I’m thinking of applying to Cornell as a transfer in the future; I didn’t apply to Cornell as a freshman. I’m wondering if I’ll be in a disadvantage if I apply to CAS as a transfer knowing there are people who got a transfer option.
In the sense that if they fill their transfer student goals from the pool of students who apply with transfer options, then yes. Because those people were “pre-admitted” already, and just have to meet the criteria for transfer to be admitted for transfer. Even if you are “better”, those people will be accepted ahead of you. Because they were already accepted, but for meeting certain subsequent criteria.
But I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. Traditionally nearly all of the transfer options were into the contract colleges. CAS didn’t really do much of this when they participated in the program before, and has only recently started participating again. So CAS may not have even given out many of these in the first place. CAS has traditionally not had trouble filling their transfer student needs with strong applicants, so they seemingly would not have need for many transfer option students, in lieu of actual “fresh” transfer students. In fact I actually don’t know what its motivation was for participating again.
Of course the people who received the TO will be advantageous because they are already technically admitted, but many also end up not using the TO because they enjoy their current school. Cornell historically has a high transfer acceptance rate in general, and CAS is one of the easier schools to get into within Cornell. If you are firm on transferring to Cornell, give it a shot! There is nothing to lose.
re #2, most recent Cornell Freshman admissions rates by college:
Dyson 2.9%
COE 9.6%
CAS 10.9%
AAP 11.4%
Ag 11.5%
ILR 15.9%
Hum Ec 17.0%
Hotel 21.1%
also re #2, “Cornell historically has a high transfer acceptance rate in general…”
That depends on what one considers “high”, but also historically it has varied greatly among its individual colleges.
The last semester I can find data for transfer acceptances broken out by college is Fall 2011.
For that semester, the overall university transfer admit rate was 22%.
But that number was broken down as follows:
Hum Ec 54.5%
Ag 46.8%
ILR 44.0%
Hotel 34.2%
AAP 10.7%
Engineering 9.2%
CAS 7.5%.
Note that the three colleges with the highest admit percentages were also the colleges that gave out the most transfer options. There is no published data concerning what their admit rates were for applicants without transfer options.
I’ve seen it reported that the overall university transfer admit rate was 17.9% for 2017-2018, but no breakdowns by college.
Is 22% “high”? Is 17.9% “high?” Since we’re talking about Arts & Sciences, Is 7.5% "high?. Is whatever the CAS transfer admit rate might be down to most recently (as a guess maybe 6%) “high”?
It depends on what you are comparing them to.
re #4, thank you for the insight! CAS is not known to handing out many TO’s compared to schools like ILR. Correct, my notion of the “easier school” really depends on what the OP is comparing to. Compared to other T10 schools, the transfer acceptance rates at Cornell are generally higher. Within Cornell, CAS’s acceptance rate really varies from year to year. The trend is that CAS seems to be handing out more TO’s in the more recent years.
While CAS acceptance rates do vary from year to year, there was a period of a number of years when I looked at these numbers, and every year I looked CAS was the most selective or near the most selective of the university’s colleges for transfer admissions. As well as for freshman admissions.
However, to the extent individual colleges are active in issuing transfer options, the admit numbers become quite murky. The nominal transfer acceptance rates go up, but there is no way to know what proportion of those individuals are TOs, and what the acceptance rates are for transfer applicants who were not previously contingently admitted.
re #5: what is a “T10 school”? Is Cornell a “T10 school”? Is there a link to a list of schools in the “T10”?
Certainly the source is not US News & World Report, it’s been over 25 years since they listed Cornell in their top ten. I think it’s #16 now.
[timed out, had trouble posting due to link]
The #14 school, Vanderbilt, apparently has a 30% transfer admit rate. Notre Dame, at # 18, has a 27% transfer admit rate.
There’s a list of Top 50 school transfer admit rates that I can’t link to.
Based on the #s from 2011 Cornell CAS is suitable selective IMO. The Cornell aggregate transfer admit rate is hard to compare to other schools due to the TOs.
Cornell’s transfer guide is a good resource, although it just has the number of transfers per college, not the admissions rate. https://admissions.cornell.edu/sites/admissions.cornell.edu/files/2018%20Transfer%20Guide%20FINAL.pdf
The 2018/19 CDS shows a total transfer acceptance rate of 17%, section D2
http://irp.dpb.cornell.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/CDS_2018-2019_v5.pdf