Cornell selectivity relative to UPenn.

Colleges & Universities A-Z Cornell University
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<p>bottom line guys, don’t worry about selectivity or rankings- just go to the school that is the best fit for you. the rankings don’t mean that much in the end. it is about a school that is a match, which for me is Cornell no doubt; like I said above, if you are from the midwest and want premed, what better then UM Flint honors where 100% get into medical school without screening; [Pre-Med[/url</a>]<br>
if you want top notch sciences, like upstate NY, and esp. if you are a NY resident, then cornell CALS or COE are great choices.
if you love NYC, then go to Columbia, NYU or Fordham
Why Penn (and all the other top schools) got thousands more apps this year and cornell apps stayed the same is a mystery; if if was just penn or brown that got more apps, that would be one thing, but how just about every other top school got thousands more this year and cornell stays the same is something that is difficult to explain,
even schools that stayed the same (or went a notch or 2 lower in the rankings) - all got thousands more this year, like NYU, Hopkins, Dartmouth etc
maybe it was the unfortunate incidents of last year at cornell…I think that is the only thing that cornell admissions can attribute it to unless there is another reason - maybe lower financial aid awards or something like that…
it just seems odd that a top school like cornell would get the same amount of apps when basically every other school went up by thousands from last year.
I guess it is a great time to be applying to cornell because it is an ivy which has about an overall 20% chance at admission compared to the other ivys which is about 10% or less based on the NYT numbers
that Dartmouth and Brown are now about twice as hard to get into compared to Cornell is hard to explain
<a href=“http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jdI0Wl7_OvQ/TUm7EvTvm6I/AAAAAAAAAH0/aMQsLGNZqgw/s1600/Class_of_2015.jpg[/url]”>http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jdI0Wl7_OvQ/TUm7EvTvm6I/AAAAAAAAAH0/aMQsLGNZqgw/s1600/Class_of_2015.jpg](<a href=“http://www.umflint.edu/majors/premed.htm]Pre-Med[/url”>http://www.umflint.edu/majors/premed.htm)</a></p>

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<p>I hear Arizona State has 99 percent acceptance rate…</p>

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<p>You’re getting too caught up in these numbers. Brown and Dartmouth have always had much lower admit rates. They’re much smaller schools and are traditionally a little more selective for their fewer spots. Harvard gets 35,000 applicants for far fewer spots than Cornell has because it’s Harvard and everybody just wants to see if they have a chance. It wasn’t that long ago that UPenn had an admit rate over 50%. </p>

<p>You could have 100,000 kindergartners apply to a school, all get rejected, and then brag about how selective the school is. I’m not saying admit rates are irrelevant, but certainly won’t impact your education much.</p>

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<p>Selectivity is a reflection of desirability and exclusivity. That in and out of itself has an intrinsic value. Harvard wouldn’t hold prestige if it has an admit rate comparable to say, University of Michigan.</p>

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<p>yes, but selectivity does not equal fit, in my opinion.</p>

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<p>Could this be true? Is there a “fixed” number of kids going specifically for an Ivy League spot every year? If that is the case, then maybe the varying freshman classes at all 8 Ivy League schools could possibly create the different admission rates. Obviously, it would appear that Cornell would have the highest admit rate under these circumstances, since they have the largest freshman class…just wondering.</p>

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<p>yes, it does seem that the fact that cornell has about twice as many students will give it a higher admit rate.</p>

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<p>By your logic, would you conclude that College of the Ozarks, Alice Lloyd College, Brigham Young - Hawai’i, Morgan State, Liberty, and Tougaloo are superior to Michigan because they are more “selective”? Is Cooper Union on par with Harvard?</p>

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<p>@Swimmer, there is only so large of a pool of qualified applicants. Is it fixed, no, but it is about proportional to the total number of seniors. However, I do know some people who are qualified for the Ivies, such as Cornell, who didn’t apply to them because of the facets of the school. For example, one kid at my school said that he didn’t apply to Dartmouth and Cornell because they’re “in the middle of nowhere”. Now, he is a perfectly qualified applicant who both the schools could have easily seen as a viable candidate, had he applied. The point being, these sort of non-blanket applying holdouts are the ones that the schools should be targeting by actively trying to dispel these ideas and make the school look fantastic. Penn’s done a remarkable job of cleaning up its image in the past few years, and its rankings and perceived selectivity have increased dramatically. Cornell should really do the same.</p>

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<p>USNWR did the cleaning up for penn. Cornell will always have a higher acceptance rate overall due to its size. Within individual schools in Cornell, this is not so much so.</p>

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<p>@bpspgs, why do you think cornell apps stayed the same this year while most every other top school got thousands more than last year? can’t be the location as that obviously has not changed.</p>

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<p>USNWR rankings go down, apps go down (in this case, stayed the same). simple as that.
Don’t worry. People still love cornell :)</p>

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<p>@England, Cornell’s marketing this year has been less than the rest of the Ivies, at least in what I received. I mean, the biggest difference is the Penn has emailed me about ten times over the last few months in marketing… Cornell, a whopping 0. I mean, when you’re seeing Penn in your inbox, preaching about its unifying spirit or affordability, it really reminds you of its existence. Whereas Cornell, had I not known about it beforehand and had a good friend attending it, probably would have not even been on my radar; all the mail I received from them was a postcard telling me to use the Common App, which ironically, is pretty decent marketing for every common app school, not just Cornell…</p>

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<p>@anti, good point, but that does not at all explain how some schools that went down a few notches and all the others that stayed the same in the survey got thousands more this year. Cornell not getting any more apps when the other schools in the survey that stayed the same (and some that even went lower) get thousands more is very hard to explain. Even the University President said something about it in an article and said if it happens again next year, they may have an issue…<br>
I really don’t think that many people obsess over rankings and selectivity as the people here on cc do. I personally think ranking and selectivity should have nothing to do with the choice of college - it’s all about fit and location.
Like I said above
bottom line guys, don’t worry about selectivity or rankings- just go to the school that is the best fit for you. the rankings don’t mean that much in the end. it is about a school that is a match, which for me is Cornell no doubt; like I said above, if you are from the midwest and want premed, what better then UM Flint honors where 100% get into medical school without screening;
[Pre-Med[/url</a>]
if you want top notch sciences, like upstate NY, and esp. if you are a NY resident, then cornell CALS or COE are great choices.
if you love NYC, then go to Columbia, NYU or Fordham
Why Penn (and all the other top schools) got thousands more apps this year and cornell apps stayed the same is a mystery; if if was just penn or brown that got more apps, that would be one thing, but how just about every other top school got thousands more this year and cornell stays the same is something that is difficult to explain,
even schools that stayed the same (or went a notch or 2 lower in the rankings) - all got thousands more this year, like NYU, Hopkins, Dartmouth etc
maybe it was the unfortunate incidents of last year at cornell…I think that is the only thing that cornell admissions can attribute it to unless there is another reason - maybe lower financial aid awards or something like that…
it just seems odd that a top school like cornell would get the same amount of apps when basically every other school went up by thousands from last year.
I guess it is a great time to be applying to cornell because it is an ivy which has about an overall 20% chance at admission compared to the other ivys which is about 10% or less based on the NYT numbers
that Dartmouth and Brown are now about twice as hard to get into compared to Cornell is hard to explain
<a href=“http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jdI0Wl7_OvQ/TUm7EvTvm6I/AAAAAAAAAH0/aMQsLGNZqgw/s1600/Class_of_2015.jpg[/url]”>http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_jdI0Wl7_OvQ/TUm7EvTvm6I/AAAAAAAAAH0/aMQsLGNZqgw/s1600/Class_of_2015.jpg](<a href=“http://www.umflint.edu/majors/premed.htm]Pre-Med[/url”>http://www.umflint.edu/majors/premed.htm)</a></p>

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<p>I don’t know why you keep bringing up that same link over and over again.
I never know if you are being sarcastic/ bitter when you are saying that but you certainly sound like it. It is obviously not that good to get in while admissions % is high, but yes it’s better to apply, considering that admissions will get more and more strict as time goes by.
What matters is the quality of education and what employers perceive of cornell, and they’re nothing short of fantastic.
If you want to see what i got when i googled Ivy league rankings (first link), here you go. It takes into consideration “PBA, The Times, Jiao Tong and the USnews”.

[List</a> of Ivy League Schools | Ivy League University Ranking | American Universities and Colleges Rankings](<a href=“http://www.plant-biology.com/Ivy-League-university-Rankings.php]List”>http://www.plant-biology.com/Ivy-League-university-Rankings.php)
If you care about what other people on cc think of cornell (which you really should not care about), i googled for you to see:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/high-school-life/596299-whats-your-ivy-league-rankings.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/high-school-life/596299-whats-your-ivy-league-rankings.html&lt;/a&gt;
Clearly, cornell is not one of the big three, but it certainly has a fair standing among the non-big threes :slight_smile: and with that i’m happy.</p>

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<p>Englandern, you doth worry too much. Cornell still received 4,500 more applications than Penn last year. Cornell’s US News ranking was unchanged this year. Btw, these rankings are wilding subjective, the product of one man who works for a magazine which exists largely just to publish lists. And for-the-record, US News ranks Cornell and Penn equally for academic reputation.</p>

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<p>Canadians used to have it’s own pool of FA money, now it’s combined with internationals. Canadians used to get very generous FA from Cornell, and traditionally Cornell always had a lot of Canadians (close to Toronto and FA). I wonder if there are less Canadians applying to Cornell because of FA. I think the new Canadian FA policy just went into effect recently.</p>

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<p>no offense, but you are making too much over the rankings - forget about rank and selectivity - all that matters is fit and location. whatever that link to plant biology rankings, it is not really relevant. kids here on cc obsess and apply to schools based on rankings which is ridiculous.<br>
the only issue here in the past few threads is why cornell apps stayed the same this year when other top schools (some of which even went down in the rankings you mention) got thousands more apps.
don’t be bitter or sarcastic about anything, but if you have some constructive input on why that happened, then you should post and it could be helpful to the discussion
and just forget about rankings - forget about selectivity, go to a school because it is a fit and the location works
picking a school because of its reputation, ranking etc is not a good thing</p>

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<p>englandern, why did you post : “if was just penn or brown that got more apps, that would be one thing, but how just about every other top school got thousands more this year and cornell stays the same is something that is difficult to explain, .”

  • after the several reasonable explanations had already been posted?</p>

<p>I, for one, do not find the several possible explanations that were posted previously on this thread to be at all difficult concepts.</p>

<p>What I do find a difficult concept is what would motivate someone to go on and on about the same point, even after this had been already dealt with earlier on this very thread and the various explanations had already been advanced. I can readily see why a ■■■■■ from another school would behave that way, but not someone who had committed to attend this school in ED.</p>

<p>As I previously mentioned, Yale applications went down, and Penn applications went down, in prior years. Maybe go raise hysteria about them instead.</p>

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<p>@mony, no need to raise hysteria. Cornell is fine for me and many other people.
given that you say several explanations have been offered, ok, then that’s that and move on. No mention was made of prior years; just focusing on the anomaly which seems to have happened this year with apps. maybe it is the unfortunate incidents of last year, maybe not. The other years are not the focus of the discussion, as much as why there was such an enormous disparity this year between cornell and the others. I know you may not find it a significant issue, but even Cornell’s President commented on it when he was interviewed. You may not find it note worthy, but some people do and were simply trying to elicit an explanation for the app figures this year at cornell vs. virtually every other top school.
no need to bash cornell or support cornell on this issue; instead simply looking for insight into why it occurred. The University President did suggest that it could be related to last year’s events.</p>