Let’s be real here. Very rarely will someone with ivy league stats ever attend a community college. However, in many cases students with upper level state school stats do attend. Around say a 2100 on the SAT, top 10% of their class, unhooked and some moderate extracurriculars. This student probably wouldn’t get into a top 20 school, but would get into most schools in their state with partial scholarships. This is an example of a “top 10%” community college student.</p>
<p>
This is probably true. But let’s not forget that the top 20% of people at Cornell REALLY is the top 20% of the already self selected top 10% of high school students to begin with. So if there are 100 people in high school total in the nation, and 10 people get into Cornell, only 2 of them would considered “top 20% students.” Not to mention that this assumes that there is an even distribution among students at Cornell. </p>
<p>I’m willing to bet that the top 20% of students at any ivy league school are much smarter than the other 80%. The top students are Cornell are probably geniuses.</p>
<p>“majoreco why wouldn’t 4 year schools be an option for families that make less than $40,000? Wouldn’t that student get a full financial aid package to cover the COA like at Cornell?”</p>
<p>No they would not get a full financial aid package like they would get at Cornell. The state schools do not have the endowments that Cornell and other top universities have. A student who is considered under privilaged at Cornell will get most of their cost covered with just some minor expenses such as the student contribution, books and spending money. This is basically as free a ride as possible and most kids would be thrilled with such a package. The same kid who applied to his or her state school would have to have near perfect stats to get a full tuition grant, plus room and board. Most kids who have EFCs of 0 would only be given enough to attend their instate college but they would need loans to cover the cost of room, board, text books and expenses. These are the type of kids who should be applying to the Ivy’s because they would get an Ivy education at a next to nothing pricetag. Of course Cornell is just not stat driven so the kid who has low EFC but high stats great GPA and an assortment of other stand out qualifications would have a wonderful opportunity at Cornell and like schools.</p>
I agree that Cornell should require the submission of standardized test scores, but I don’t believe that any more hurdles should be provided to transfer students than to high school seniors that apply, which seems to be the position taken throughout the thread.
I agree that different schools possess different admission philosophies, just as different businesses possess different hiring practices, but I, at the same time, find it doubtful that either an employee or a random citizen has a better grasp of how Microsoft should do its hiring than a human resource specialist that actually possess a track record. There’s definitely a wrong way to make such decisions.
I certainly am implying that a community college student with a 3.9 GPA is just as, if not more qualified than a student from a no-name, inner city high school with the same GPA. Do you have any reason to believe otherwise? I’d be extremely interested in reading it.
So far I’ve seen no logical refutation to the point, other than the circular argument that it’s absurd because it’s absurd. Although you never stated that “community college students are idiots” it’s certainly implied and all but hammered down throughout the remaining portion of your post.</p>
<p>“I agree that Cornell should require the submission of standardized test scores, but I don’t believe that any more hurdles should be provided to transfer students than to high school seniors that apply, which seems to be the position taken throughout the thread.”
No it isn’t. Just make that a requirement and most people would be satisfied.</p>
<p>“Most high schools don’t rank their students. Only 45% of high schools report class ranks, which puts the other 55% into the same boat as the community colleges.”</p>
<p>“Many colleges say that the absence of a class rank forces them to put more weight on standardized test scores.” - This works with high school students, but for contract college transfers they don’t need to report test scores - so what is there to rely on if cc applicants choose not to reveal their scores? Hiding rankings is usually reserved for really competitive high schools, in which getting a 3.9 UWGPA really, really means something. Ccs do it because they simply don’t care, and most of the students don’t care either. When you get put with a bunch of apathetic kids and get put in a curriculum designed for those apathetic, it isn’t that hard to excel either.</p>
<p>"I certainly am implying that a community college student with a 3.9 GPA is just as, if not more qualified than a student from a no-name, inner city high school with the same GPA. " - Yeah a very very large percentage of kids from cornell who aren’t URM aren’t from no-name, inner city high schools. Cc students with 3.9 aren’t comparable with Cornell students (many of whom came from top publics and other privates) with a 3.9 in their high schools. One of my friends is taking 5 higher level courses @ the local cc such as higher level math (Lin. alg) and he literally spends no time whatsoever doing work (he’s doing this as he waits for his school’s first semester to start), and now he has a 4.0. Our high school was very, very different.</p>
<p>"So far I’ve seen no logical refutation to the point, other than the circular argument that it’s absurd because it’s absurd. Although you never stated that “community college students are idiots” it’s certainly implied and all but hammered down throughout the remaining portion of your post. "</p>
<p>I can say harry potter is absurd because it’s absurd. Can you disprove that we don’t live in a world with magic and wizards, and that all this happened but we were just magically made to not know about it? Can there be technologically advanced aliens on the moon watching our every move who are toying with our existence while hiding theirs? No, you can’t, because there is simply no way for you to disprove these statements without some convoluted methods that nobody on here is willing to go through in order to prove. Rather, use common sense. It’s just absurd.</p>
<p>If CC students with 3.9s are as academically qualified as say higher tier high school students with 3.9s (because they are where most 1st year cornell students come from), then how come nobody in the world acknowledges them for it? Is it a worldwide conspiracy? No, it’s just that you are thinking too much about it. CCs are at the bottom of the “academic food chain” and are simply known that way. You keep comparing CC students to a minority of cornell applicants - applicants from inner cities, applicants from schools that do not show rankings (which is a faulty comparison because most of those are competitive high schools) - by doing so you are already insinuating that they cannot compete when you consider the body of hs applicants as a whole.</p>
<p>I don’t know where you got the 45% figure from as your first article implies that 60% of HS still rank their students. 60% is a lot better than 0% and the implication of the article is that it’s the top high schools who don’t rank. I agree with them that rankings are more important for lower tier high schools.</p>
<p>The point is that it is a lot better to get a sense of a freshman applicant than it is to get a sense of a 3.9 GPA CC applicant. There is just way too much heterogeneity b/w CC’s. CC students are not idiots. But, even above average students don’t belong at Cornell. It’s an elite school and it should receive elite students.</p>
Then, it would seem that we have nothing to debate about, outside of a few tangent points. I, however, am unconvinced that this is the view of most who have participated in thread, especially when people are still arguing that the average high school is more rigorous than the average community college.</p>
<p>
Common sense is most often the refuge of racist crackpots and religious zealots when science can’t back up their claims. No scientist in his right mind would rely on “common sense” to support a point. “Well, I believe that the Earth is flat because we’ve always thought that way. If it was round we’d fall off. That’s just common sense.” If you can’t reason through a point without it falling apart then that sets up some major alarm bells.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Have you ever heard of a [Peer</a> Effect](<a href=“http://www.nber.org/digest/apr01/w7867.html"]Peer”>Peer Effects in the Classroom | NBER)? It’s much harder to remain motivated in an environment filled with apathetic, lazy peers than it would be when surrounded by positive role models. And it’s not as if community colleges actually curve the grades, so that the students can pass either. More often the difficulty remains the same, and the vast majority of the class fails out. Just because it’s open admission doesn’t mean that everyone can handle college-level work.</p>
<p>The claim that successful community college students are less capable than successful high school students is a claim that can be reasoned through and even assessed empirically. The existence of magic or of any deity cannot be. That is to say, that one presents a falsifiable hypothesis and the other doesn’t. Your claim has already been falsified empirically, and the question that we’re discussing has been tested numerous times. [This[/URL</a>] is why scientists and statisticians haven’t relied upon “common sense”, since The Enlightenment.</p>
<p>To be honest, I had quoted from a Wikipedia article, which supposedly cited a now non-existent College Board page. But since I had cross-referenced it, and the figure matched up with everything else I had seen, that doesn’t particularly matter to me. The MNDaily listed a similar figure of [URL="<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost]40%[/URL</a>] and the second link I posted listed the collection of high school class rankings at [URL=”<a href="http://www.nassp.org/Content.aspx?topic=61042"]50%[/URL">http://www.nassp.org/Content.aspx?topic=61042"]50%[/URL</a>]. The question still remains as to what the admission board should do with such a staggering amount of high schools that don’t provide class rankings, especially when the trend is only increasing. I think it’s safe to say that 40-60% of high schools aren’t “elite”, so why wouldn’t the same methods be applied towards them, as are applied to community colleges?</p>
<p>
I feel like a jerk for calling this one out, but this statement is just too naive for words. Does anyone over 20 believe this? That’s a serious question, with no offense intended.</p>
<p>Look, sometimes common sense is just common sense. While it might make sense that the best cc students may do better than hs students from the worst public high schools, cc students just can’t compare to the high school student application pool (at least of Cornell) when gpas are equal. We all know people who go to ccs- unless they really can’t afford a state school, they’re just lower in caliber. The people i know who go to ccs are the partiers of high school/ kids with low scores/grades who get rejected from state schools and continue to party it up in cc (this is far from a singular case). This is the de facto norm. Of course, to debate this further I would have to try pretty darn hard to pull up some rarely searched-for source that relates to this topic - but this is because people just don’t really question this fact that qualified hs kids just don’t list ccs among their choices when there are schools that give need based aid and when are state schools. You can argue that every top ccer is one of those kids that are really poor and can’t even afford a state school and just don’t have good enough credentials to get any merit scholarships at a state school. But then this already says something about those students, and this is also obviously not the case. </p>
<p>Anyways I was just trying to show that this was nonsense. Obviously this means something more to you for you to argue it so fervently… arguing for your self worth perhaps? We wouldn’t be having this argument if you thought that you would have a chance comparable to that of other high school students and aren’t headed for cc. Look there is no value to proving ur worth here. Do it in the real world, because people have preconceptions about cc students and they are generally correct. If you are just saying that I can’t prove that they aren’t comparable to the cornell applicant pool of hs students, I can’t, but neither can you prove that they are. </p>
<p>As i said, I would be fine with the entire thing if they simply make scores a part of the transfer application to the contract colleges, simple as that - because that is the only real edge that they have (admission chances are largely based on sat -not considered for such transfers- and gpa -not really hard to get a good one in a cc-) and because of that advantage and the fact that transferring takes quite a bit of weight off high school performance, quite a number of people abuse it as the “backdoor way in” which bothers me .</p>
<p>Geez, what’s going on with this thread? I just wanted to say that my son has attended a couple of the Ivies for summer programs and visited a raft of East Coast schools and after it was all said and done it was Cornell that won his heart. He HOPES to be admitted. ;)</p>
It cant be helped. People have been discussing this topic since post #4. Id rather not maintain it as a debate thread, either, but its difficult to ignore a controversial statement, once someone has already posted it.</p>
<p>
Then its fortunate that we arent discussing the people that you know from CC, nor do we particularly have to when others have already gone through the rigor of collecting actual data. Nor would it be logical, even without the data, since were explicitly discussing students that the Cornell board of admissions clearly believe are adequate transfer material. The average community college student, who fails out in the first few quarters and doesnt even apply to Cornell, doesnt even enter into the equation.</p>
<p>
People of a particular group are offended when you make large generalizations about them? Well, that makes sense. That also goes a long way in explaining why I dont make offensive, stereotypical comments about other peoples culture or background.</p>
I actually agree with this last one, but as stated, your reasoning and other conclusions are faulty, and dont seem to be backed up by much hard evidence.</p>
<p>“The average community college student, who fails out in the first few quarters” - they really don’t. It’s simply because it’s that easy. </p>
<p>Were we talking about cc students v high school applicants or transfers v regulars of a particular major? You have no pertinent evidence either. “Many sources” - really, then post 7 up to date articles pertinent to the subject that we were talking about before.</p>
<p>Anyways as I said before you are only trying to hard because this is an argument for your academic value. I honestly just don’t really care if it’s offensive because on cc i’m really able to speak my mind and that’s how i feel, and this is honestly also how most people feel (Your argument is comparable to saying the higher scoring inner city students are as academically comparable to top students of top ranking publics and privates. They might have a similar drive, but they aren’t academically comparable because of the opportunity that was offered to them. It is not that easy to catch up. However, in this case, the cc students just really don’t care and it’s easy to do well against such apathetic peers). Cc students have always been looked down upon academically. I don’t care if it makes me sound biased, because you are obviously biased as well (since you are going to a cc). We wouldn’t be arguing this if you weren’t planning to go to a cc and transferring from there instead of applying directly as a high school senior because your credentials weren’t even close to good enough - you are already among the better of the cc students because you are at least trying. Don’t say you would - because you know for a fact that this would be a blatant lie, as this would not even pertain to your life. Anyways, this argument won’t change others’ perceptions of most cc students nor would it change the quality of the students that go to cc in the first place.</p>
<p>Anyways, I am done. Keep arguing however much you want to. Perhaps you will realize this upon your time @ a cc</p>
<p>^oh well, then those students are even worse than i thought.
Anyways, make it mandatory for them to report their standardized test scores and we’ll see how they would do.</p>
<p>“I feel like a jerk for calling this one out, but this statement is just too naive for words. Does anyone over 20 believe this? That’s a serious question, with no offense intended.”</p>
<p>From your above statement, I assume that you’re claiming that hard work and diligence are not the most significant factors in ensuring success. The central topic of this entire debate is based on the resolution for the implementation of an SAT or ACT requirement to the transfer students’ applications. As we have all observed from personal experience as well as empirical evidence, GPA is not a measure of intelligence or capability; rather, it is an indicator of diligence and effort. Since community colleges do not rank and since some CCs are undoubtedly more challenging than others, GPA is not a “fair” operational definition for considering effort and hard work. Then the CLOSEST thing we would have to an equitable factor would be standardized test scores, which also do not measure intelligence: these tests measure APTITUDE. Working from the basis that all human beings are created equally intelligent and that knowledge and scholarly mastery is EARNED through experience, effort and aptitude are all we have to consider in terms of academic prowess. If you are discounting both (since no standardized GPA exists and CCs do not rank), then there really isn’t anything to measure students by academically.</p>
<p>And just because you don’t agree with my statement and the fact that you may be older doesn’t mean I’m naive. It may simply mean that you’ve taken a different approach and outlook to your lifestyle. I don’t know who you are. You could be a CC student looking to redeem yourself in the eyes of who knows who, maybe an Ivy student, or maybe even an admissions officer. I do know this though. My family and I have come a long way from the dregs of society and moved up the ranks through sacrifice, frugal spending, and HARD WORK. You think you know adversity? Try starting public school in rural Indiana without knowing a word of English, clinging to your mom’s back as she takes you to school every morning on bike because your family doesn’t have a car, or being told that your applications at your dream schools are far less competitive solely on the basis of your genetic inheritance. Different outlook, different perspectives. You may attribute occurrences to fatalism or situational factors, but I believe hard work and diligence will always pay off. I turn 18 in 2 days, and at the risk of having to eat my own words, in 733 days, I tell you now that I will be of the same mindset.</p>
<p>Cornell wraps up its season on the road at Hanover and I wish all good luck for rd applicants. I agree with Matrix and Soccer, early decision thread was really peaceful! While i was reviewing some posts here, i really do not know why all these arguments are going one. Its truly supported for regular decisions and nothing else.</p>