<p>btw, on transfers schools accept them, because people drop out, transfer to other schools, etc. They balance the class.</p>
<p>I’m guessing here – but it looks like Cornell is addressing this issue. I seem to recall from the ‘admit’ thread, that a surprising number of students were offered “guaranteed transfer” after their first year.</p>
<p>Presumably all of these are ‘qualified’, but Cornell just doesn’t have space. One would guess that if this program was a success, it would significantly shrink the number of slots for other transfers.</p>
<p>Lazy: “critical thinking” is about reasoning- not assuming, not basing belief on hearsay or a few experiences, etc. It implies questioning what one thinks or hears and a little fact-seeking. </p>
<p>All high schools are not created equal, all courses are not taught alike, (not even APs, which are supposed to be standardized,) all teachers do not grade by the exact same standards- so, gpa isn’t the be all and the end all. It is important, no doubt. It is the bar. It expresses a kid’s goals, determination, achievement, etc. But, unless you evaluate the context, the actual hs, it’s not an absolute about one kid’s superiority over another. Acoms, btw, do evaluate context. </p>
<p>I’m going to skip the transfer argument. You can go look at Cornell’s own words about why they participate in GT and their satisfaction.</p>
<p>Norcal made a good point about post-grads stats and their influence. I find it curious that Cornell’s front-end stat, its yield, is lower than for other Ivies. Location? Something missing in marketing? Fin aid? Could be that highly qualified kids also get into another top school they prefer. ? I don’t know.</p>
<p>I am not a Cornell student, though I am a legacy, so I have an interest. I am an adult and…an admissions reviewer for another Ivy. </p>
<p>Zephyr, an anecdote: we did take a kid this year who filled a need in the orchestra. But, the excitement about this kid went deeper than realizing the last person playing instrument X was about to graduate. Stats, curriculum, ECs, responsibilities, essays, LoRs- it all lined up.</p>
<p>I think there are 3 things that hurt Cornell’s yield (in no particular order):</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The location. I loved Ithaca. I think it’s a great place. I understand why to a 18 year old, NYC or Boston has more attraction. Admittedly, I think Cornell can do a lot better job at selling the location.</p></li>
<li><p>The perceived difficulty. There is ample data that Cornell is not any more or less grade deflated than it’s peer institutions. The truly smart kids I met all thought Cornell was challenging but fair. Unfortunately, I think there are too many kids at the low end of the spectrum who just aren’t up to the challenge and thus perpetuate the myth that Cornell is unfairly hard. It’s not. It’s really not. I averaged over a 4.0 my last 3 years at Cornell as a premed and I’m barely in the top half of my med school class (a class full of kids from peer institutions). I think Cornell takes too many kids who aren’t qualified academically.</p></li>
<li><p>The perception that Cornell is the “lowest Ivy.” We all know where this comes from: its acceptance rate and average SAT scores and its transfer agreements. I’m not one to split hairs over 30 SAT points (like those Penn kids when they want to make themselves feel better). I don’t care if Cornell’s acceptance rate is 19% vs. 15%. However, I do think it’s ludicrous for transfer acceptance rates to be higher than freshman admit rates. And I think it’s ludicrous to be taking people who had obscenely horrible HS stats as transfers.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I like transfers in that they bring school spirit. They’re some of the most appreciative people at Cornell because they’ve been to inferior colleges. They don’t whine about how there’s a 20 GB internet limit (it was 2 GB back when I went to Cornell just a few years ago) or how you have to pay $5 if you’re locked out. However, I think some of them would be more successful if they went to another college where the competition isn’t so great.</p>
<p>*I simply don’t think people with SAT scores below 2000 really belong at an Ivy League institution. I don’t think they will be as successful as if they were at a different institution. A Cornell adcom saying that SAT scores are only used for “screening” and that 650 in each section is what they’re looking for really sends the wrong message that someone with a 1960 has as good a chance as someone with a 2290. That should NOT be the case. *</p>
<p>No, no, no, no, no, no. Some private company’s exam should absolutely not be used as a measuring stick for an Ivy league student. Anyone can get (or not be able to get) materials to study for some arbitrary exam which still disfavors certain people anyway.</p>
<p>I have also thought about something relating to high schools. As far as I know, CoE is pretty selective compared to some of the other colleges. What I would like to know is how many freshman admits come from higher quality high schools. The engineers are typically known for having higher scores in certain areas, no? I don’t think that occurrence would be so widespread if admits were going to high schools that were lacking.</p>
<p>No one is saying the SAT’s are perfect. Neither is GPA. But, they are still better predictors of academic success than someone’s essays or EC’s or LOR’s. I think it’s ludicrous to suggest that someone can write a better essay to overcome their academic failings.</p>
<p>By the same token, some people are unable to have a personal trainer or to dedicate a lot of time to practice running, but that doesn’t mean athletic recruits should have LoR’s and EC’s as their deciding factor instead of their 100 meter time.</p>
<p>Athletics is a mess of its own. That’s a whole other issue probably unrelated to one’s academic capability. Having the body to do a sports activity doesn’t mean that one is unqualified to attend a top institution.</p>
<p>Sure, it would be always good to have hard-stats to back one’s claims, yet when such stats are missing, one’s best way around it is to consider the experience coming from a primary source. In law, there are many accidents and crimes that do not perfectly reveal all concrete proofs and evidences, yet trials/judges/juries depend on witnesses, if available, to an extent, despite the credibility issues of any witness related to any crime. Or, are you prepared to argue that the justice system, during trials, not listen to what witnesses say about the crime at all, but only should proceed with trials only when there was a surveilance camera that caught the crime scene?</p>
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<p>As you stated that GPA’s aren’t standardized due to differing rigor and grading among different high schools, I would argue that extra curriculars or other softs are even more unstandardized. That was my point before: how would you measure the strength of one’s extra curricular, compared to others’ extra curricular? Of course, you could go on to say that one can judge by looking at the depth of an applicant’s activities, etc, yet, how do you know if an applicant is sugar-coating his application by jacking up his activities chart (I’ve seen kids do this: listing activities that they actually didn’t do), or over-selling their leadership/impact at whatever club/organizaiton that they were part of?</p>
<p>At least the GPA from high school is 1) more correlated to the academic aptitude of a student, 2) a more concrete and objective evidence of one’s work ethic. Not only the GPA, but you can look at the applicant’s class rank and determine, within the school of that specific applicant, how much of a student the applicant is. </p>
<p>And, how about SATs? SATs are standardized, in national scale. I am sure it is heck of an objective measure, at least compared to extra curriculars/essays/etc.</p>
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<p>Since you are not a Cornell student, nor have ever been inside a classroom here, I don’t think you could discount the first-hand experiences of Cornell alums who assert that, from direct encounters, the transfer students tend to be quite sub-par, compared to freshmen admits.</p>
<p>I couldn’t agree more. Looking through the acceptance thread this year, I was shocked and embarrassed of how many low scorers/low gpa people were getting in. I didn’t count, but I’m pretty sure that there were more below 2000 people who were accepted than there were above 2250 people. As an ivy league institution, THAT DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE WHATSOEVER. </p>
<p>I don’t care if they wrote an amazing essay; that shouldn’t forgive 4 years of high school that others worked hard for. Also, chances are that they didn’t write the essays themselves if their scores/grades are that low.</p>
<p>Well, I could see your argument if Cornell was accepting 20-30 transfers a year. From what I am hearing, they are accepting hundreds of transfers a year. Surely, each year, hundreds of Cornell students do not drop out or transfer out. I don’t see any reason as to why Cornell should accept that many transfers, who, often times, are quite sub-par.</p>
<p>Arts & Sciences [CAS] and Engineering accept relatively few transfers. In fact for last fall’s class, CAS accepted only 7% of transfer applicants, enrolling 50 transfers.</p>
<p>The last thing I want to see changed is getting rid of the “specialty school” label for ILR, HumEC, etc. I really don’t understand why people defend the slightly lower SAT scores of these schools by calling these specialty schools. Whether you want to study English in CAS, ILR, communications in CALS, or engineering, you should be held to a high academic standard. The only two possible exceptions I see are architecture and hotel admin, which require distinctly different skill sets. But, it’s silly to suggest that studying Human Development in HumEC requires lower SAT scores than studying German in CAS. That’s just insulting to everyone in Human Ecology. Internal transferring at Cornell is fairly easy. A HumEC student may very well be a CAS student the next semester. These are all good schools that should be looking for high SAT scores and solid GPA’s (ie a high record of academic achievement) in everyone.</p>
<p>My basic point with all of this is: we need to stop making excuses in order to accept kids with weak academic records. There’s no reason to be elitist and stop accepting transfers altogether (ala Harvard) or to eliminate all contract schools. That’s silly. But, Cornell really needs to be more selective in the students it chooses when looking at academic achievement.</p>
<p>*I don’t care if they wrote an amazing essay; that shouldn’t forgive 4 years of high school that others worked hard for. Also, chances are that they didn’t write the essays themselves if their scores/grades are that low. *</p>
<p>Lol at implying that SAT scores indicate how much effort high schoolers put into their academics.</p>
<p>GPA is a measure of effort. SAT scores are a proxy for intelligence. Good proxy? eh, so-so if you look at the correlation with future GPA. But, it’s the only thing we have. I’m certainly not going to judge the academic capability of a student from his EC list. We’re not suggesting you split hairs between a 2220 applicant and a 2240 applicant. We’re suggesting you eliminate applicants who can’t get a ballpark figure (ballpark meaning 2000 or above).</p>
<p>SAT scores should be used somewhat as a weed-out since GPA’s aren’t all qualitatively equal. Nothing more, nothing less. Also, not all EC’s are the same, but I do agree they should not have too much of a heavy emphasis on admissions.</p>
<p>This. People need to stop making excuses about how the contract schools have lower stats overall because they pick more on “fit”. Aside from architecture, all the rest of the colleges should be held to higher academic standards.</p>
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<p>You totally missed the point; I didn’t say that. Notice I said “scores/grades”, which meant I was talking about the SAT’s AND high school GPA’s. I get the feeling you’re strongly defending Cornell’s admissions standards because you’re one of the guys who got the lower grades/scores that some of us are talking about. Regardless of how you’re performing in Cornell, you have to understand that the majority of people accepted with low scores are underperforming, and overall hurting the reputation for the other students.</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s any reason to get personal. He could accuse you of being a high SAT scorer with lackluster EC’s. </p>
<p>I don’t think the SAT is a perfect test. But, I took it myself. And I tutored the SAT both in college and in med school. I can see a clear difference in the kids who can solve a math problem or think through an analogy versus those who can’t. That’s just the truth. It’s not a perfect test. It’s clearly not a test of knowledge (except for maybe vocabulary). It’s a test of whether you can solve logical math problems, whether you can deduce the main idea of a reading passage, etc. It’s a test of the thinking process. I think those are useful skills in college regardless of your major.</p>
<p>Lazy, ask that same question about evidence after law school. </p>
<p>I don’t think you could discount the first-hand experiences of Cornell alums who assert that…transfer students tend to be quite sub-par, compared to freshmen admits. An issue here is generalizations about a group, based on a couple of experiences. Eg, you know some URM athletes. Maybe you know 10 URM athletes. Or 20. Does that make all URM admits into athletes? Of course not. I do not deny that you or NorCal have met subpar transfers (or freshman or faculty or some majors or whatever.) I am disputing that you can generalize about all transfers. None of us are really certain- or we’d be quoting those figures and their links.</p>
<p>About the need for more than a handful of transfers: Cornell has a 96% retention rate (good.) This rate usually refers to freshman who return for soph year. So, of the 3229 freshman in the class of 2014, roughly 129 will leave. But, overall “empty seats” is also a factor of off-campus internships, study abroad, other leaves, shifts in dept or program enrollment, etc. And, the number of kids who transfer out after 2nd year. Somehow, Cornell is figuring they have roughly 500-600 slots available. </p>
<p>Of course they should aim high with their transfers. One thing none of us know is just how many kids actually seek to transfer to Cornell, from peer institutions. </p>
<p>ps. can we all agree on this? ECs are not a fix for “poor” academic performance. I don’t know if that’s a CC myth or from elsewhere. “Poor” academic performance in hs is a fabulous indicator of lower chances of succeeding at a highly competitive college. With rare exceptions, even athletes and legacies have to meet the range expectations for scores and grades. Even the cc kids have to meet expectations.</p>
<p>The problem is that the transfer rates are not equally distributed. CAS is quite hard to get into. I have no problem with that. The transfer rates for some other of Cornell’s colleges are quite high. I think even a 22% transfer acceptance rate is too high. I don’t see how you discount 4 years of HS data along with standardized testing in favor of 1 year of community college data.</p>