<p>I believe the point trying to be made is that in comparing the selectivity of Cornell (the University) to Dartmouth (the College by name that’s a de facto university), you would say “Cornell University is less selective than Dartmouth College.”</p>
<p>However, when considering it for a particular applicant, Cornell University’s undergraduate acceptance rate matters little; rather, that applicant should consider the selectivity of the particular schools (s)he applied to. As Dartmouth’s undergrad is undivided (thank you, Wikipedia), its overall undergrad acceptance rate does pertain. Given that it seems that the average applicant to Dartmouth that was a cross-applicant to Cornell would likely apply to Arts & Sciences, it is thus pertinent to consider Dartmouth’s selectivity with the Cornell Arts & Sciences selectivity for an accurate comparison that is practical to most would-be undergraduate students considering both.</p>
<p>Going by that logic, it would imply that only a small portion of Cornell’s student body is of caliber comparable to Dartmouth’s students. Either way you slice it, Dartmouth is a notch above Cornell in selectivity. It is like saying since Penn Wharton’s selectivity is on par with Harvard, and that many who apply to Wharton also apply to Harvard Econ, you can’t definitely say that Penn is less selective than Harvard. Another issue is that the contract schools at Cornell aren’t that niche of schools, and there will be plenty of people who apply to these contract schools at Cornell who apply to Arts and Sciences divisions at other schools. ILR and Human Ecology are essentially social science schools with focuses on HR or policies. Anyone doing humanities may toss an app to either of these schools. And, Ag school is essentially all science school with a ‘Business’ major somehow attached to it.</p>
Yes, on the whole, it is. I was just trying to explain what had been said by other posters because I thought a lot of people weren’t getting it.</p>
<p>For an applicant to Cornell Arts & Sciences, the overall University acceptance rate means little. For an applicant to any specific school in the university, it’s best to look at that school’s specific admissions.</p>
<p>You are totally right BillyMc. The relevant comparison is with Cornell’s College of Arts & Sciences, which for the class of 2014 received over 17,000 applications for a class of about 1,000. The other colleges at Cornell truly are more specialized schools.</p>
<p>@Lazykid - Yes, most kids would apply to A&S colleges elsewhere; however, that point seems irrelevant in comparing. No college releases (that I know of) the data for acceptances/rejections on a major-by-major basis, thus, we have no way of knowing if Government at Cornell CAS is more or less selective than Political Science at Brown. We just don’t know. Obviously, colleges try and plan out their class to fill every department; that is just a fact of life. However, comparing across schools with any degree of accuracy would require that critical piece of information.</p>
<p>For example, Penn, according to its own admissions documents, is targeting science based majors, so I would theorize that getting into Penn with a Chem major marked is a heck of a lot easier than getting into Cornell with the same statement. Now, Penn may not be easier to get into overall than Cornell, but for those kids, it sure is. </p>
<p>Therefore, I think it is moot to argue over selectivity between colleges, because there is simply not enough data to do it properly. Any of these threads have brought up the generic CAS admissions rate, which is fine and dandy, but the point remains, certain majors are easier/less-competitive than others at each school due to the wishes of the applicant pool. I mean, that is something that seems to have been forgotten in this argument; each and every applicant pool for every school is at least slightly different from the others. Thus, this is all an experiment in foolishness, for while it might be killer competitive to get into Dartmouth as a History major this year, next year there might not even be enough qualified applicant to fill the seats.</p>
<p>But the applicants on the general are not so specialized, except for say architecture, hotel and engineering. seriously, there is a limit as to how specialized a high school student can get, and i believe many cals students are only specialized in that they showed interest in biology. A school with a large percentage of bio majors and yet higher admittance and lower average scores show that it is less selective.
The land grants are definitely easier to get into. Even CAS is easier to get into in cornell (by like 2-3%) in comparison to darmouth arts and sciences, but the difference is definitely a lot smaller when comparing the arts and sciences departments with each other</p>
<p>1) Colleges don’t make admission decisions based on an applicant’s suggested pick of major.
2) Students change their majors all the time, and colleges know it.
3) In fact, you can be admitted even if you indicate that you are undecided for a major.</p>
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<p>I highly suspect the validity of this statement.</p>
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<p>Acceptance rates and accepted students’ SAT score range serve as a proper, objective measure.</p>
<p>I would agree with this statement to an extent. Except - as I mentioned earlier, there is a fault with the assumption that an individual who applies to Dartmouth would apply to Cornell’s Arts and Sciences division.</p>
Yes, they do, for class planning purposes. They try to keep an even distribution among the humanities, social sciences, hard sciences, and soft sciences per year. Otherwise, the departments would have constantly to furlough each and every year to keep from being over/under staffed.
Though they know this, generally there is enough flow that major changing has a minimal effect on the admissions prospecs.
Obviously, but they then do examine what you’ve done and try to forecast an area to allot you. </p>
<p>Lazykid, this is just common sense that they need to do this. They cannot run over capacity, and they lose money if they do not fill departments which don’t have enough kids. Obviously, the best laid schemes of mice and men go oft awry, but still they certainly strive to keep all of the departments near capacity to keep from losing money.</p>
<p>About the Penn issue, it actually is something they acknowledged recently. They are really pushing to get more hard sciences majors because they typically under-enroll. It came up when people were discussing the recent issuance of the likely letters.</p>
<p>Objectivity is only so valuable as the standards upon which it is measured, and acceptance rates (as UChicago used to show) only mean something when an applicant pool is fully exposed. In the case of Cornell, it is disproportionately applicants fron NY State, which is unlike any other pool. Several years ago, when UChicago had 30+% acceptance rates, nobody would argue that the school was any worse off than it is now with its estimated 18% (and many would argue it was better). </p>
<p>SAT ranges are the most useless of all tools in the adcom’s arsenal; hence many admissions officers pay little attention to them beyond the initial weeding of highly unqualified applicants. Yes, one can argue that SAT scores generally correlate with IQ, but selectivity is not based on mettle alone, at least not in the country. In England, that’s all the rage, and if you prefer selectivity premised on such harsh objective measures, be my guest to go across the pond. However, in the US, colleges look much more closely at rigor, AP scores, EC’s, etc. which all serve to create a much more complete picture of each applicant as a person. No admissions officer will ever say that he or she is looking for just a brain; the American university system prides itself on being a developmental stage in maturity, not just giving an education.</p>
<p>I’ve heard AdComs say that they are looking to build a class, not accept a student. They could easily admit an entire class of 15-1600 SATs, but that would be a huge detriment to the learning environment. Students learn from each other, and they say that if everybody is so similar to everybody else, it diminishes one of the core values of the college experience.</p>
<p>1) I don’t think this statement is true. If you have an evidence to back up your claim, it would help.
2) Even if this statement is true, there will be a distortion of this purpose in long run; meaning, applicants will know certain majors are harder to get into and no one will apply to that specific major but instead apply to other ‘easy’ majors - destroying the purpose of admin’s efforts to enroll efficient number of students under each major. </p>
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<p>When I was applying, Cornell said that they ask applicants to list majors only for reporting purposes but not for admissions purposes. I believe that information still on the admissions website.</p>
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<p>Source? Again, even if this statement is true (which I doubt), that would encourage more applicants, then, to apply to other major for which the chances of admission is higher - thus destroying the purpose of the system.</p>
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<p>Let’s not confuse selectivity with the quality of the institution. The quality of academics at U of Chicago hasn’t changed over past few years, yet, it has become much harder for anyone to get in. Has largely to do with them switching to common application.</p>
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<p>There is a positive correlation between SAT scores and selectivity of an institution. The higher SAT, the higher the selectivity. Yet, that doesn’t imply that SAT is the sole metric of admissions criteria at top colleges.</p>
<p>This may hold true for small selective schools, such as Dartmouth, Princeton, or Williams. For a large school such as Cornell, I doubt this is possible. Additionally, assuming that high scoring SAT students are all ‘similar’ to each other, is ridiculous. I think that it is more of a case that admitting sub-par students who score low on SATs would be detrimental to the learning environment, not the other way around.</p>
Yeah, because smart people always test well and dumb people don’t… No offense, but this in-the-box institutionalized thinking is really crippling our educational system and ingenuity in our nation’s economy.</p>
<p>Actually they do limit acceptances by major. There is no rigid line, but they know just about how many to admit this year. If you are interested in something like Egyptology and you have the ecs and essays to back up your claim (Egyptology as a major), it will help you. If you are a typical bio major, it works against you. Source: A for admissions, written by a head Dartmouth admissions officer. They are trying to build a class so they want many kinds of people across the field, not just high scoring science and math majors. If Cornell just fills its class with science majors and leaves little room for people with different interests, how would Cornell sustain its multitude of programs (which cornell is known for having)? That’s why a lot of top scoring students, especially science focused, are on the waitlist. Cornell cannot afford to take all of them in. If an accepted student chooses to not go to Cornell, it opens up a spot for the admissions officer to pick a similar student in terms of interest from the waitlist.</p>
<p>Cornell’s slightly lower SAT range may be explained by the fact that:
Cornell take in a lot of people every year (needed to sustain life of its programs, and it is fitting for a college of this size)
Some specializations are not that focused on scores (Hotel, art, etc.)
land grants
athletic recruits (like others of the ivy league)
legacy bonus (like others of the ivy league)
URMs (like others of the ivy league)
Super rewarding early decision (unlike others of the ivy league)
high number of external transfers</p>
<p>If you are unhooked and you are not an early applicant things are going to be pretty tough for you anyways, especially in the privates</p>
<p>Cornell is well known for having an academic environment that will eventually weed out the unqualified students anyways (and regrettably even some qualified students in the process)</p>
<p>Wouldn’t that just encourage more to apply to ‘easier’ majors then? Like I mentioned earlier, 1) Students change majors often much to the knowledge of the colleges. 2) The system of using students’ intended major as a factor of admissions criteria won’t work in the long run. 3) It is widely accepted that even students who put ‘undecided’ for their choice of major get in, without admissions disadvantage. 4) Which is why, colleges don’t require that you declare your major until end of your sophomore year.</p>
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<p>1) Some majors do indeed contain more students than other majors, sometimes by a significant amount. Note: Economics, Biology, etc tend to be ‘big’ majors. Some other majors do indeed have significantly less number of students.</p>
<p>2) Few colleges actually admit you based on your choice of major, but not during Freshmen application cycle. One example is Berkeley, in which for you to get into a popular major such as business, economics, or psychology major, you first need to take the prerequisites then apply to these majors to be admitted. At Berkeley, they call certain majors that require admission as ‘impacted’ major. Such a system is never seen at top private schools, including all Ivies.</p>
<p>3) The issue with qualified applicants that are waitlisted - probably doesn’t have much to do with their pick of major. More to do with the fact that maybe people who are more qualified, whether in quantitative or qualitative measure, got in.</p>
<p>I admit I haven’t read the previous seven pages, but I wouldn’t say that one of these colleges is more “selective” than the other. They have different criteria: Cornell is fairly straightforwards in its admissions process, weighing academic indexes (grades, standardized tests) much more heavily than UPenn does; Cornell doesn’t seem to be looking for a specific type of person. Penn seems to focus on subjective matters with an emphasis on leadership and the Why Penn? Essay; a high GPA and test score won’t get you as far for Penn as opposed to Cornell.</p>
<p>I wasn’t being sarcastic and what I said seems to be something that may well be necessary for you to understand. One of the great values of Cornell is that it recognizes different types of intelligence for different fields. Your presumption that smart people can all be categorized by some test they took when they were 16, and then extrapolated to valid comparisons, is dangerous.</p>
<p>Perhaps once you’re in the real world for a while to experience the different ways intelligence comes into play and away from the structures of grading / testing it will make more sense.</p>