Hi, I applied engineering to Cornell, and just got my result recently. I was sadly rejected. However, I’m more concerned about the fact that 50% of the applicants ED get rejected, which means I wasn’t even in the top half of the applicants.
I considered myself a pretty strong candidate, and I surely didn’t expect an acceptance, but didn’t expect a rejection. How much should I look into this? Should I drop some of my reach schools (Duke, JHU, Vanderbilt) and opt for more safety schools RD?
Thanks, this rejection hurts but mostly because of the fact it might mean I’m not competitive at any of my reach schools.
Sorry about Cornell. Based upon that rejection I would certainly consider Duke, JHU and Vandy to be reaches. Not knowing your academic stats I’d say it is fine if you want to apply to a few reaches as acceptances can be unpredictable but be absolutely sure you have match and safety schools that appear affordable and that you would be happy to attend on your application list.
I’m confused where you got your first point, but I do have 2 schools on my list with 50%+ acceptance rate.
I have had someone look over all my essays from supplements to Common App, but not my overall application. Since most of the application is filling out info and giving short descriptions of activities, I did not see the point in getting a whole application review. I will do that now.
Cornell is a very tough school to get into. As one example, many years ago Cornell was my top choice for graduate school but I was turned down and had to go to my second choice, which was Stanford. “Duke, JHU, Vanderbilt” are indeed reaches for nearly all students, but it is entirely possible for students to get into one of these three after being turned down at Cornell.
If you already have a good list of schools, including some reasonable match and safety schools (at least two of each), then I don’t think that you should be concerned at all.
@HRSMom
In high school I’ve had 3 B’s and 21 A’s in classes. Hardest curriculum offered, very stem heavy. No rank.
ACT is 34 Single sitting, 35 Superscore, taken twice
Subject test: 780 Physics, 780 Chem, 800 math II
@HRSMom I say my grades like that because I understand a number is difficult to tell anything from. This is a 3.8, UW gpa, I’m not close to valedictorian, probably closer to 7-8% in class although our school doesn’t rank.
Only ~27% of ED applicants are accepted, so 1393 in total are accepted. Of those ~1393 accepted, at least 100 are athletic recruits (6% of all Accepted), let’s assume 300 are legacies (16% of all Accepted), 400 are URMs (25% of total Accepted), and 100 are First-Gen, so the non-hooked acceptance rate is 500 out of 4000 or ~15% - still better than the RD rate of 10%, but it’s still a reach for everyone.
Does your list already have at least one sure thing (including for your major if it admits by major) affordable safety that you would be fine attending?
In addition to a safety, best to include matches, meaning schools where the acceptance rate is above 20%, or you should be prepared to be happy at your safety,
I completely understand that Cornell engineering (especially for an Asian male) is a reach. I also understand they try to attain as many URM during ED because they are more difficult to find. My concern isn’t that I wasn’t accepted but that I wasn’t even deferred. @Chembiodad
I have already been accepted to Rose Hulman with $25k of aid. This was my ‘safety,’ but I still have one more school with 50% acceptance rate which I will be applying to. @ucbalumnus