News & Notes: News of Columbia destroying admissions records released

The Columbia admissions office destroys all documents created by or with comments from Columbia admissions officers, the Columbia Spectator reported on Friday.

When Frederic Enea, a junior, learned of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, he asked to see his admission record. Though he was given access to an email that his guidance counselor had sent in to the office and the application he submitted to Columbia, there were no documents with direct input by Columbia admission officers.

Columbia’s Dean of Undergraduate Admissions Jessica Marinaccio said that Columbia admissions officers create a “reader rating sheet,” which is a written assessment of the student’s application. She added that these sheets are destroyed before the student matriculates to give the student a clean slate before they begin college.

Marinaccio said the admissions office has seen more records requests since the movement for requesting files started at Stanford, though the increase has not been huge.