I am from New Jersey and a junior in high school. I have a 1520 SAT superscore and a 3.94 UW GPA. I am in the jazz band and play varsity soccer. I also volunteer as a tutor, as a soccer trainer, at a food pantry, and work for an educational center. How good are my chances for Cornell in computer science or business?
How is your rigor ? Do you take the hardest schedule your school offers, especially the sciences ? Do you have a weighted GPA and rank ?
If so, as good as one can hope. If not, unlikely.
Business appears test blind so your score won’t help there.
Make sure you have targets and safeties too. Cornell is not a given for anyone and CS is tough.
Good luck.
You will need to decided which college to apply to as CS and business are not in the same colleges at Cornell.
Both Dyson and COE are very tough admits and should be considered reaches for every students.
Give it your all but be sure your college list has matches and safeties.
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Omg agreeing with @momofboiler1! If you aren’t 100% sure Of CS, Cornell’s CoE is not for you. Fabulous for those who really really want it it- but it is a brutal program for day-trippers.
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Thanks for the reply. My school does not release rank but I have a 5.5 GPA and take the hardest schedule my school offers. Do you have any recommendations for safeties and matches?
We’ll it depends. I don’t understand 5.5. I understand =.5 homors and +1 AP but it sounds like you have rigor and mainly As? Which APs have you taken. How have you scored ?
Depends what you want…not just major wise but size, area, rural, suburban, urban, big sports or Greek?
Do you have a budget in mind ? Full pay or do you have need?
My school uses a 6.33 scale an A+ in an honors/ap class is a 6.33 and an A is a 6. I have taken APUSH and got a 4 on the exam. I am taking AP Physics 1, AP Calc BC, AP World History, and AP Lang. Suburban and full pay, but I don’t understand what you mean about big sports and Greek. Hope this helps.
Computer science is also available in the College of Arts and Sciences; it’s also not particularly difficult to do an internal transfer if eg you enrolled in the College of Engineering and ended up wanting to make a change.
You are a competitive applicant, but acceptance rates last year at Dyson, CAS, and COE were 5.4%, 7.1%, and 8.0%, respectively. They are a reach for anyone. If you are sure it is the school for you, ED will help your chances. Cornell consistently talks about the importance of the essay so leave yourself plenty of time to write and receive feedback. Good luck.
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Meaning, do you want to go to an Alabama or Georgia type school or a heavy greek school like Syracuse or Tulane…or a smaller, or mid size school…and quiter - not big or not heavy greek.
Assuming since you want to ED to Cornell, a similar school, but less competitive, would be Lehigh. That should be a match for you.
Generally speaking, look to your instate options for safeties.
I’d recommend going to the library and getting the Fiske Guide and doing some research.
A note to the OP that transferring into Dyson, if you decide on Business after enrolling in CS, is not easy, nor guaranteed.
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Class rank will be important here. If your school doesn’t rank, the colleges can typically figure it out. They do this by going back to prior years applications from your HS and seeing what the GPA distribution looked like.
You can do this yourself by going to SCOIR or Naviance and seeing where your GPA compares. If your GPA is in the top 5% then you are in good shape. If not then it will be difficult, even with a 1500+ SAT score.
The standards are sometimes easier for URM, development cases, athletes and legacy candidates. The other thing that can help is applying ED. If none of these apply to you then know that the chances of admission to either CAS, Dyson or Engineering are <5%.
Good luck
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Can you share what school or schools go back thru prior years’ apps to infer rank?
I’m not an admissions counselor, so I really don’t know the comprehensive list of colleges that do this. My guess is that it is limited to the highly selective colleges (Ivy+). The less selective colleges probably don’t.
I know that Duke estimates class rank. This was explained in Rachel Toor’s book. Rank is even a bigger factor now during the era of test-optional.
Many high school profiles also provide estimates of the GPA distribution – either the entire class, or by individual courses.
I speak with AOs regularly and haven’t heard that any do this, that’s why I asked. IME rank is declining in importance in admissions decisions.
I don’t think Rachel Toor’s examples from her 2001 book are necessarily accurate today.
One third (maybe fewer and it’s declining every year) of HSs provide rank. Do you have a source that supports your statement?
Yes many HSs provide a median GPA or mid 50% GPA range in their school profiles, but that doesn’t tell an AO much about rank. Certainly can’t approximate the top 10% from that.
Our high school counselor said he provides “academic profile in comparison to the class of 2022” in his high counselor letter. Vague, but there’s certainly some element of standing there.
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None of the secondary schools our lot have been to rank- but all of them give enough info that it is very clear who is at the top of the pile (for ex, Cum Laude as a Junior, limited to 2 students). That is easier at small schools, esp those that don’t weight GPA (we had 2 of those).
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Absolutely agree: it may not be most schools or even many, but top schools do use the school profile to estimate rank, counselors at schools “that don’t rank” do often indicate a range/decile in their letter, and yes some schools do keep data on previous applicants and refer to it if needed for comparison. Exact rank is not the focus, it is more the general range: a 3.8 unweighted that is around top third of a school is very different than a 3.8 that is top 10%. Naviance and/or other platforms are used by colleges too, and certainly it is conceivable they could sort applicant data by region or even high school if they wanted to.
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