off point, but Parchment which is nothing more than self-reported anecdotes, is anything but accurate. (I just thought it ironic following your first sentence.)
Au contraire. As the land grant Uni for NYS, Cornell’s ‘contract colleges’ were established under the statue that funds SUNY. So, its related, kinda. As teh old saying goes, ‘Follow the Money!’
To a student in a contract college, however, the above technicality is irrelevant as they are still attending a private University who is a member of the Ivy League.
@lucy78 - you are entitled to your opinion and so am I. Parchment is wildly inaccurate. I can give you a multitude of examples that would call into question the credibility of Parchment. For instance:
Wash U sharing close to 50% cross admits with Yale?
If you are going to assume that 53% of students choose Cornell over NU based on parchment and make a blanked statement that more students choose Cornell, then I guess you need to accept that Wash U is apparently more desirable than Columbia and about equally desirable to Yale…
Furthermore, if we are going to trust Parchment’s data, then I would encourage you to look at how Cornell and Northwestern both compare to every ivy league, stanford, and MIT in cross admits. After a quick glance, Northwestern outperformed Cornell in just about every cross-admit battle with every other top ivy, S and M. So, it appears that even based on Parchment (your trusted resource), that Northwestern is more desirable than Cornell where it matters (competition with other top ivies). I have no doubt that Cornell wins cross admits with Emory, CMU and UMichigan but Cornell is significantly losing cross admits with the middle / top ivies and top 10 schools - it is NOT EVEN CLOSE.
Let’s get back to the facts and the only university ranking worth talking about (US NEWS). Cornell is a great university and so are the other top 30 universities. Cornell’s ranking at #16 is more than appropriate. Its admissions standards, reputation, hybrid public / private structure and relatively low endowment per student make it a top 20 school (not anywhere close to a top 10 university). Before anyone talks about international rankings, then I guess we should agree that the University of Washington and University of Wisconsin are superior to Dartmouth or Brown…please let Goldman Sachs and McKinsey know…
@merc81 and @lucy78 – more importantly, let’s look at the FACTS from Cornell’s own website. It has archived data that shows the clear admissions differences between the contract colleges and endowed colleges. Let’s look at Fall 2011…there is no reason to suggest that these types of differences have changed:
This is a pretty significant disparity, as I described above. Cornell Hum Ec is closer to Emory / UMichigan than it is to Cornell Arts / Science or Northwestern CAS. This data used to be published yearly and there was always a big difference between the contract colleges / endowed. You can imagine that some Cornell students in the endowed colleges have a chip on their shoulders when they are taking some classes with a student who was less accomplished / talented in high school. And for the record, Cornell gives out A TON of guaranteed transfers to ‘average’ students who generally have low SAT / ACT scores and/or low GPAs, in order to give them a future opportunity without diluting their stats for US News. US News does NOT consider transfer stats for the rankings…Again, talk to a handful of Cornell students or alumni off these boards and do NOT trust everything you read. Or talk to top students who went to competitive high schools in NYC, Westchester, or Long Island or the top private preps in NYC or New England, who send a massive amount of students to Cornell each year.
The “gap” between contract schools and endowed schools have significantly narrowed in the past years. For example, CALS freshman class of 2016, the middle 50% ACT score is 29-33. Not much different than the 30-33 that you posted above for the endowed schools. For 2018, the admission rate for CALS is 11.4% vs 10.9% for arts and science.
Another factor in the contract school admissions is “fit”. Test scoring is less important, extracurricular activities that “fit” or match the contract school’s mission have more weight. The students they accept, really want to go to the contract school due to the mutual “fit”. This is evident in the 70% yield rate for CALS admitted students vs 51% yield for arts and science.
@StanfordGSB00 To use 2011 numbers is pointless as things have changed so much in college admissions. The kids from my area who generally end up in the contract colleges are kids with top grades and scores. They are frequently kids who are at the top of their class but couldn’t afford private tuition but wouldn’t have qualified for aid so appreciate the discount and/or have a good fit with a contract school. And while they don’t tend to have that unique quality that would have gotten them into Harvard and Yale, Michigan is more like a safety for them. And as a side note, I know many many students who choose Michigan over Northwestern for the overall student experience. And I agree, Parchment is not exactly a reliable source,however, it is consistent with all other data that show Northwestern and Cornell are peers, with perhaps a slight edge going to Cornell.
So what if there are differences in admission between the contract and private divisions at Cornell. What matters for this particular student is if NU at $15,000+ more is a better choice than HUMEC. I know lots of people for whom that cost difference would be enough to mean that NU gets kicked to the curb.
Admission to HUMEC is not a death sentence. Depending on the choice of major, the student can take a lot of electives in other divisions. Heck, if the student is totally unhappy in HUMEC, systems exist for internal transfers within CU to other divisions.
And one final point - you keep mentioning Cornell kids in the Arts school having a chip on their shoulder. That is pure nonsense. You have kids sitting in a history class, playing intramural soccer, in a fraternity from every school and background. Do you think they are discussing how one kids had a high school GPA of 3.9 and one kid had a 4.2? And then they need to discuss how did your school weight your grades? How many APs did you take? They are all Cornell students once they are there. And yes, I know this from speaking to a large number of Cornell alum family and friends.
Pick the school you prefer if cost not a serious factor . No real difference. You have no idea what will come up in future to make either choice preferable The edge NU has that its giving you a whole new geographic.
The caliber of student at Northwestern University is higher than that at Cornell Human Ecology. This factor leans both ways. But, NU will definitely be a more intense academic experience. Again, leans either way depending upon what type of academic environment you are seeking.
The safer option for you is Cornell due to lower cost & less intense academics plus you already have your major picked out.
Since you are transferring from a SUNY, Cornell should also offer a comfortable environment as many other students will also be entering via GTO at Cornell from SUNY schools.
Overall, Penn (except Wharton), Cornell and Northwestern are peer schools.
merc81: parchment is 100% filed with self-reported anecdotes, which will never equal data in any way possible (as any AP Stat students will know). Thus, raising the concept of significance is a waste of good keystrokes.
Ha! This thread is the first time I’ve heard Cornell described as less intense in comparison to anything.
OP, from what I’ve read if you have good grades at Cornell, changing majors isn’t impossible.
If the money isn’t an issue, just choose whichever place you like best. If money matters and the difference is somewhat significant, choose the cheaper option. These are both great school and if you so well, both will help you with future successes.
Here is an objective difference between Northwestern and Cornell:
Faculty resources ranking from USNWR (and especially specific numbers)
Cornell
Faculty Resources Rank 23
Percent of faculty who are full-time 93.5%
Full-time faculty with Ph.D or terminal degree 93%
Classes with fewer than 20 students 57.3%
Classes with 50 or more students 18%
Student-faculty ratio 9:1
NU
Faculty Resources Rank 5
Percent of faculty who are full-time 94.5%
Full-time faculty with Ph.D or terminal degree 100%
Classes with fewer than 20 students 78.6%
Classes with 50 or more students 6%
Student-faculty ratio 6:1
I think there is also a large difference in endowment per student, with advantage again going to NU.
@osuprof: Yes, the EPS (endowment per student) is significantly larger at Northwestern compared to Cornell.
Based on the 2014 endowment & 2015 enrollment at each school, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported Northwestern’s EPS at $436,492 while Cornell had an EPS of $212,959.
Regarding endowment, , cut and pasting a prior post I made some time ago:
"My understanding is a lot of endowment income typically goes to financial aid, to lower student tuition costs.
State-supported institutions receive state funding, obviously, and already provide lower tuition in the first place, hence don’t need endowment for this function.
For example, Cornell is actually divided into The “Endowed Division” and the “Statutory Division”. The “statutory division” colleges receive funding from New York State. All its in-state students enrolled in the statutory colleges receive reduced tuition regardless of demonstrated need.
from a June 2008 article:
“The yearly check from Albany functions as a de facto endowment for the statutory colleges, funding professor salaries, student services, and research initiatives. Last year, Cornell received $175 MM in state support. That’s the functional equivalent of a $3.5 billion endowment.”
$3.5 billion divided by 20,000 students is additional $175,000 endowment equivalent per capita.
I’m sure these numbers have gone down since then, since state education funding is always under pressure.
Still “quasi-endowments” of this type should not be ignored, lest ye mislead.
“Thus true inter-institutional endowment comparisons which do not detail quasi-endowments represented by state funding initiatives as well as external research funding grossly misstate the comparability between institutions which may, or may not, be inherently non-comparable.”
List of colleges and universities in the United States by endowment - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "
