowment and status among prospective students. Under then-President Lee Bollinger, who retired in 2023, the school aggressively expanded its campus across Morningside Heights and courted foreign students, with almost 40% of its roughly 36,000 attendees now from overseas. But lately, the school has been squeezed on multiple fronts.
The university is on its third new president in less than two years, and frustration over the handling of anti-Israel encampments and a failed attempt to placate Trump is still simmering among alumni, professors and students. Controversy recently flared up again, with the takeover of a library as students prepared for final exams, a reminder of the fault lines on campus. Acting President Claire Shipman, who took over at the end of March, called in the NYPD and said she was “incensed” by the actions of the group, which goes by Columbia University Apartheid Divest.
Columbia has seen $400 million in federal grant funding cancelled so far as the Trump administration targets Ivy League schools. It’s also facing a steep tax bill on its roughly $15 billion endowment under the spending plan proposed by House Republicans.With the White House going after Ivy League schools, Columbia has seen $400 million in federal grant funding cancelled so far, and it’s facing a steep tax bill on its roughly $15 billion endowment under the spending plan passed Thursday by House Republicans.
In recent weeks, the White House attacks on higher education have primarily focused on Harvard, which has pushed back against Trump and is facing billions in lost funding and multiple federal investigations. But in many ways, Columbia, with its history of student activism, embodies the difficulty facing schools as they navigate federal antagonism, student protests and pressure from parents and donors.
“Columbia is one of the leading research institutions in the country and in the world,” the school said in a statement. “We continue to attract and engage the best minds in pursuit of greater human understanding, pioneering new discoveries, and service to society.”
A faction of Columbia students and professors are still angry that the NYPD was called in to arrest protestors last year and say the school is suppressing dissent. There has also been outcry over the detention of Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate and protest leader, who the US has sought to deport.
Others, including influential alumni, argue the university remains a hotbed of antisemitism that attracts activist rabble-rousers and is in need of deep reform. When it comes to Trump, the school tried to meet the administration’s demands, but ended up appearing feeble and has still lost federal funding.
“They can’t win because there’s no path to victory,” said Larry Ladd, a consultant at the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges, a nonprofit that offers consulting services for schools. “Anything they do will be heavily criticized by somebody.”
Lost in the social media videos and tension is a large segment of Columbia students eager to get back to normal college life. They’ve been perturbed by an increased security presence on campus, where the gates have been locked for months, identification requests are frequent and guests have to pre-register to visit friends.
“It’s not been a normal college experience,” said Elisha Baker, a rising senior. “You don’t come into college thinking the experience will be filled with protesting and counter-protesting.”
Oscar Wolfe, a rising junior from Minneapolis who arrived in 2023, just weeks before the Hamas attacks on Israel, said his first two years at Columbia were dominated by the upheaval on campus. He said it occurred to him that he was living through a historic moment, and joked that he made sure to dress decently when he went to class because of the news crews camped outside the campus gates.
Still, this was not what he imagined when he chose Columbia because of its location, course offerings and study abroad opportunities. With two years remaining to get his degree, he acknowledged the difficult path facing the school.
“There is no situation in which every single segment of Columbia University will be satisfied,” Wolfe said. “I don't think there's any world in which everyone will be happy.”