<p>gomestar,</p>
<p>I think kk is playing with you. I bet he knows the admission for schools of music and communication (film, theater, dance) at Northwestern is heavily based on ECs.</p>
<p>20 points (actually less) seperates Dartmouth and Princeton. Cornelll A&S +engineering has the same gap. Dartmouth is easily more selective.</p>
<p>slipper,
Yes, Dartmouth is a little more selective than Cornell A&S and Dartmouth is nearly as selective as Princeton. But, 20 or 30 SAT points is not a very big difference. Stanford and Harvard/Yale differ by about that much.</p>
<p>You should take it as a compliment when schools try to compare themselves to a great place like Dartmouth. Cornell A&S has about the same enrollment as Dartmouth. Cornell and Dartmouth are the two non-urban Ivies. The Arts Quad at Cornell is like a little taste of Dartmouth heaven.</p>
<p>By the way, there is some random fluctuation in acceptance rates. This year's acceptance rate at Cornell A&S (20%) is nearly the same as last year's acceptance rate at Dartmouth (19%).</p>
<p>"I think kk is playing with you. I bet he knows the admission for schools of music and communication (film, theater, dance) at Northwestern is heavily based on ECs"</p>
<p>Thanks, Sam. Smooth one, kk.</p>
<p>Darmouth accepts fewer studnets than Cornell does (the acceptance rate for CAS is around 19% vs. Dartmouth's slightly over 15%), and the the SAT difference is insignificant. The ranges at the top and bottom end are nearly identical. Any applicant with a 1500 SAT and a high GPA has a great shot at either Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton, etc. Sure Darmouth and Cornell have SAT 75th percentile ranges that aren't very far below Princeton at all, the difference lies on the other end ... both Darmouth and Cornell are around 50 points behind. Like I said, Dartmouth certainly accepts a fewer percentage of students (though it's not like a big runaway win ... and certainly not 'easily more selective'), the student bodies at both Darmouth and Cornell are nearly identical.</p>
<p>percent of freshman in top 10% of high school class</p>
<p>Cornell A&S 90%
Brown 90%
Dartmouth 87%</p>
<p>My thinking is that Cornell A&S has a student body and curriculum composition similar to Brown and Dartmouth.</p>
<p>they are about the same...again, there is always some random fluctuation from year to year</p>
<p>I think the whole argument here simply reflects the fact that Cornell (and Penn) differ from the other schools in the Ivy League in the range of programs that they offer and therefore also differ in the ways in which they select students for admission. </p>
<p>From an admissions point of view, Cornell has much more in common with universities such as Northwestern and Carnegie Mellon than with Dartmouth or Brown.</p>
<p>Dartmouth and Brown offer only liberal arts and engineering majors. Academic performance, as reflected by rank in class and SAT scores, are the most crucial criteria for admissions to such programs -- with a more focused emphasis on achievement in math and science for the prospective engineers and a broader emphasis on achievement in all areas for the liberal arts people.</p>
<p>Cornell, Northwestern, Carnegie Mellon, and Penn also offer liberal arts and engineering programs, and they probably admit students into those programs in much the same way that Dartmouth and Brown do. However, these universities also offer additional programs for which the criteria for admission are different. </p>
<p>A Carnegie Mellon application packet appeared in my family's mailbox yesterday (heaven knows why; my daughter wouldn't apply to Carnegie Mellon if it was the last university on earth). I skimmed the packet a bit, and I noticed that Carnegie Mellon explicitly tells applicants for each of its schools what the most important factors in admissions are. For example:</p>
<p>"School of Art, Design, Drama or Music: Portfolio review, design project or audition, as well as academic performance."</p>
<p>"College of Humanities and Social Sciences: Academic performance, with emphasis on reading and comprehension abilities and mathematics courses."</p>
<p>"Carnegie Institute of Technology: Academic performance, with emphasis on strength in mathematics and science."</p>
<p>In other words, the criteria vary for different schools, and for some of the more specialized programs -- such as Carnegie Mellon's performing arts programs -- academic performance is not the first consideration. Of course there are going to be students in Art or Drama whose SAT scores would not have gotten them into the other schools at Carnegie Mellon, just as there are students in Hotel or Architecture at Cornell for whom you can say the same thing. This is the way it is supposed to be, since SAT and GPA are not the highest priority admissions criteria for those programs.</p>
<p>The problem here is that if you average the SAT scores of Carnegie Mellon's performing arts majors or Cornell's hotel or architecture students in with those of the liberal arts and engineering people, you give potential liberal arts or engineering applicants the false idea that it is relatively easy for them to get into these universities. It isn't, and that can lead to a lot of disappointment. </p>
<p>Or, to put it more bluntly, if you are applying to liberal arts or engineering and Dartmouth is your first choice college, you had better not be using Cornell as your safety school on the grounds that "it's much easier to get into Cornell." People who do that risk ending up with nowhere to enroll next fall.</p>
<p>"I think kk is playing with you. I bet he knows the admission for schools of music and communication (film, theater, dance) at Northwestern is heavily based on ECs"</p>
<p>“Thanks, Sam. Smooth one, kk.”</p>
<p>Oh my.... I really wasn’t trying to play with anyone. But now that you mention it, yes, gomestar, I do know a school that rejects people without specific ECs: Northwestern University. :)</p>
<p>well yeah, if NU's schools of music and communications really do admit with heavy emphasis on certian EC's, then there's an example right in your backyard. But, again, these are highly specialized programs similar to what Cornell has. I'm willing to bet that the other arts and sciences parts of Northwestern don't admit the same way, much like CAS at Cornell.</p>
<p>Dartmouths SAT scores are 1350 - 1550, about 30-40 points higher than Cornell A and S, Miarian those numbers are off unless they know more than collegeboard.com, US News, and the schools themselves</p>
<p>Also, Columbia, Brown, Dartmouth, Duke, and Penn each have scores about 20-30 points higher than Cornell, whereas their scores are about 20-30 points lower than HYPSM</p>
<p>So would it be fair to say the difference between Cornell and one of Columbia is the same as the difference between Columbia and Princeton?</p>