Applying ED to Cornell or SCEA to Stanford-completely torn.

College Search & Selection
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<h2>@International95: sigh. I will trust the email I received more than you. Simple logic because they are the officials. Still, I’m copy pasting the email I got.</h2>

<p>Hi XXXXXX,
Thank you for your e-mail. We appreciate your interest in Cambridge. The gap year you’re mentioning has no bearings on the admission process. You’ll still be considered with the other applicants from India. Please note that you should not enroll in other university in the meanwhile if you want to apply to Cambridge. The Man Mohan Singh Scholarship (MMS) is a very competitive scholarship. According to the past 3 years, the candidates who satisfy the following criteria are awarded the scholarship.

  1. A score of 90% or greater in CBSE board examinations.
  2. A rank below 1000 in JEE Advanced
  3. If your first language is not English, we require you to take the IELTS. For more information, refer to our website.
    Also note that your performance in the interview is also important for admission. Feel free to contact
    -Cathy</p>

<h2>(Some digital signature was also present in the email which I’m unable to copy here)</h2>

<p>I guess I should trust Cathy more than you, for obvious reasons. Thank you.
As far as internships are considered, I’m interested in working in the US. I guess that’s pretty good enough reason to go to Cornell considering the fact that Cornell is undoubtedly my very close second choice. My father was an HR (Human Resource) consultant until last year (He went broke last December). His work is exactly what I’m talking about. Again, I’m bound to trust him more than you since that’s what he did for earning a bread. Also, internship is not something I “need” per se. I <em>want</em> to work and I’m pretty sure that a summer internship is not a JOB. It is moot to argue about this since you’re way off the point.
And thank you @MYOS1634 for U of Alabama suggestion! That would make a pretty good safety in the US, even though I’d prefer the Hong Kong route since their Engineering program is better (at least, that’s what the rankings say)
Thanks to all for your help so far :)</p>

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<p><a href=“http://www.cambridge-india.org/prospective-students/dr-manmohan-singh-undergraduate-scholarships”>http://www.cambridge-india.org/prospective-students/dr-manmohan-singh-undergraduate-scholarships&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>“If you meet the conditions above and wish to be considered for a Manmohan Singh Scholarship, you should complete a scholarship application form (available on the Undergraduate Admissions website) and apply for a place at Cambridge in the usual way, submitting a UCAS application and Cambridge Overseas Application Form (COAF) together with your scholarship application form. Applicants for the scholarships will be interviewed in India.”</p>

<p>As indicated, you must apply to Cambridge the regular way. Whether or not you will get in will be the decision of the admissions officers at Cambridge. </p>

<p>“The scholarships are competitive and are conditional on a College offer of a place to study at Cambridge, including meeting any immigration and English language requirements.”</p>

<p>That is exactly what I said. You first apply to Cambridge and get an admission decision and then those admitted and who applied for a scholarship will be assessed for it. Admission to Cambridge is competitive, and I’m positive it’s even more so for this scholarship. To consider Cambridge a safety would border on idiocy. </p>

<p>The takeaway for you is that even though that email indicates that those who meet those criteria are awarded the scholarship, it does not mean that meeting the criteria entitles you to admission at Cambridge. If I were you, I’d ask this Cathy if meeting the criteria would guarantee a scholarship as well as admission.</p>

<p>I do not care for the disparagement (although I must say, it’s slightly amusing for you to say that a word of a broke HR consultant would be any better than that of a random person on the internet – calls into question if he was really good at what he did? no disrespect intended). Good luck with whatever.</p>

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<p>Well, the email says nothing. It’s not a promissory note but rather to clarify the requirements for the scholarship.</p>

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<p>Better: it is obvious that you have COMPLETELY misinterpreted the email from Cambridge University. COMPLETELY MISINTERPRETED. Do you understand this? You seem exceptionally pigheaded in your determination to misconstrue this email as a guaranteed offer of admissions to Cambridge with a guaranteed scholarship. First of all, you have NOT been admitted to Cambridge. So your blithe assertion that you will attend Cambridge if you are denied at Cornell or Stanford is absolutely nonsensical. Second, just because you meet the minimum qualifications to be a winner of the MMS scholarship DOES NOT MEAN you will be awarded the MMS scholarship. You are simply competitive for it – along with hundreds of other Indian applicants to Cambridge – because you meet the minimum qualifications. And that is the second hurdle. The first is actually being admitted to Cambridge. And because you do not understand either the admissions process at Cambridge, or the level of amazing competitiveness FOR admission to Cambridge, I suspect you will not be admitted. Thousands of applicants, for example, meet the threshold for competitiveness in applications to Stanford and Cornell, but very few of those who meet those qualifications are accepted. That is also true of Cambridge, routinely ranked one of the WORLD’S TOP UNIVERSITIES!!! Do you understand that meeting a minimum is only a possible guarantee of being seriously considered for either an offer of admission or a scholarship? It means NOTHING more than that.</p>

<p>Your arrogance and stubbornness do not bode well for a successful application season. I suspect rejections for you from Cambridge, Sanford, and Cornell unless you start being intelligent and open to learning about the admissions process. Because, clearly, you are WILLFULLY misinformed.</p>

<p>And, no, we are not being cruel. We are trying to talk some sense into you for your own good. So far no one has been successful.</p>

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<p>It’s best to spend time to really brush up on your English. </p>

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<p>Alright. First of all, I’ve emailed Cathy and hopefully I’ll get a reply by today. Let me clarify on Cambridge first.[list]
1.Cambridge is not my only safety. There are lots of others too. I suggest you to go through my first post and other subsequent posts.</p>

<p>2.<a href=“http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/admissions/indian-qualifications.pdf”>http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/admissions/indian-qualifications.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“Study at Cambridge | University of Cambridge”>Study at Cambridge | University of Cambridge;
The criteria for admission is:

  1. Greater than 90% in CBSE board.
  2. JEE Advanced rank of under 2000.
  3. English proficiency.
    The normal students who apply to Cambridge are usually in their Senior year and have not taken any of the CBSE exams and JEE advanced, therefore, the offers made are subject to their meeting the above criteria. That is, the students who did well in the interview AND meet these criteria get into Cambridge. Correct? Now coming to me, As I have already graduated and my results of all the above exams are available, the offer</p>
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<p>OOPs sorry. I accidentally clicked on post comment. </p>

<p>Alright. First of all, I’ve emailed Cathy and hopefully I’ll get a reply by today. Let me clarify on Cambridge first.
1.Cambridge is not my only safety. There are lots of others too. I suggest you to go through my first post and other subsequent posts.</p>

<p>2.<a href=“http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/admissions/indian-qualifications.pdf”>http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/sites/default/files/admissions/indian-qualifications.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
<a href=“Study at Cambridge | University of Cambridge”>Study at Cambridge | University of Cambridge;
The criteria for admission is:

  1. Greater than 90% in CBSE board.
  2. JEE Advanced rank of under 2000.
  3. English proficiency.
    The normal students who apply to Cambridge are usually in their Senior year and have not taken any of the CBSE exams and JEE advanced, therefore, the offers of admissions made are subject to their meeting the above criteria. Cambridge does not have any knowledge of what the students are gonna get in their exams and therefore can’t make any guaranteed offer. That is, the students who did well in the interview AND will meet these criteria get into Cambridge. Correct? (Assuming you did well in the interview.)</p>

<p>Now coming to me, As I have already graduated and my results of all the above exams are available, the offer made to me CAN NOT BE CONDITIONAL SIMPLY BECAUSE I ALREADY MEET ALL THE CRITERIA FOR ADMISSIONS. Clear* Let me state again, any offer made to me can not be conditional simply because Cambridge will already have all my results and since I meet them I AM GUARANTEED A SPOT*. All clear? Any clarifications here @swingtime, @International95?
Now we have settled that Cambridge is at least sure to offer me admission, we’ll see what Cathy says about MMS scholarship.
@swingtime: I don’t know what of my posts make you think I’m arrogant and whatnot, but if that’s what it really seems, I’m sorry because that’s not what I intended them to be. I posting on CC simply because I need help. Think about it, if I were so sure of things, I’d not be asking on CC.
And @DrGoogle: I seriously don’t need to brush up on my English skills simply because I have good enough scores on TOEFL and SAT CR. My TOEFL score is 118/120 and SAT CR score-800.</p>

<p>Let’s just wait for the email from Cathy.</p>

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<p>OMG! Better: Cathy’s email to you was not an offer of admission. She was simply telling you that if you take a gap year it will have no affect on the admission’s PROCESS! Meaning: you will still be eligible to APPLY if you take a gap year, as long as you do not enroll elsewhere.</p>

<p>You are asking for assistance and we are trying to give it to you. </p>

<p>Do you have a letter from Cambridge congratulating you on having been admitted? If you do not, YOU HAVE NOT BEEN ADMITTED TO CAMBRIDGE. You haven’t even been interviewed as yet. You seem to believe that if you meet certain criteria you will AUTOMATICALLY be admitted to Cambridge. That is NOT true. Just because you meet certain criteria does not mean you will be admitted. Thousands of students all over the world may meet or better that criteria. Are they ALL automatically admitted to Cambridge? No they are not. Just as they are not automatically admitted to Stanford or Cornell. This is a lesson you should have learned after applying to and being rejected by Stanford. You may have been competitive, like THOUSANDS of other applicants. But even though you were competitive you were STILL REJECTED by Stanford, because Stanford doesn’t have room to admit everyone who is qualified. That is the same for Cambridge.</p>

<p>Ask Cathy if you have already been admitted to Cambridge and get it straight from her. </p>

<p>Because, we are telling you that you HAVE NOT BEEN ADMITTED to Cambridge. You seem to think her email was confirming your admission. IT WAS NOT! The email only told you that a gap year will not affect your application. Meaning, you can still apply if you take a gap year. What part of this are you NOT understanding?</p>

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<p>I am really exhausted by his intransigence, too, @swingtime. Look, dude, nowhere in those two links does it say that meeting those criteria would guarantee you admission to Cambridge. It’s basically a REQUIREMENT for being CONSIDERED for admission, not to get in for sure. We UNDERSTAND that you have other “safeties”, even though we are hardly convinced that HKU and HKUST would be considered safeties (though those two are comparatively easy to get into, it’s not as easy to get enough $$ to attend.) What we are pointing out is that CAMBRIDGE IS NOT A SAFETY SCHOOL FOR YOU OR ANYBODY (perhaps except Emma Watson).</p>

<p>I agree that you need to improve your critical reading skills. </p>

<p>“The scholarships are competitive and are conditional on a College offer of a place to study at Cambridge, including meeting any immigration and English language requirements.”</p>

<p>What does that say? That does not say anything about conditional offers of admission from Cambridge. What that says is that to be considered for and receive one of these “competitive” scholarships, you would need an offer from Cambridge. That is, the scholarship would be “conditional on a College offer of a place to study at Cambridge.” So no offer of admission, no scholarship.</p>

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<p>Cambridge is different from Cornell in that it’s not holistic. If you meet the academic requirements, which are very high, your odds are pretty good. However, there’s still the interview, which is a long oral exam on lots of things related to your field, and which students typically spend 2 years preparing.
This student has scores that qualify him/her directly. It means s/he’s sure to get to the interview stage. We don’t know whether s/he already went to the interview stage and aced it, which is quite possible. So in a sense, while it’s unlikely Cambridge is a “safety” per se, it’s not the same as considering a highly selective school a safety when it has holistic admission. It’s as if a college in the US were to say “all students with SAT 2250 SAT and a 4.0 are guaranteed to move to second round selection, and 30% of those will get in” and you’ve already passed the second round exams once so you’re reasonably sure that with one more year of work, you’ll pass them again.</p>

<p>However, things are a completely different ballgame with holistic admissions.</p>

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<p>The competition at Oxbridge is still very high. I have many friends with sets of four and five A<em>s who made it to the interview but did not get into the either of those two in the end (in fact, it was on the British news that a young lady with 10 A</em>'s did not make it into Oxford; the standard offer is A<em>A</em>A). So while not having the grades will certainly ensure that you will be denied, meeting the requirements does not entitle you to admission at Oxbridge either. That’s when the ‘holistic’ part comes into play. The interview and the personal statement are indeed quite important, as is luck.</p>

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<h2>So, this is the email I got. Guess who was right? ME!</h2>

<p>Thank you for the e-mail. Answering you questions point by point.
A.) For the applicants who are in their 12th grade when they’re applying, we take their performance in the interview and other factors into consideration, and if we think that the applicant is competitive, we offer them a conditional offer which lies on the following three conditions. The applicants who fulfill these conditions are thereby admitted to Cambridge.
1.) Over 90% in CBSE board examinations (consisting of 4 major subject +1 additional subject)
2.) A JEE-Advanced rank below 2000.
3.) A satisfactory IELTS score if English is not your first language. (for more details, visit our website)
Coming to you, as you’ve stated in your e-mail, you already meet all the stated criterion. Therefore, any offer we make to you will not be conditional. If you perform satisfactorily in the interview, your odds of getting an admission letter are pretty high.
B.) The same can be applied to MMS scholarship too with slight alteartion in 2nd condition. You need to have under 1000 rank for that.
Since you meet its criterion too, your chances of getting one are extremely high. Going by the past year data, everyone who had a JEE rank of under 1000 was awarded a scholarship (although exceptions can be made if someone is an outstanding achiever which can be demonstrated in some other way (KVPY, NTSE etc.).) Since your credentials are good enough for the scholarship, you are almost assured of getting a scholarship.
However, please note that it’s not ‘guaranteed’ that you’ll be admitted. It’s very probable that you’ll get a positive decision.
You may find the other statistics interesting too <a href=“Study at Cambridge | University of Cambridge”>Study at Cambridge | University of Cambridge;

<h2>-Cathy</h2>

<p>I just hope this is the final Cambridge related post I’m writing.
@DrGoogle: Guess who needs to brush up his/her Critical reading skills?
@International95: Everybody knows brother’s friend’s son’s friend’s mom’s friend who did X. there are outliers to everything. Even Purdue has sometimes rejected applicants which are qualified. That doesn’t mean it’s not a safety.
Of course there’s not a 100% chance of getting in Cambridge, but it’s good enough for it to become a safety.
let’s revisit the definition of safety: It means a college which is very likely to admit you. There are numerous stories about students being rejected from their safeties, but more often than not, people get into their safety.
@swingtime: I just hope you’re not that judgmental in person. I mean, you deduced from half a dozen posts that I was arrogant etc. WOW! So nice of you. Just a tip for you: Being judgmental isn’t good. Neither for you, nor for people around you.
@MYOS1634: I just hope that there are more people like you. You’re such a gift to CC :slight_smile:
Overall, I’m much disappointed with the attitude of many CC posters who just like to berate people and are over negative in everything. It’s because of the other helpful users that people still browse CC. If only there were more posters who were helpful. there are very good people on CC and their posts keep CC from being unhelpful. Like @Ucbalumnus, @T26E4, @BrownParent, @MYOS1634 I’m sure I’m missing a lot others but at present only these come to mind.
And lastly, I <em>reallly</em> hope people will stay on topic of this thread.</p>

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<p>BetterThanBest: it’s because many posters don’t understand the qualifications you cited (like the JEE-Advanced rank you have) and how that relates to some admission practices (ie., a 2400 on the SAT guarantees nothing but this is not the same system we’re talking about). If you were American and stating you’re confident to get into Harvard because you got a 2400, everyone would tell you the things that were said above, for your own sake. It’s a cultural difference, not something you should be disappointed about, and they’re well-meaning.
You still have to do well for the interview, and prepare for difficult or quirky questions (it’s like an oral examination). </p>

<p>Back to the first question: I do believe your odds of getting into Cornell ED are higher than getting into Stanford, so it all depends on whether you want to roll a dice and perhaps lose your “ED trump card” at Stanford, or play is a bit safer and try your hand at Cornell ED and prepare to apply to Cornell in the RD round, thereby reducing your odds of admission.
I hope more people will chime in.</p>

<p>Purdue admits but doesn’t give scholarships… So, not a good choice for you. Also, it admits into its ‘engineering technology’ which is NOT THE SAME as “engineering”!! (This last bit is for the Indian readers following this thread).</p>

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<p>Apply to Cornell ED, but don’t expect to get in - anecdotally, I recall one person (an Indian) applying ED his senior year in high school to Cornell, getting rejected, taking a gap year, applying ED again, and getting rejected again.</p>

<p>If a lot of things don’t change in your application, I presume the same thing will happen to you. That being said, you have a much, much better chance at Cornell than at Stanford, and if you’d be almost equally happy going to either, then I suggest applying to Cornell. Stanford’s acceptance rate just keeps dropping, and I imagine it’ll be even lower next year. I just don’t see it happening, but of course, there’s always</p>

<p>I don’t know if you’ve visited either yet, but if not, and if you have the necessary finances (I’m assuming you may not, however), then try to visit both since they’re very different colleges. You might find Cornell too cold for your taste or Stanford too ‘suburbian’ etc etc.</p>

<p>You’re actually in a better situation than many who take gap years tbh, so there isn’t anything to worry about even if you DO decide to apply SCEA to Stanford. I see no major problem since well, not many people can say they have Cambridge as a safety. (By the way, I agree with other posters that the way the first email was structured, it actually did sound like you only met the requirements to be considered - and I’m an Indian that understands what the JEE is, so you can’t really fault other posters for their misinterpretation, seeing as the first email was unclear to begin with.). It does look like you’re likely to get in, so you’re good to go on that front. </p>

<p>tl;dr: I would apply to Cornell if they’re relatively equal in your eyes, but visit if you can. If you decide to SCEA to Stanford, don’t worry about not getting in too much since it looks like you’re in a good position regarding Cambridge.</p>

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So, OP, what happened? I tracked your posts and saw that you got into Penn. What about Cambridge?

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Meeting the criteria for a UK school simply means that your application will not be thrown immediately in the garbage. One of the best universities in the world did not get to be where it was today by admitting everyone who scored above a certain benchmark on some standardized tests. They have rigorous interviews that weigh heavily on the admissions process.They are still liable to reject or “waitlist” (offer a conditional acceptance) regardless of whether or not you meet their published criteria.

I met the benchmarks for the University of Edinburgh by a long shot and considered it a safety when I applied. I ended up being conditionally accepted with an acceptance hinging on a test score that I could not receive. Don’t make the same mistake I did. Cambridge is not a safety, not even close.

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Safety does not mean “Guaranteed Admission.” It means “Highly likely to be accepted” which OP explains in his 1 year old post above. OP has clearly already moved on from this thread guys.

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Thank goodness someone told him that.