Ranking the Ivies

<p>I agree with Slipper. However, the joke of the matter is that Cornell grads are incredibly successful despite the fact that Cornell based on an "objective" standard is less selective than its peers. In fact, I would argue that if you are interested in business (i.e., consulting and banking), a person is better off going to Cornell CAS than Brown (which is probably the least recruited ivy).</p>

<p>And the fact that Lehman Brothers just added Brown as a "new recruit school" suggests that Brown is just starting to gain a reputation for feeding wall street....</p>

<p>And to add something, Cornell has a unique situation. I know several people (friends I met during my summers and cousins who live in NY) who initially started in CAS (yes, Arts and Sciences) who switched to one of the state-supported schools to save money b/c they were ny residents. This seems to suggest that in the eyes of Cornellians, A/S is no more respected than any of the other schools there. Thus, the fact that A/S is more selective on an objective basis seems to mean little to Cornellians. And this probably holds true for grad schools as well.</p>

<p>"This seems to suggest that in the eyes of Cornellians, A/S is no more respected than any of the other schools there. Thus, the fact that A/S is more selective on an objective basis seems to mean little to Cornellians."</p>

<p>This is true, though there are a few bad apples here and there than tend to "look down" upon other schools and like to rank them by things like SAT ranges. Knowledgeable observatin.</p>

<p>Buuuut, in your post ranking the individual schools at Cornell, you failed to mention the school with the lowest acceptance rate or the highest SAT averages. Just stuck them in last with the "rest of Cornell" at the bottom. </p>

<p>Slipper-</p>

<p>"Cornell is less selective based purely on objective data."
the mix up with the Brown/Cornell data threw off a small part of my point - but just stick Penn in there. So, 17% vs. 20.5% .... that about the same as 10.4% Columbia vs. 14% Dartmouth ... or even worse 10.4% for Columbia vs. 17% for Penn. Yet, you still think it's appropriate to separate Cornell from this group. You cite "SAT score averages, acceptance rate" ... I've covered acceptance rate, now on to SATs. You've heard the point dozens of times by now, how certain schools like Arch and Hotel really care more about the resume/portofolio than a SAT Math score (call admissions if you're still in denial). The fact is that similar majors have similar SAT scores between Cornell and the other Ivy's (throw in Cornell CAS+Engineering and compare to Penn, Brown, etc.). You never care to take this into consideration, you have some agenda against the school, you DO hate Cornell.</p>

<p>Gomestar, </p>

<p>The facts point to Cornell being the least selective (it is, isn't it? BTW Penn had a 16% accept rate this year), every data point out there shows this. In fact I've never seen even one data point to suggest otherwise (SAT, class rank, accept rate, cross admit data...always the lowest in every category). An internal Cornell reports that they lost 75% of cross-admits to the above schools. Every RP report out there confirms this. And can two small schools like Hotel and Arch really bring down the SAT score 20-60 points less than DCBP? </p>

<p>Outside of selectivity, Cornell's endowment is far lower per student than any other Ivy. Also, every list where grad placement is considered (even only counting CAS and Engineering to be fair) Cornell still is always the lowest in terms of grad placement. </p>

<p>Cornell is a great school in certain areas, for example engineering and CS are absolutely near the high end of the Ivy heap. But in overall terms it is the least selective and IMO the lowest Ivy overall.</p>

<p>There are more important measures of a university than undergraduate admission rates that really in the end do not differ by that much.</p>

<p>No, it's still your agenda. </p>

<p>"The facts point to Cornell being the least selective "
my point was why are you lumping 16% Penn with 10% Columbia while saying Cornell is so far in the back (at 20%) that it deservies its own spot. </p>

<p>"An internal Cornell reports that they lost 75% of cross-admits to the above schools."
1 school loses out to a combination of 4 other schools - wouldn't that make sense?</p>

<p>"And can two small schools like Hotel and Arch really bring down the SAT score 20-60 points less than DCBP?"
Seeing how CAS's sat range is in the likes of 1340-1520 and COE is about the same though 1550 is the high ... yes!</p>

<p>"Outside of selectivity, Cornell's endowment is far lower per student than any other Ivy"
An effect of a very large student body, not of a sub-par university. Cornell averages $1,200,000 in new funding a day ... they just spend a whoole lot of it rather than stow it away in endowment. </p>

<p>"Also, every list where grad placement is considered (even only counting CAS and Engineering to be fair) Cornell still is always the lowest in terms of grad placement. "
You've seen these lists? I never knew they were available. Perhaps you can enlighten me and show me what you mean, back up your point. </p>

<p>I still think you have a personal agenda against Cornell. I'm not sure why, but it's baffling why you'll never consider it a peer with your beloved Dartmouth. Fortunately, most others do.</p>

<p>PKswmr76-
Admit rates are not a very reliable indicator of selectivity. When I said that Cornell engineering is nearly as selective as MIT and Caltech I was basing that on SAT scores which are 20-30 points below Caltech.</p>

<p>First of all, a low selectivity doesn't immediately equate to lower quality school, especially when a school has 14,000 undergraduates and over 3,000 spots to fill each year. </p>

<p>I believe UPenn is the second largest Ivy (wow, they also have second highest admit rate for class of 2010)</p>

<p>With regards to the "lesser" ivies (not HYP), it seems that class size and acceptance rates are correlated. Dartmouth is the only exception as they are the smallest but have the 3rd lowest acceptance.</p>

<p>Class size among "lesser" ivies goes as follows (descending): Cornell, Penn, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth.</p>

<p>Acceptance rate goes as follows (descending): Cornell, Penn, Dartmouth, Brown, Columbia</p>

<p>Anyway, many of my engineering classmates would stomp most other Ivy engineers in job placement. Period.</p>

<p>How about non-engineering? Here's an example.</p>

<p>2001 ranking of English departments that offered a Ph.D. put Cornell near the top of the list in terms of reputation. Only Harvard and Yale were ranked higher in terms of ivy schools.</p>

<p>"An internal Cornell reports that they lost 75% of cross-admits to the above schools."</p>

<p>Gomestar, I meant 75% for EACH of the schools. That means if a student was admitted to Brown and Cornell for example, 75% would choose Brown. Cornell said it split applicants with schools like Northwestern, Rice, etc but loses out bigtime to every one of the other Ivies. I'll try and find the report.</p>

<p>As for placement, HLS, Wharton, Columbia MBA, UVA Law, Yale Law all publish lists and Cornell lags in every one of them. The WSJ also did a study where Cornell significantly lagged its peers.</p>

<p>"The WSJ also did a study where Cornell significantly lagged its peers"</p>

<p>the WSJ use facebook to get some answers. Do I need to say more?</p>

<p>"Cornell lags in every one of them."</p>

<p>Again, you're including non-relevant and inflated Cornell numbers (like counting engineering or agricultural students) to better fit your assumptions. You know perfectly well that comparing similar students (CAS Cornell vs. CAS Penn) wouldn't yield the same results - but you refuse to see this as then you wont be able to exclude Cornell from your own personal rankings. You've been proven wrong on the subject many times (not by me) and you STILL deny it. It doesn't get much more arrogant than that.</p>

<p>Cornell's freshman class is three times the size of Dartmouth's. If you took the top 1000 students in a freshman class at Cornell and compared them to the top 1000 students at Dartmouth, the top 1000 at Cornell would be far superior to the top 1000 at Dartmouth in terms of SAT scores. Cornell's top 1000 is superior to any other top 1000 in the Ivy League including Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.</p>

<p>Thank you, collegehelp, for pointing out the basic fact that Cornell's acceptance rate is a lot higher because it can admit more students (for a larger class size) than the other Ivies (which have smaller class sizes to admit for). This obviously skews the acceptance rate to make it a lot higher.</p>

<p>Here is a ranking of the Ivies based on the SAT scores of the top 1000 students in the freshman class. If you don't believe me, see a mathematician.</p>

<p>(1) Cornell
(2) Harvard
(3) Penn
(4) Yale
(5) Brown
(6) Columbia
(7) Princeton
(8) Dartmouth</p>

<p>Gomestar,</p>

<p>A while ago we DID do a calculation eliminating Cornell's Agriculture, Hotel, etc and it still was in last place by a significant margin. I actually went and did the calculations.</p>

<p>As for the 1000 top students at Cornell, one could easily counter and say the worst 1000 students at Cornell are significantly worse than all the other Ivies.</p>

<p>There's nothing wrong with being the lowest ranked Ivy. Its still very impressive.</p>

<p>"A while ago we DID do a calculation eliminating Cornell's Agriculture, Hotel, etc and it still was in last place by a significant margin. I actually went and did the calculations."
You didn't have to do any calculations, though it looks like you did them wrong. The data for the individual colleges regarding stuff like SATs is release, to which there is no "signficant" margin between similar colleges at Cornell to the other Ivys. I feel like I'm just repeating myself and your pretentious ways are preventing you from learning or accepting anything. </p>

<p>"There's nothing wrong with being the lowest ranked Ivy. Its still very impressive"
Technically, Cornell isn't the last ranked ivy in any of the major published undergrad ranking sources. It is, however, on Slipper's personal list. You have such a clear agenda against Cornell, it's slightly humorous sometimes and pathetic other times.</p>

<p>
[quote]
The data for the individual colleges regarding stuff like SATs is release

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Perhaps then, to clear things up for readers, you could post a link to this data. I searched but to no avail. I am willing to bet the qualifications of Cornell CAS students are similar to those of Penn CAS to say the very least.</p>

<p>I can't get to the links here at work, they were on the PDF format, I'll have to dig them up when I go home sometime. I have a hard copy someplace too.</p>

<p>The numbers for engineering were posted online sometime last year at the COE website - the 25% was in the low 1300's while the 75% was 1550.</p>

<p>The thing is brand, being in CAS does not elicit the same kind of respect that Penn CAS does. That is because Cornell as a whole is just less selective than is Penn as a whole. Think about it. The least selective school at Penn is nursing which comprises like less than 5 percent of the entire school. At Cornell, on a pure numbers basis, you have Agric, ILR, Hum Ec, Hotel, Architecture, schools which do not have the most impressive numbers. This, however, does not mean that they are not great schools--b/c they are!.</p>

<p>And in addition, Penn CAS has around 1500-1600 students per class year whereas Cornell only has about a 1000 students in CAS. However, Cornell's yield for A/S is only in the low 40s whereas the yield for Penn as a whole is in the mid 60s. Thus, if you take away Wharton's impressive 77 percent yield (wharton is about 25 percent of Penn), the College which is around 60 percent of Penn still must have a comfortable 50-60 percent yield rate, which is far more impressive than Cornell CAS. I still argue that Cornell is the "bottom ivy," which is an impressive feat by default. We are talking about some of the finest schools in the world. To even be on such a list is an accomplishment in itself.</p>

<p>That may be true, but that does not mean it should be that way. If Cornell CAS is similar in selectivity and student body, that's all that matters.</p>