Hey, I just handed in my hometest and I wanted some kind of thread for future admissions decisions. I think Cooper admission have been rising in the past few years but each source seems to have a different answer… Any others out there?
The art school had an 8% admission rate last year:
My daughter also just finished this. Arg. So stressful! She had to take apart an entire piece because she had tiny mirrors in it. “No Glass”. We were rushing out the door to Fed Ex. She is paranoid she missed something in the directions and will get disqualified. Portfolio Day guy was “chilly” about most of her stuff. Not reassuring that admission rates are so low, and then even 60% of those are from NY, NJ. Getting in is so random… She also applied to SAIC, Cal Arts, Pratt, NYU. Will do RISD by Feb 1. Was planning on Parsons. Finished the app but decided she was too burned out to do the home test, so we wasted $50 on the application. Oh well… She has a very strong background in painting/illustration, but"hates" this now. Wants to do weird stuff. We visited Cooper, and she thought the student art there was the best/most matched her style. Visited SAIC and Pratt. Didn’t see Parsons, but heard it has a nice campus. Seems to be too “product” oriented for her liking. Wants to be in NYC. Did a summer program at MICA. Didn’t like Baltimore. Visited PNCA in Oregon, and thought about combining a program with Reed. Still applied to Reed, but to PNCA. Visited CCA, and a San Francisco school. That’s all, in a nutshell. Good luck!
nmmomma, if your daughter gets the chance, check out vcuarts. Our D did the whole cooper thing (long story but ultimately not a great experience), Saturday outreach
for a year and summer intensive plus attended several lectures. She loves Richmond , its like a MORE artsy NY and
tighter community. Just a suggestion. .
@nmmomma wow, good luck to you guys too! The portfolio days really seemed a bit based on the guys you got. I had a really young kind of chill guy, and we managed to have a nice conversation about my stuff but some other people who had older professors looked close to tears. My only complaint was that the guy didn’t seem to have much experience, so it was a bit of a tradeoff. I hope I get to study with your daughter at Cooper!
@stones3 wow, really? I’d actually like to hear about this! I hadn’t heard any kind of discourse… was it a problem with the courses and academics, or was it administrative?
@2017freshman please ignore @stones3. She’s a very disgruntled parent who can’t seem to move on from the Cooper forum. Here’s the backstory, as per her above post, ‘Our D did the whole cooper thing (long story but ultimately not a great experience), Saturday outreach for a year and summer intensive plus attended several lectures.’
Her daughter never attended Cooper as a college student she was at Cooper only during HS. Here are a few of her posts when she thought her daughter was a shoo-in because she attended the HS program:
10-26-2015 at 10:42 am
up till recently it was 100% free, now due to a board that spent like drunken sailors its 50% free to ALL that are talented enough to get in. See it is a very rare meritocracy. So even middle class kids and higher get a 50% scholarship, it’s very competitive and they only take the best of the best of the best in Engineering, archit, Art. Very small school of about 1,000 with lots of personal attention in those three disciplines. A very very impressive list of alumni.
12-21-2015 at 12:12 pm
here’s a school with a 8-15% acceptance rate. With a curriculum widely considered the toughest around and that’s in comparison to places like Harvard, Yale , Princeton etc. A meritocracy . And it always gets me when a student is surprised by how difficult it can be. Frankly that’s what happens when you go to your “reach” school . I mean , its supposed to be really really difficult.
However, this all changed when her daughter was not accepted to Cooper. She’s on a mission to stop anyone from attending since it makes her feel better. It’s time for her to move on, it would be healthier for both her and her daughter if she just would. But FACT feel free to PM her.
BTW, the new President Laura Sparks was at Cooper today welcoming the students back and ushering in a new era at the school. Good luck, I hope you are accepted into the school this spring.
@jimbobcharlie ah. I see. Thank you for the good wishes!
and jimbobcharlie’s actual first hand experience amounts to what? Did she have any actual first hand experience? sorry I don’t agree with her but she has NO actual experience with this place. Our experience is what it was period. I hope all here get to attend wherever they wish. But just know its not all rainbows and butterflies at that place.
Actually, unlike you stones3 I do have first-hand experience, my son was accepted to Cooper and is an engineering major.
@stones3 @jimbobcharlie Please, I started this thread for applicants interactions… I’m sorry, but please don’t use this thread for arguments…
2017freshman, yes your thread has been hijacked just like every other thread stones3 posts on, it’s a shame. She needs to stop already and leave the cooper forum. Good luck, I wish you well!
Why is it that Cooper seems to admit different numbers of applicants every year? I’ve been looking through their site can’t tell if they admit 60 or 70. What if they admit 75 and they get 100 percent yield? How is it that their admit rate seems to always be 8%? I think I’m confused about “selectivity” vs “admission rate”, etc,
@nmmomma I hope this helps, it’s a little long, but most of it is condensed from or linked to Cooper’s website:
But first, from google:
“Selectivity is measured by the percentage of students who are admitted. The lower the percentage, the more selective the school is. Essentially, most colleges are selective to some degree. A small group of highly selective schools admits less than a third of applicants.”
Cooper shows on their admissions page that they accept 70-80 art students per year. As far as admit rate, for at least the past three years, it has been reported to be 8%. According to Cooper’s admitted students’ stats, the number of art school applications hasn’t fluctuated as much as say the engineering school and they generally have a greater than 80% yield rate for the art school. The art school had only a 6% increase in applications from 2014 to 2015 (engineering had a 66% increase) and 8% from 2015 to 2016. So they seem to be able to accurately predict their yield rate with that 8% admit rate.
Here are the last 3 years admitted students stats links:
http://cooper.edu/about/news/cooper-union-releases-figures-2014-admitted-students
For 2014 Cooper admitted 69 art students. The above link doesn’t specify the yield (it’s from April right after students were admitted, but before the May 1 commit date) but it is the first year that they charged ½ tuition and they had a large decrease in applications. Also that year they did not accept any art students ED because the timing of the ED application was right in the middle of the discussions to start charging tuition.
http://cooper.edu/about/news/admissions-numbers-announced-2015
For 2015 they posted the stats after the May 1 deadline and only show how many enrolled (67) and still show an 8% admit rate.
https://cooper.edu/admissions/first-year-profile
Finally for 2016 they show both the admit and yield rate: “The School of Art received 900 applications; 74 students were admitted (8%) and 62 of those students accepted our offer (84%).”
I don’t know of any school that gets a 100% yield rate, but if they did, they would have to let all of them enroll.
And while the admit and yield rate is important to the school, as a parent the retention rate is just as important. As per the 2016 stats, ninety-nine percent of the Fall 2015 School of Art first-year students returned for Fall 2016.
Please don’t worry too much about the admission percentage rate, yes it can be scary but your daughter will end up where she is meant to be and hopefully it’s at Cooper!
Ah, correction to my above post, it was 2013 that they suspended arts ed admissions, everyone was rolled into rd pending the tuition decision.
Thanks for that! So, I’m thinking… that colleges have a number of fairly “fixed” spots to offer. This would be based on budgets, class size, facilities etc. And they generally know that a certain percentage of accepted applicants will accept the offer. SO, maybe some years they have 2 more, or maybe three less art students than others, I guess? Or do they fill to a certain capacity off the waitlist to keep a minimum of, say 65 students?
Yes. I’m sure where ever she goes will be a great experience. And then there’s grad school too. This is the place she wants to be most. She’s looked at Cooper student work and it appeals to her more than the work at RISD, SAIC, and Cal Arts. And that hometest consumed her entire winter break. Also, it’s very important to her to be with SMART art students. And she gets no points for good GPA or SAT scores at any of these programs. Different than applying to a liberal arts school with good stats and then a really good art “hook”. We’ll know by April or so, I guess!
2017freshman- apparently it’s “hijacking” if you provide a differing view than jimbo. I stand 100% by ALL my statements We did not have a good experience, we were not impressed with the campus and the administration. Our experience was with the Art school not the engineering school. Also at 1/2 tuition plus very high room and board no one is going to convince me there aren’t better situations available. I wish ALL students (even Ms. jimbo’s) the best and much success.
@nmmomma Did your daughter apply ED? If so, I think they receive their admissions decisions sometime in February.
Yes, for Cooper in particular they know how many fixed spots they have. Basically, there are three buildings, the Foundation Building, the Engineering Building and the freshman dorm. A few years ago on Parents’ day the acting dean of the engineering school had addressed this issue of class size. The previous dean of engineering had tried to increase the freshman class size but as the acting dean emphasized, the school has limited facilities. Their location in the East Village has little to no available real estate to expand (and what if, any is bought by NYU, lol). If a classroom in the engineering building was built to handle 30 students, it can’t handle 35-40. The labs were built to accommodate a certain size class so there was no place to put additional students.
And yes, that’s where a waitlist comes into play. If they don’t receive the desired number of enrolled students, they’ll go to the waitlist. I have no idea how many are waitlisted at Cooper and if any actually get accepted off of the waitlist.
everyone should read the NY district attorney’s findings and settlement with the board.
Easily available with a google search and it will shed a light on how things are done at this institution.
I think you mean the NY Attorney General? And yes, thanks to this agreement with the Attorney General, Cooper is more transparent by keeping all informed on what is going on in the school.
Here’s the latest report from the Free Education Committee which was emailed to parents, students, alumni etc. earlier this month: