<p>My D wants to apply to one Ivy (she’s somewhat partial to the small LACs) but thinks a smallish top U with grad school might be good. Brown and Cornell seem to be a bit less competitive admissions-wise than the other Ivies. </p>
<p>Which do you think she should go for, Brown or Cornell? Which is the better U and why?</p>
<p>Why does it have to be an Ivy? Why not any other top school? (If it's a matter of location, there are certainly non-Ivies in the Northeast with admissions rates similar to Brown and Cornell. There's no reason why your daughter has to restrict herself to these particular eight schools.)</p>
<p>Brown has an admissions rate of 13.6%...The talk around Admissions as of right now is that they will be getting about 5,000 more applicants this year due to the switch to the common app. The size of the class, however, is not expanding. That simply means there will be 5,000 more people to reject and the admissions rate this year will be lower (read: 10-12%). If applying to Brown seems like a good idea because it has "less competitive admissions", I would suggest reevaluating your position. Cornell and Penn may be your better options if it is the ease of getting in that attracts you to a school.</p>
<p>Brown is a lot more LAC like than Cornell because it's a lot smaller, if that's something important to your daughter.</p>
<p>Brown is in every way more LAC like than Cornell. If that's what she's attracted to, Brown in many ways is just a beefed up LAC-type atmosphere.</p>
<p>That's why we've been called the "university-college" since back in 1906. No term has ever superceded Fowler's idea then when reading the first college guide and realizing that Brown did not fit into any of the current categories.</p>
<p>Poubelle: No one in the history of our family, her mother's or mine, has ever been an undergrad at an Ivy. She thinks it would be kind of cool to be the person who starts a family legacy with the Ivies. But she's not counting on it. Her standardized test scores probably make her marginal at best. Still, she's going to apply to one anyway. Penn is in a rotten neighborhood and Dartmouth is too far away. Princeton is the closest but is probably too difficult to get into (plus it's in my native state of NJ, and I absolutely hate everything about NJ. I'll never go back there or let my kids enter the state). </p>
<p>I could be wrong, but I'm asssuming Cornell and Brown are a little bit easier to get into than Harvard and Yale. Easier not easy.</p>
<p>Cornell is always touted as the easiest, with an overall admission rate of 21%, and lower SAT scores than every other Ivy. But it sounds like your daughter would be applying to Cornell arts and sciences, which is more competitive than the other six colleges, I think. Cornell is much bigger and colder than Brown, but Brown's ultra-liberal. Both have their pros and cons.</p>
<p>I'd highly urge her to reconsider applying to an "Ivy League School" just to apply to one. Cornell and Brown are pretty different. If she looks into them both, probably one will appeal to her more, and if it's the LAC-type atmosphere she's into, Brown and Dartmouth are the two Ivies most like that.</p>
<p>They are completely different. As far as rankings Cornell is above Brown by U.S news and world report but schools go beyond their rankings. Cornell is much bigger than brown and for acceptance rates CAS at cornell is actually one of the lowest because it gets the most applicants. Cornell also has some great programs that make the school smaller like PAM at Human Ecology or ILR.</p>
<p>BWCW: thanks for the info. My D is interested in CALS at Cornell. That's the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, I believe. How competitive is that part of Cornell vs. CAS? </p>
<p>She's also applying to actual LACs, including Swarthmore, Amherst, Oberlin and Dickinson.</p>
<p>CALS as far as acceptance is easier than CAS. They publish the rates somewhere i thinks CALS is like 25 or 27% but even CALS has Applied Economics and Management (AEM) which is the second best undergrad business program behind wharton, so it even depends on programs within schools in deciding chances.</p>