<p>I think something people don't realize (and this is after going to Cornell myself and talking to an admissions officer) is that test scores matter to Cornell the very least. They are still important! But not the most important by far.
For any student applying this year who reads this!!
Speaking to the undergraduate admissions officer, it seems that what they look for first is that you show dedication to a more specific area of intellectual interest and second, that you are challenging yourself the most you can with what you are given and prove to be successful. They want to see you have a VERY heavy courseload, and good grades in these classes.
He said that the SAT scores are considered, but only to really eliminate the low scorers. If you're in the 650+ range you're fine.
Focus on ESSAYS and TEACHER RECOMMENDATIONS. Show that you are intellectually curious and intrinsically motivated. The biggest no-no's are giving tons of recommendations and tons of ECs that have nothing to do with what you're applying for. Show dedication to a passion of yours!
Best of luck
I'm applying ED for Cornell this year. :)</p>
<p>**Some advice from someone<a href=“Sorry,%20you%20double%20posted%20so%20I%20will%20be%20posting%20this”>/b</a></p>
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<p>Well, the advice the adcom gave doesn’t seem that bad. People these days (me included when I applied) spent a great deal of time on the SATs and took them like 4 times. I should have stopped after the second. The adcom was probably trying to deter people from overemphasizing the SAT. I say shoot for at least 700 on each section and then if you fall a little short (650+), then focus on the other parts of the application. I fell short on CR (650 actually) and now I’m going to be a freshman at Cornell next year.</p>
<p>Let your passion for Cornell and the school you want to get into show in your essays. I wrote a great essay about why Cornell Engineering and I also talked about some of the research things I wanted to do here. Then, day after admissions, they told me I was an RCPRS (research) scholar. So, the essays do matter a lot. I got waitlisted 3 other places and I wrote pretty generic “why x school” essays for them. Coincidence? Well, they may have been looking for other things, but this was probably a big factor.</p>
<p>About teacher recommendations, I will admit that my English one was probably generic. But, I have a great feeling that my math teacher wrote a great one and my research mentor did too. I’d try to at least get great recommendations regarding the field you want to go into. </p>
<p>Point is try to get as close to perfect as you can. Don’t stress yourself out completely if a part of your application doesn’t seem perfect though. Good luck!</p>
<p>After going through my D’s application process, I look at it like this…your test scores and gpa (with course rigor) have to be high enough to get you considered, after that your essays, letters of rec., & EC’s get you in, as they are used to determine the quaility of person you are.</p>
<p>I think this thread goes to show that none of us really know how admissions really works.</p>
<p>All we can really say is that if your SAT/ACT is above a certain level (we can go with 650+ on the Math and CR or equivalent) and you have good grades it’s worth applying.</p>
<p>Also, you should realize that Cornell admits by department, so it may be more useful to talk to admissions people from a specific department.</p>
<p>My assessment is that the adcom was probably telling the truth about SAT scores. He could have easily said, “We think both GPA and SATs are important.” It’s an answer that would have been expected, but he didn’t. He could have also said that GPA wasn’t that important either, and he didn’t.</p>
<p>Few years back when my older daugther was applying to colleges, at the Stanford’s info session a student asked what was more important, getting As or taking more challenging courses. The rep said, “We expect our students to take most rigorous courses and get As.” There was no sugar coating.</p>
<p>I think Cornell is getting enough applicants now it doesn’t need to sugar coat anything in order to get more students to apply.</p>
<p>If you’re applying to the College of Arts and Sciences, you don’t have to show dedication to a specific area of intellectual interest. You don’t even have to declare an intended major, and if you do, nobody takes it seriously anyway because people in the Arts college change their majors about as often as they change their underwear. But you do need to have a pretty impressive record – it’s tough to get into Arts and Sciences.</p>
<p>If you’re applying to any of the other schools, you do have to show evidence of dedication to a specific area of interest because these are pre-professional schools, designed for students who are already committed to that particular field of study. </p>
<p>Thus, the strategies for what to emphasize on your application differ, depending on which part of Cornell you’re applying to.</p>
<p>Let us say that you’re applying to Cornell as a prospective Psychology major in the College of Arts and Sciences. You were president of your student government, and you have had starring roles not only in school plays but also in community theater. You have also worked as a camp counselor and volunteered at a nursing home, but you don’t have any particularly distinguished achievements in those activities. Even though the counselor/volunteer activities are more related to your major because they involve working with people, you would be better off emphasizing your student government and drama activities on your application because your accomplishments there are more impressive. </p>
<p>Now let’s change the picture a little. Instead of applying to the College of Arts and Sciences to major in Psychology, you’re applying to the College of Human Ecology to major in Human Development. Now, your experiences working with children and elderly people, what you learned from those experiences, and how they affected your choice of Human Development as a major and your planned career become important. You would be well advised to focus on these experiences in your application essays, even though your accomplishments in your other ECs are more impressive. (Of course, you would also list the other ECs, but you might not want to write about them.)</p>
<p>See the difference?</p>
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<p>Based on the success/lack of success of Cornell applicants from my daughter’s high school, I think the adcom was telling the truth. Curriculum rigor and GPA matter more than test scores.</p>
<p>What the hell. My passion has nothing to do with my major. Will that seriously look bad? There’s no way in Hell I’d major in Music…</p>
<p>I don’t think this is entirely true across CU-This isn’t from an adcom, but from a friend who will be a junior in ILR, who said that since ILR is a very small school, they REALLY want high SATs because each person’s score has a much more significant effect on the average. When only 150 freshmen enroll a year, each person’s SAT has a reasonable effect on the school’s averages, so for ILR and other small schools within Cornell, SAT may be more emphasized than in larger colleges such as A&S.</p>
<p>Again, my comments are just my thoughts. They may or may not be right.</p>
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Haha, enough is enough, but more than enough is better.
$70x or $70*1.1x?</p>
<p>I went to an MIT info session and if I had not been accepted ED I would have surely applied after. The speaker was so good at making everyone in the room feel special enough to apply. Quite literally, in my head he was Eddie Murphy (kinda’ racist because he was black but he definitely had the energy of him). He sugar coated lots of things. Each adcom is different but the good ones are those who can inspire the, “Yeah, I think I can get accepted here” feeling and encourage people of all academic standings to pay the application fee.</p>
<p>We do have to realize that colleges are businesses.</p>
<p>@Samonuh
That came out strong. D:
Err… I do not know what to say.
If you are not passionate about the major you want to pursue, then why are you pursuing it? Just curious.</p>
<p>@Marian
Don’t count out CoE! :)</p>
<p>@Supervisor</p>
<p>I plan on double majoring in Economics/Government and then Law, which I am passionate about, but the fact is that there are no EC opportunities in my area for that stuff. I started a Young Republicans club in my school, I am planning on helping out with campaigns, but other than that there is not much I can do in rural Pennsylvania. No internship opportunities…nothing…</p>
<p>And why do I have to major in something I’m passionate about? I may love music but I also enjoy live a stable affluent lifestyle…</p>
<p>Edit: Double post</p>
<p>It is naive to think the reason a college would want more applicants is to make $70. There is an easier one of making $70.</p>
<p>“Now let’s change the picture a little. Instead of applying to the College of Arts and Sciences to major in Psychology, you’re applying to the College of Human Ecology to major in Human Development. Now, your experiences working with children and elderly people, what you learned from those experiences, and how they affected your choice of Human Development as a major and your planned career become important. You would be well advised to focus on these experiences in your application essays, even though your accomplishments in your other ECs are more impressive. (Of course, you would also list the other ECs, but you might not want to write about them.)”</p>
<p>…Marian, you are describing my D, who will be a freshman HD major! She emphasiized her work with children & interest in individual differences in her Human Ec essay. Her letters of Rec. covered her accomplishments as class president, in Theatre, & as a swimmer. Best of both worlds, she explained why the major “fit”, others spoke to the quaility of her character and accomplishments!</p>
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Y u mad? >.<
I never said that it was the only reason the college wanted more applicants!
Just that it is definitely a plausible one - at least, I meant this.</p>
<p>Hmm… No youth court or internship (which can be anything from getting coffee to filing papers) at a law firm? Volunteering somewhere can show your interest in helping out people. Samonuh, you sounded as if you had no interest in your actual major. I was worried that you could not write about it in your essays but you can pull it off now.</p>
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<p>And it is equally naive to think colleges don’t benefit from giving false hope to applicants. WashU has perfected the science of drawing in as many applicants as possible to climb the rankings. A little extra $$$ for the college in the way of application fees don’t hurt either.</p>
<p>I don’t know why but it has become fashionable at every application process to tell applicants their test scores won’t matter. Do we feel dirty excluding someone on the basis on their SAT score? After all, someone with a 1800 SAT score has no business at an Ivy League college. Why do we feel the need to tell such applicants “Cornell doesn’t value SAT scores. You still have a chance.”</p>
<p>As the residency director at the radiology residency program at my med school told me, “don’t believe anything I tell you during the admissions process. I have nothing to lose by lying to you and any other applicant.”</p>
<p>While I certainly think it’s likely that test scores are weighted the least, that doesn’t make them insignificant. I remember an admissions officer telling me that they consider 80% of their applicants “admissible.” They didn’t define what that meant super well, except that it means they think the candidate would be successful at Cornell. Given that, it means the applicant pool is pretty competitive and thus test scores most certainly come into play. </p>
<p>That said, as advice I wouldn’t get too caught up in Cornell’s relatively low acceptance rate. If your stats are decent, you can probably consider yourself as someone who is really only competing against 80% of the applicant pool.</p>
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<p>SAT scores serve as an initial-screening process. If some non-URM guy applies to Cornell with 1800 SAT, his application is bound to go into a trash can in a matter of few seconds.</p>
<p>When they say “SAT scores aren’t important”, they mean SAT scores don’t play that much of a factor when an applicant reaches 2100+ range on SAT. Once an applicant reaches a certain SAT score, other factors including essays, ec’s, recommendations, and overall academic record matter much more.</p>
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<p>Many URM’s and recruited atheletes are admitted each year by top schools, in a rather large quantity, despite having disgustingly low scores on SATs.</p>
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I don´t believe Cornell has used many (or any)of those tactics in trying to climb the ranking. I did some back of the envelope calculation at one point, and $70 doesn´t really cover the processing costs. The only way it would be profitable to a college would be having a computer program to systematicaly filter out students who do not meet the minimum requirement.</p>