<p>I really don’t think it matters because Cornell gets more than 30k applicants a year from all over the world - and they know many people can’t really afford to visit somewhere too far away because of inconvenience. They just wouldn’t bother to keep track of it. Even the interviews for some schools in Cornell don’t matter towards admittance.</p>
<p>mhmm, there’s absolutely nothing on Cornell’s website or common data set that suggests that information sessions are required for admission. It would make no sense for a school to have a “secret” requirement like that, that you could only find out once you were on campus picking up a physical tri-fold brochure. Furthermore it flies in the face of the data points of known instances where students were accepted RD without having visited (including my son, who was certainly not such a spectacular applicant that they would have waived a “requirement” for him). You must have misunderstood or misinterpreted something. Even if they “take names” when you visit, they may be recording the information for their own internal analysis, rather than to impact admission decisions.</p>
<p>Did your son apply to CAS?</p>
<p>Simple math dictates that this cannot be a requirement. Cornell receives more than 30,000 applications. If we assume the Admissions Office is open for tours on roughly 250 of them, this would mean an AVERAGE of 120 applicants every day. I would be surprised if they are able to handle 120 students (plus family) on their busiest day.</p>
<p>If we assume that half this number actually visit, that is still an average of 60 students per day - still an awfully high number that assumes an equal distribution of visits (does anyone visit Cornell on Tuesdays in February?. This would also mean that HALF the applicants would be disqualified based on a single arbitrary requirement.</p>
<p>Finally, I simply cannot imagine the enormous outcry if advocates for URMs and economically disadvantaged applicants received word of this policy. College visits are expensive and this policy would effectively exclude the vast majority of these applicants.</p>
<p>My son applied and was admitted to the college of engineering – but I can promise you that it’s also not a CAS requirement. If it were a requirement, it would be easy to find that information on their website. I can assure you that they don’t have a secret requirement to visit campus that you can only find out about by picking up a flyer once you’re on campus. That makes no sense at all. There’s something you misunderstood, or something was misprinted. If that were a requirement, it would be very well known (and as rmldad says, people would be up in arms about it). It’s particularly absurd to imagine that an information session is a requirement at a school that publicizes the fact that demonstrated interest is not considered, and visiting a school is a sign of demonstrated interest.</p>
<p>CAS [Freshman</a> Requirements](<a href=“http://as.cornell.edu/admissions/requirements.cfm]Freshman”>http://as.cornell.edu/admissions/requirements.cfm)
“Visits encouraged, and information sessions recommended.”</p>
<p>COE says the same in more verbose language [Cornell</a> Engineering: Visit the College](<a href=“http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/admissions/undergraduate/visit.cfm]Cornell”>http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/admissions/undergraduate/visit.cfm)
"The campus is truly magnificent and worthy of a visit. We encourage you to do just that!</p>
<p>We suggest that you attend an Engineering Information Session led by one of our admissions officers."</p>
<p>It’s clearly not a requirement or even a tipping factor in either case. They are just encouraging people to come see how great Cornell is, and to make sure the student feels that it will be right for them.</p>
<p>I never said it was a requirement. It is strongly recommended. When such language exists in any wording about admissions, people who ignore it, do so at their peril usually. And we are discussing people who are able to do so, more or less. I cant imagine it applying to people who are in wyoming and living on public assistance.<br>
your – They are just encouraging people to come see how great Cornell is, and to make sure the student feels that it will be right for them. – clearly you are stating what Cornell wants - to make sure the student feels that it will be right for them before they give an offer of admission.</p>
<p>“Strongly” is your word. Cornell’s words are “encouraged”, “recommended” and “suggested”. From just that wording alone, it’s not 100% clear whether they are “recommending” a visit because it will increase your chances of admission, or because it will be helpful for the student in making an informed decision about whether or not to apply. </p>
<p>The clarification that they must only mean it for the student’s own information and not as a tipping point in admission is the fact that they clearly and publicly state that demonstrated interest (which includes things like registered visits and attendance at information sessions) is NOT CONSIDERED at all as a factor in admissions. Therefore they must be “recommending” the visit for the purpose of educating and informing the student, not to help them get in.</p>
<p>It seems quite obvious that they are not “recommending” a campus visit in the same way they are “recommending” 3 years study of a foreign language (deviations from which must be explained with your application). </p>
<p>Plenty of people who are not living on public assistance still can’t afford to travel to visit all of the schools they are applying to prior to making their applications, or in some cases even prior to making their decisions. This is why they offer other ways of learning about the school such as [Cornell</a> University - The Ithaca Campus - Virtual Tours](<a href=“Visit | Cornell University”>Visit | Cornell University)</p>
<p>This topic isn’t really worth the back and forth, but … yes strongly is my word.
When even in the selling bits of the college web site words such as “Students who want to learn more about the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP) are encouraged to attend. The session is approximately 1.5 hours long. Registration is required” and “Students who want to learn more about the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) are encouraged to attend” – generally one reads this type of text as “oh yes, that would be a good thing to do”, rather than “oh that sounds extremely optional to me”.</p>
<p>I know that others originally “shot down” my contention that attending the info session meant “something”, but the “feeling” we got was that it did. At ours, the 6-7 students were asked to introduce themselves & where they were from, fill out a questionnaire, the admissions person running the session circulated while this was happening & looked at my D’s info., talked with her about raising her SAT score. It definitely gave the feeling that it just wasn’t them purely giving out information, but rather also Cornell “sizing up” the students. This may differ from College-to-college, size of group, etc., but other families we know that have attended have gotten the same vibe".</p>
<p>I’m going to drop it at this point. It is our experience that not visiting wasn’t an issue for our son who was admitted RD without visiting even though we live relatively nearby. (In our case, the reason for not visiting was that he added Cornell to his list just days before the RD deadline based on advice we received here.) </p>
<p>Visiting is never a bad thing, and can save you from applying somewhere you ultimately won’t feel is a good fit, and can help you get excited about a school that you feel <em>is</em> a good fit. It can provide fodder for an essay on why you want to attend a particular school (which both CoE and CAS require in their supplements). So if you can visit before applying, that’s fantastic. If not, based on the information in the common data set, I don’t believe it will negatively impact your admission chances, but I can’t say that for sure for all colleges. </p>
<p>fwiw, we did visit for an admitted students’ day in the spring. They required registration in advance (presumably for planning purposes) and did require us to check in, so they did keep track of who actually attended, even though it could have no bearing on admission decisions at that point.</p>
<p>Good luck to everyone applying!</p>