<p>My friend, an international student from an Asian country with no citizenship or permanent residency, is currently attending SUNY Albany, and I'm trying to help him in transferring to Cornell, his dream school, after his Freshman year. Unfortunately, he does not have any access to university-related community websites like CC nor is he proficient in English, I decided to help him out instead.</p>
<p>Whenever I heard Cornell's very generous toward transfer hopefuls by consistently admitting more than 20% of transfer applicants every year, I rebutted this claim by providing a published document from Cornell University itself, which indicates that College of Arts and Science and Engineering accepts fewer than 7% of the applicants. But, how about the contract colleges of Cornell--Ecology, CALS, or ILR? Are these programs relatively easier to get in? (Probably, the transfer admission rate is indeed over 20%)</p>
<p>If so, would his one year attendance at SUNY Albany significantly increase his chance of transfer admission into Cornell, if he applies to one of those contract colleges? Or, is his status as an international student without a green card, negates the fact that he attends a part of SUNY program?</p>
<p>I heard that the contract colleges of Cornell receive fund from NY state, which makes Cornell part of SUNY program like the SUNY website enlists Cornell's three colleges as their program. In addition, I heard that many transfer applicants from SUNY or other related-colleges (or Community Colleges) have to maintain 3.0 GPA with no need of SAT score (my friend has very bad SAT score, as he is not comfortable with English yet). I wanted to verify if this above statement is true, in order to provide a very objective fact about transfer process to my friend, who thinks he can get into Cornell without putting much effort on anything except for some classes at SUNY that will enable him to maintain 3.0 GPA.</p>
<p>While Cornell receives partial funding for its contract colleges from New York state, no part of Cornell is in any way SUNY. Cornell is one of of only two land grant universities in the country that managed to retain private status, along with MIT. Cornell remains the final arbiter for the administration of its contract colleges, not the state.</p>
<p>So, my friend won’t have a chance of transferring into Cornell with virtually no SAT score, bad high school GPA (3.5 ish), no particular ECs, and 3.0 or above GPA at SUNY? I think my friend is buying into some of his, perhaps misinformed, friends, who told him that Cornell CALS, ILR, or Ecology is “back-door” to Cornell for SUNY or CC students… And I’m trying to tell him that, in order to be admitted to Cornell as a transfer applicant, he has to be as qualified as other particular transfer applicants, who have a fairly good chance of getting into Cornell’s peer schools like UPenn, Duke, UC Berkeley, etc (the schools that have around 10% of transfer admission rate)</p>
<p>Your friend has a good chance at the contracts if his college stats look good. It’s rather easy to transfer into, but still it isn’t an absolute pushover while you are right about the difference in stats between transfer rates of the colleges - he still has to be qualified grade-wise, but perhaps not as much as transfers to other top tiers. And yes, it seems like they do take cc students in quite large volumes because transfer applicants don’t need to send in SAT scores and the contracts give out a lot of GT options …</p>
<p>So, there’s semi-truths to his statements but he may be exaggerating them. Your high school records matter less the older you are of a transfer applicant (in terms of graduation year). As for whether or not transfers are preferred from in-state, it is a debated point that is not really resolved yet. It would make sense that the contracts would take more from NYS due to its affiliation with the state and the number of GTs it gives to instaters, but this point is hard to prove.</p>
<p>hmm… i see. I’m sad that CALS, ILR, Ecology, all of which are excellent colleges of Cornell, are exploited by some as “back-door”… </p>
<p>and when you said “not as much as transfers to other top tiers,” do you mean specifically for the contract colleges? CAS and Engineering has less than 7%, which is even lower than UPenn’s overall 10%. I know I started this thread, specifically regarding Contract colleges, but just wanted to make sure, and perhaps to warn my friend to never apply for endowed colleges of Cornell.</p>
<p>Sometimes people treat them as backdoors but they’re not really as easy as you expect them to be from that term. College performance still matters a lot. And yes for second point.</p>