<p>I'm curious about this. I would imagine Wharton gets a really high number of applications - maybe 5000 or 6000? I'd assume engineering gets at least 2000-3000, and nursing gets at least around 2000. </p>
<p>Total, Penn gets about 23000 applications. So I'm assuming CAS itself gets around 12000 applications? Assuming that CAS has say, a 55% yield rate (I would assume Penn's overall yield rate is buoyed considerably by Wharton and specialized programs like Nursing), this breaks down to around 2700 admits out of 12k applicants, or about a 23% accept rate. This could be way off though, because Penn also uses ED pretty shrewdly, so if they accept a ton of CAS kids ED, that can really drop the accept rate in a kind of superficial manner. </p>
<p>Are my estimates here accurate? I'm always confused by Penn's numbers because they disclose everything as one lump sum, and there actually is so much diversity in the undergrad population. </p>
<p>Additionally, I'm curious because it seems as if, with just CAS in mind, applications to CAS could increase. If you look at other similarly sized colleges (Duke and Brown have class size similar to CAS), many other schools are getting 20k+ applications to the college. Penn's College is only receiving around 12k apps. Why is this?</p>
<p>"Each College class is composed of approximately 1,500 freshmen selected from over 14,000 applicants."</p>
<p>There were roughly 14,250 applicants to the College this year, according to Furda who said that applications to CAS went up by a couple hundred, and in the reverse direction for Wharton - which is why the overall number only increased by 4.</p>
<p>"This year, 2,411 students were accepted to the College of Arts and Sciences, 837 to the School of Engineering and Applied Science, 544 to Wharton and 134 to the School of Nursing, according to Dean of Admissions Eric Furda."</p>
<p>2411 were accepted from both ED and RD.</p>
<p>2411/14250=.169, or a 16.9% acceptance rate.</p>
<p>This fits in with the rest of the data precisely, for an overall admit rate of 17.1%.</p>
<p>A general rule: Wharton is below the admit rate, CAS = the admit rate, and SEAS and Nursing is above the admit rate.</p>
<p>Also, I don't like your tone at all. I'm pretty sure you're just a Chicago troll in disguise.</p>
<p>Oh, by the way: until 2 years ago, 14k applicants was the norm for highly selective colleges with 1,500 spots (see Brown, Dartmouth, Columbia admissions statistics from 2000-2005).</p>
<p>In the last 2 years, Brown/Dart/Columbia exploded (well, mostly Brown). Penn stagnated, because Stetson left in the middle of the year and the admissions office was in turmoil. It was not back up to speed until quite recently. I expect Penn to catch up now.</p>
<p>Haha easy muerte - also, guilty as charged, I'm a big fan of the U of C. I went to Chicago for college and loved it. I did my grad work at Penn and enjoyed it. Penn students always seemed very status-conscious to me though, and in recent years I've wondered just how selective the undergrad population is. Thanks for Penn's numbers, they are certainly selective. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, from some of your previous posts, you seem to fit the bill a bit for the "hyper-aware" of status Penn student. I encountered a lot of undergrads who were very cognizant of rankings, Penn's status as an ivy league school, etc. I liked Penn a lot, but I never really got this feel from Chicago, or from the large number of undergrads I've met in my time from Brown or Dartmouth. </p>
<p>It's something interesting I've seen from the years I spent at Penn, and it was a bit unsavory, to be honest.</p>
<p>muerteapablo is just upset that Penn's acceptance rate rose slightly while Cornell closed within exactly 2% (17.1% vs. 19.1%), despite wanting to grow its class size by 100 students this year, otherwise it would be even closer (~18.5%). Not to mention the extremely high percentage penn takes ED that artificially lowers its acceptance rate.</p>
<p>Cue7, your criticism is fair, but I think it's also outdated. Penn has only recently become as selective and highly-ranked as its peers, so naturally its students became extremely sensitive to that fact. But that was 9 years ago, when the shift first occurred. Now, I feel, students enter campus with confidence in Penn's new status.</p>
<p>Brown and Dartmouth have been preppy perennials for decades, so their students are obviously more comfortable with their perceived location in the academic pantheon.</p>
<p>As for Hermanns comment, I don't want to make the wrong impression:</p>
<p>I think that certain colleges at Cornell are easily on par with their Ivy League counterparts, and produce fantastic scholars. I am referring to the engineering, architecture, and arts & sciences schools. The others, however, are patently less selective and chock-full of idiotic New Yorkers who want to see their tax dollars at work.</p>
<p>Muerte - Yah that's fair. I was at Penn a few years back, so maybe now life on campus is a little different. Back then, students seemed to cling to their "#5 ranking and ivy league status" a little too tenaciously. Don't get me wrong, I liked Penn a lot, I'll just be glad when the status-consciousness falls to the wayside a bit. </p>
<p>Interestingly, I think Penn's next big step is to really bulk up its academic reputation in certain scholarly areas. This will happen in time, of course, but Rodin (and Gutmann a bit) really put a lot of effort into rejuvenating the neighborhood and strengthening college selectivity. These were good, productive areas, but I think the next big move is to really focus on making some big hires in areas such as Poli Sci, History, math, etc. Penn's reputation as a practical, professional-type school is superb, but it doesn't yet have a ton of credibility as a scholarly place. </p>
<p>The extreme top schools (Harvard, Stanford, etc.) really have a lot of excellence across the board. Penn is getting there, but I hope more resources will be put toward this goal in the future. Of course, I was on track for a doctorate in the social sciences, so I may be a bit biased here ;-). Nevertheless, I can't see Penn getting a ton more selective at the undergrad level, and they're already putting in a lot of work into the neighborhood. Time to make some waves on the scholarly reputation front.</p>
<p>(As an aside and to stay true to my Chicago roots, I see the U of C going in a parallel direction as Penn. The only difference being that Chicago already has the academic rep in place, and the trick will be to increase college selectivity and make the undergraduate lifestyle more traditionally enjoyable. The acceptance rate at Chicago has dropped about 40% [literally] since I was there, so Chicago seems to be on track as well. Moreover, Chicago just made a terrific new hire for Dean of Admissions - the new guy, Jim Nondorf, used to do student recruiting at Yale - so I'm very optimistic on that front.)</p>
<p>Quick additional note - I don't agree that Cornell's state-funded schools are "full of idiotic New Yorkers who want to see their tax dollars at work." Again, that sort of attack is simply too harsh, and there's no reason for it. Moreover, on the contrary, Cornell's agriculture school and their school of Hotel Administration are outstanding - pretty much the best of their kind. They may not be producing Rhodes Scholars or future Presidents, but there is certainly no need to impugn these schools. They do a great service and provide great opportunities for their graduates, and they should be acknowledged appropriately.</p>
<p>You're right - they do a great service, and they are not "idiotic" (this was my own exaggeration). However, they are definitely not people who could have been accepted at another Ivy League school or places like them (UChicago, Duke, Stanford), whereas the students in arts & sciences, engineering and architecture could have been.</p>
<p>This is not a personal bias; I lived with them for a full year.</p>
<p>Cue7, ILR is also the best of its kind, and it DID in fact produce Cornell’s most recent Rhodes Scholar a few years back. Maybe some of the less intelligent people are in these schools, but some of the brightest people I have met come from the contract colleges. It most certainly is a personal bias, you trash talk cornell every chance you get.</p>
<p>So Cornell A&S was harder to get into than Penn A&S this year, considering the admit rates were the same and Penn accepts way more people ED. Oh, and Cornell actually EXPANDED its class size this year, and had it not, the admit rate would have been even lower.</p>
<p>Right. Also, EATYOURCEREAL: admit rate isn’t equivalent to selectivity. For a more extreme example, Cornell CAS admits a lower percentage of applicants than Williams or Caltech; but it is certainly less selective. I feel that this is the case with Penn, as well.</p>
<p>For example: how many people do you know that were admitted to Cornell CAS and Penn CAS/Brown/Columbia CC, and chose Cornell?</p>
<p>This, I think, is the most telling aspect of selectivity.</p>
<p>@hcvops: Maybe not in this thread, but in every other thread muerteapablo bashes anything and everything that has to do with Cornell.</p>
<p>@muerteapablo: Random anecdotes are the most telling aspect of selectivity? Even if they were, I actually don’t know one person who chose Penn over Cornell; all the people from my school who got into Penn and went there got in ED because ED is so much easier. </p>
<p>Cornell A&S has almost identical stats to Penn A&S- so, effectively, they are equally selective. It actually doesn’t matter to me the least which one is more selective, but it’s just funny to watch you trash Cornell at every opportunity you get when it turns out it is actually on the exact same level as Penn in terms of A&S. And you can attack Cornell’s state schools all you want, but the fact remains that they are the best at what they do in the country and have incredibly high yield rates. </p>
<p>I’d have a hard to believing that, of people who get into Penn A&S and Cornell A&S, more than 55% chose Penn. It’s probably close to exactly 50/50.</p>
<p>According to the revealed preference study, Dartmouth, Penn and Columbia each get 70% of the cross-admits to one of those schools and Cornell.
Brown got 75%. I know, I find that crazy, as well.</p>
<p>Ummm… honestly speaking, there’s no point trash talking any school’s desirability within the Ivy League, especially if you’ve applied to undergrad at least a couple of years ago. Outside of HYP, does it really matter?</p>
<p>muerteapablo, that’s not true according to the most recent preference study done by the ny times, unless you know of one that i don’t. i believe the study was done a few years ago and had 61% going to penn and 39% going to cornell. but i’m talking about cornell a&s vs. penn a&s, which should be almost 50/50, considering the 61/39 number includes wharton vs. cornell and penn vs. cornell state school.</p>
<p>Of course Sdma89 is partially right; but it’s also true that EATYOURCEREAL is grasping at straws. If anything, the cross-admit rate has gone up towards Penn, as it consistently ranks so highly.</p>
<p>EATYOURCEREAL is also something of a hypocrite: he claims that my study is too old to be significant, and then IMAGINES that the cross admit rate is virtually 50/50.</p>
<p>So which is it, buddy boy - statistical culpability or your imagination? You can’t **** on your cake and eat it, too.</p>
<p>That’s a great line, by the way, I’m copyright-ing it.</p>
<p>wait, what? when did i say your study is too old to be significant? i don’t even know what your study is, because you never said what it was. all i said was the ny times one from ~2007 had 61% penn, 39% cornell, and it did not take into account wharton and cornell’s state schools. thus, it’s difficult to imagine a&s vs. a&s being much different than 50/50.</p>
<p>maybe you wouldn’t be so bitter if you didn’t get rejected from harvard despite having 45658 family members go there.</p>
<p>Do they have statistics anywhere for Penn CAS yield specifically? When you look at the undergrads at Penn and INCLUDE WHARTON, the stats become so skewed. Wharton absolutely dominates in cross-admit battles with pretty much anywhere else. I’m more curious to see how Penn CAS does against Brown, Princeton, Cornell A&S etc.</p>
<p>Having said all this, I dunno how useful it is to point to cross admit battles as really SAYING anything beyond what is important in the minds of some 18 yr olds. Penn CAS getting a leg up on Cornell A&S could just show that more 18 yr olds are interested in studying in an urban area rather than an extremely rural area. It doesn’t necessarily mean one school is better than another, or offers a lot more opportunities than another school.</p>