<p>“Cornell is Ivy, but it’s generally considered the weakest Ivy of the lot. Don’t deny it. It’s true. Ask anyone who isn’t on CC.”</p>
<p>Heh? LOL! Most people who aren’t on CC would not even know what universities belong to the Ivy League and which do not. Those that do know which universities belong to the Ivy League will typically be well educated and judge universities on the strengths of their faculty and departments, not on something as superficial and meaningless as acceptance rates. What matters is that to virtually all educated people, Cornell is near the top at whatever field of study they pursued.</p>
<p>FWIW, here’s how I think most academics would rank the strength of these universities qua universities, taking into account the strength and breadth of all their academic programs at both the undergrad and graduate/professional school levels:</p>
<p>It’s complicated, however, by the fact that Dartmouth is dedicated almost entirely to undergraduate teaching, and that Princeton and Brown (by many accounts) place a somewhat greater emphasis on undergraduate teaching than do the rest of the Ivies. It’s further complicated by the fact that Cornell is a unique hybrid, part super-elite private institution like its Ivy peers, part quasi-public land-grant institution, larger than the other Ivies, with ag and other programs not offered by any other Ivies, and these programs, coupled with the force of large numbers, tend to pull down Cornell’s average admissions stats. Cornell therefore gets unfairly tagged as the “easy” or the “dumb” or the “weakest” Ivy, when in fact Cornell CAS and Engineering are as elite as any in the Ivy League. Cornell Ag is probably also unmatched in its field; but no other Ivies even bother to contest that ground.</p>
<p>The answer is that while Cornell is a fine school it isn’t selective enough, because it can’t get stuendents who want to go to the 7 other ivies, a kind of vicious cycle. It ends up serving as a “safety” to the 7 oter ivies that is to say you will find many many hyp Penn brown dartmouth Columbia rejects will get into Cornell… Making it a school of other ivy rejects and therefore less prestigious that other ivies.</p>
<p>Uhh, no they don’t actually. This is a myth.
Check out Yahoo! Answers and search for “University of Pennsylvania” or “UPenn” or anything of the sort. A lot of people know its an Ivy and founded by Ben Franklin.
This is statistical SRS at work.</p>
It’s not a myth, as “lots” is a subjective term and a good deal of people that I meet have believed that the University of Pennsylvania was similar to any other University of [state] school. Perhaps not the majority of people in the Northeast, but you said “Ask anyone.”</p>
Why not? This is simple random sample. Sure you may find “stupid” questions in Yahoo! Answers, but it is well representative of the middle class of America. You are just plain elitist if you believe CC is any better than Yahoo! Answers. </p>
<p>And when I say ask anyone? See my response to Alexandre.</p>
<p>MrPrince, since when are high school students or current college students considered “educated”? An educated person must be wordly, travelled and should have benefited from the greatest teacher of all; time. I am sorry, but 15-25 year olds are not educated. Many are pursuing an education, but they do not qualify as educated. </p>
<p>And employers do not consider Cornell the weakest Ivy…nor do academics.</p>
<p>^I am sorry, but this isn’t Star Wars. People don’t have to have traveled or learn from “the greatest teacher of all time” to be considered educated. </p>
<p>People pursuing an education are educated or literate. Not uneducated or illiterate.</p>
<p>MrPrince, over 90% of Western Europeans and Americans aged 16 are pursuing an education and literate. They do not qualify as educated in this context (qualified to pass judgement on universities). And regardless of which era we live in, there will never be a substitute for time.</p>
<p>What I am impressed with Cornell is their full transparency - reporting the stats of all their 7 schools separately and then combining them for their undergraduate stats, no matter how much of a downward pressure it will result in.</p>
<p>On the opposite end of the Ivy League is Columbia (the Duke/WashStl of the Ivy League), which fails to file Common Data Sets and completely ignores the stats of 25% of its undergraduates, even though these 30-somethings with 3.0 GPA’s and 550 SAT’s use the same facilities, same faculty and attend the same classes as the other 75% of the Columbia undergraduates…what is also amazing, is that even as of today, Columbia is still reporting their Class of 2014 original 9.16% acceptance rate, compared to the final rate of 9.44% after the 75 kids were let in from the waitlist. Unbelievable!</p>
<p>by the way, I was very impressed by the Cornell Engineering School, which has a Math SAT 25/75 of 720-800, topped only by such schools as MIT, Caltech and Harvey Mudd.</p>
Please produce statistics. NU students are quite loyal to their alma mater school and only an extremely small number of students transfer out, if at all, they transfer out because they think their school isn’t good enough. I know quite a number of NU grads and neither of them thought Columbia or Penn was better.</p>
<p>Separate Acceptance Rates for Cornell Schools from a recent post on another thread, the most recent data, for the Cornell freshman class entering fall 2010, is as follows:</p>
<p>Ag 21.2%;
Hum Ec 31.3%;
ILR 20.1%;
Architecture 14.6%;
Arts & Sciences 15.7%;
Engineering 21.7%;
Hotel 26.0%; </p>
<p>This is ridiculous. Has anyone noticed that the only people interested in trashing Cornell are not people who actually go or went to Cornell? Why do these people care? It’s like a mean girls plot to cut someone out of the cool group.
People with first hand experience seem to respect the education they’ve received and have found it prepares them well for future endeavors. They also appreciate their non-traditional Ivy classmates who will have an impact on agriculture and the food supply (kind of important), the hospitality industry (don’t knock it because some day you might want a deal at the Four Seasons) and the astounding talent and work ethic of the undergraduate architects, just as examples.
In addition, Cornell has been on its own path forever–founded to accept everyone (!), both genders, all races and religions–and to prepare the post-Civil War nation for the future, combining arts and sciences with applied education. At that time HYPetc. (not Penn) were teaching white Christian males ancient Greek and theology. Cornell has led the way in defining the modern university.
Educational quality is not determined by the smallest possible admissions rate.</p>
<p>Hold on, if Cornell’s hotel management school is “unworthy” for collegiate study what about Yale’s nursing school and forestry school? Since when are they traditional fields of study?</p>
<p>Also, I believe Penn is the third oldest Ivy (not the sixth, as was posted earlier):</p>
<p>H - 1636
Y - 1701
Penn - 1740
Prin - 1742
Col - 1754
B - 1764
D - 1769
Cor - 1865</p>