<p>Depends on what one means by "success."</p>
<p>I may be biased, but isn't Cornell in the same boat as Chicago and those tough schools? Easiest to get in, hardest to get out...</p>
<p>Theres a study concerning financial success for graduates from "elite" and "non-elite" institutions, with the beginning control that the subjects of the study got into both institutions. i.e. comparing Stanford+Rutgers admits, and comparing the financial success achieved after each choice.</p>
<p>I doubt many would classify either Cornell or Chicago is to get in. Chicago students are notoriously self-selecting. I have heard it referred to as the Marine Corp of colleges.</p>
<p>edit, Cornell or Chicago as "easy" to get into.</p>
<p>"easy" in that anyone whos willing to work really hard through high school will probably get in. takes a bit more than a good work ethic to get into some of the upper ivies.</p>
<p>Over 60% of those hard workers don't get accepted at Chicago. Kids with 1530 SAT's and 3.85 UW GPA's, and many AP courses and EC's get turned down (a friend of my son's). I know many more get turned down at the Ivy's, but many many more apply that have no shot at all.</p>
<p>i havent seen that. everyone ive seen who seriously pursued cornell as a goal since freshman year has gotten in.</p>
<p>In an earlier part of this thread Marite said:
"My S's very diverse public school is sending about 11 kids to H this year, including some URMs and recent immigrants. Not a single one of them is the child of a Wall Street investment banker or any of the kinds of people you instance."</p>
<p>Yesterday while returning to the airport on the rental car shuttle in Hartford, CT, I was talking to the shuttle driver. He proudly mentioned that his oldest daughter is a PHD candidate in Biology at Yale. She also did her undergraduate studies there. Obviously not a Wall Street investment banker type, but a very proud father.</p>
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<p>I'm rolling eyes with you at the same comment, and I'll tell you how to post the smiley: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: </p>
<p>The code is : rolleyes : except that the colons go immediately before and after the smiley text. Got it? </p>
<p>I hunt for schools that offer good added value for math majors. The U of Chicago is on that list, for sure, but I believe that Harvard is arguably higher on that list, as is Princeton.</p>
<p>An0nym0u5:</p>
<p>I know little about Cornell, my referent is Chicago.</p>
<p>As far as added value for math, a friend of my S who plans to major in Math, applied to Harvard, MIT, CalTech, and Stanford, but not Chicago. His reason: Chicago was too "theoretical," if that is any help. </p>
<p>(That reminds me of an amusing [to me] story. The John Crerar science library at Chicago was located at IIT in Chicago for many years. I understand that when the library merged with UChicago and moved to the campus, the agreement required that the emphasis had to become less applied and more "pure" science or the University would not take the $18 million collection.)</p>
<p>UChicago is commonly a second choice to Cornell applicants where I'm from. We're sending two, one a Cornell reject and the other a Brown reject.</p>
<p>Interesting, we have an acquaintance who just turned down Princeton for Chicago. We've had several Chicago rejects or wait lists. They will be going to Duke, MIT, Washington U. We don't know of anyone who applied to Cornell.</p>
<p>Turning down P-ton for Chicago? That speaks well for Chicago. (Of course, Chicago does have the very large Scholarships to draw them away.) I was all set to go to Chicago (EA admit) but Cornell seemed like a better fit, mainly because of their engineering. I think they are all wonderful schools.</p>
<p>In retrospect, I kind of wished I applied to Duke or Columbia. (Physics/Engineering) not that they are that much better, but I may have had more options. I love Cornell, though.</p>
<p>Sounds like you made the right choice. Chicago has no engineering at all. Bill Gates was just lamenting the fact that the US was not producing enough engineers, seems like a great career to me.</p>
<p>And if you mess up, information technology will be an easy transition - I know so many engineers who have risen through the technical ranks to become execs in IT, which as a discipline rewards systematic thinking.</p>
<p>"Students should not be devastated by adverse admission outcomes. Not because they should plan better to avoid it, but because there is so little at stake."</p>
<p>Well said, Afan.</p>
<p>"Students should not be devastated by adverse admission outcomes. Not because they should plan better to avoid it, but because there is so little at stake."</p>
<p>I couldn't agree more, as well. </p>
<p>Here are a couple of relevant quotes from "Confessions of a Prep School Counselor" (Atlantic Monthly, Sept. 2001)</p>
<p>Here's how Rachel Toor describes her former job as an admissions officer at Duke in her new book, Admissions Confidential: </p>
<p>I travel around the country whipping kids (and their parents) into a frenzy so that they will apply. I tell them how great a school Duke is academically and how much fun they will have socially. Then, come April, we reject most of them. </p>
<p>The university devotes a considerable amount of money and effort to recruiting BWRKs ("bright, well- rounded kids") only because denying them boosts the school's selectivity rating. Although Toor seems disillusioned by the task of pumping up application rates, she also seems to believe that some measure of a school's worth can be found in the number of students it rejects. (p. 2; Atlantic Online)</p>
<p>When it comes to excellent small colleges with reasonable admissions requirements, there are almost too many to list... Students and their parents might want to compare two columns in the U.S. News & World Report rankings: "Reputation"that is, how college and university administrators regard a schooland "Acceptance rate." They'll find a number of schools that are easier to get into than their reputation would suggest, and vice versa. (p. 8 Atlantic Online)</p>
<p>yeah one person i know was briefly deciding whether he should turn down the presidential scholarship at chicago (full ride i believe), for princeton or stanford. he chose stanford. i think math is his major.</p>