<p>I agree that Cornell has a higher acceptance rate than most of the other ivies mostly because it has one of the largest student bodies out of them all. Furthermore, take into account the fact that many students who are admitted to Cornell would also be admitted to schools such as Brown and Dartmouth. Since (in my opinion) many students prefer the special programs (such as Wharton or Brown's med opportunities) or environments (Philadelphia or Cambridge as opposed to rural upstate New York in the middle of nowhere - literally, I've been there), I'd say Cornell has a disadvantage. After all, how many students are applying agriculture or hotel administration majors, compared to engineering, med-related sciences, and business?</p>
<p>My theory is that the number of Cornell applicants will explode and they will be forced to admit fewer students.</p>
<p>Myself, I love almost everything about Cornell. In fact, it's one of the only schools I've seen so far that actually has a better-than-average environmental science program (through its agricultural college, no less!). However, its location really is a big minus.</p>
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waitlisted at EMORY (? yeah i dont get it either)
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<p>Probably Tufts syndrome. </p>
<p>Either that or it's that you probably didn't try as hard on the Emory application as you did on the other applications. For example, I knew a guy who applied to various MBA programs and got into the MIT-Sloan LFM program (MBA + MS with full tuition scholarship), Harvard Business School, Stanford GSB, Northwestern Kellogg MMM program (MBA + Master's in Engineering Management), but got rejected from the Yale School of Management (look up the MBA rankings if you don't know why this is funny). The reason for this is simple - the guy knew that he had already gotten admitted to several of the other programs, so when he went to the Yale interview, he wasn't exactly trying very hard. </p>
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Cornell is a much bigger undergrad school in terms of population than all the other Ivies. They will, therefore, have a higher acceptance rate. That's simple logic.
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<p>I'm not sure about that. Harvard Business School has a much larger population than every other business school out there, yet is arguably the most selective business school out there (perhaps second only to Stanford, and even that's somewhat debatable). Harvard Law School has by far the largest population of any fulltime law school, yet is 2nd in selectivity only to Yale. The MIT engineering graduate school has one of the largest populations of any engineering graduate school in the nation, yet is still extremely selective. The fact is, you can be large and yet still be highly selective.</p>
<p>At this time of year, there are two attitudes on CC. 1) I'm a shoo-in for Harvard. 2) I'm going to kill myself if I don't get into Harvard. Both types should understand the fact that adcoms have to make decisions randomly when the applicants are practically the same person. Think of it like the Miss America pageant. After they have it down to the five finalists, don't you think it just luck at that point? Or are the judges picking Miss Texas to be number 1 because her left eye matches her right eye better than the other four contestants?</p>
<p>The "lottery" aspect among the top applicants is well known. The four major "behind the scenes" books on adcoms are "The Gatekeepers" by Steinberg about Wellesey, "Admissions Confidential" by Toors about Duke, "Harvard Schmarvard" by Mathews about the whole situation, and "A is for Admissions" by Hernandez about Dartmouth. The first three books take the lottery aspect as a matter of fact. Hernandez doesn't but her experience was in the early 1990's. That might be why or it might be her attitude towards the Ivies.</p>
<p>HYP is normally considered the most selective. That is why CC has the acronyms HYP and HYPSM. Percent-accepted is not the only measure to determine selectivity. You also have to look at the SAT ranges and so on. If you only look at percent accepted, the Coast Guard Academy is normally the most selective at around 7 or 8%. The USNWR rankings are a rough indicator of selectivity.</p>
<p>You will notice in April that there are many odd things that have happened. People getting accepted to Princeton and denied at Berkeley and so on. This is the lottery aspect at work, or something else such as people's left eye not matching their right eye and Princeton missed it while Berkeley noticed. People will apply to multiple Ivies and every combination of results will occur.</p>
<p>There is nothing wrong with "being lucky". When Napoleon was asked what quality he most valued in a general, he would reply "good luck".</p>
<p>I kind of like the idea of a lottary system in theory. Of course, when I'm a senior, I'm not sure if I'll feel the same way. But it seems like once you get to a certain level of proven ability, it really is just about how that particular adcom is feeling that day. It's actually comforting in a way. I'm not worried right now about scoring a 2330 or 2340 on the SAT (granted, I haven't taken it yet) because I know that ten hours dedicated to ten more points on the SAT would have better been spent working on an interest or passion. Or just relaxing. Maybe it's just me, but I really don't feel that much pressure beyond grades.</p>
<p>I mean, everyone says the SAT may be the most important test of your life, but when you REALLY look at the individual stats of each accepted student to Yale or Princeton or whatever, how many of them had perfect scores? Why do the 50% ranges for most of the Ivies dip into the 1300's (for the old SAT)? If you argue that those are the people who had special cases, then there must be loads of them. Furthermore, that means that those who were accepted with high scores were special cases for superior academic ability. And if that's what all of us are aiming for, then THAT'S why ten points either way don't count. There are so many who are trying to gain admission through the path of mainly superior academic ability that the stats become blurred together and it's hard to distinguish anymore. That's why I don't care to get a perfect 2400 on the SAT. I know that I'm a lot more than just that number, and it doesn't even relate to anything I want to do. But in the end, I may as well just end up one of the academic ability people with a few pluses. Then it's a game of luck, which means that I can't regret not doing anything differently other than not curing cancer or AIDS (clearly special case scenarios).</p>
<p>Maybe it's just my longing for removed responsibility :P.</p>
<p>They want to create a freshman class that mirrors society so they accept people from various unofficial categories such as legacies, URM's, athletes, development cases, or VIP's. Within each unofficial category, they consider the most qualified and then they take as many as possible. Other categories would be geographic area and different majors. There can also be hidden hooks such as the fact the orchestra needs an oboe player. If you play the violin, you are out of luck.</p>
<p>Looking back on life, you will realize that who you married is a much bigger decision than where you go to school. How many people research their spouse like they research their college?</p>
<p>jaug1 said: "Each school likes to continue the type of personality it has achieved over the past centuries. The applicants they accept, the admissions officers believe will help maintain that identity. This is why you see kids getting into Harvard, but being rejected from Yale, Columbia and Penn."</p>
<p>I agree that each college does have its own personality. However, where on the blanks of the app form, or your SAT scores, or your HS transcript do they see that you have that special personality that fits into the fixed personality of their college? There may be more personality shown in your recs, your essay or your EC's; but what can you specifically write in the essay so that Harvard would want you, but Yale/Columbia/Penn would say that you aren't their kind? Is there some special thing in the application that they can use to match your personality to theirs so that Harvard sees that you have their kind of sense of humor or whatever?</p>
<p>Penn and Cornell, hands down, easiest. If Cornell accepts a lot of Ny'ers the same is true of Penn's rates of acceptance for local city and suburban highschools. And this is all pretty well known throughout the Ivies.</p>
<p>As ranked by USNWR, the top 14 schools are Harvard, Yale, Princeton, UPenn, Duke, MIT, Stanford, CalTech, Columbia, Dartmouth, Northwestern, WUSTL, Brown, and Cornell. That is probably the closest you will get to a ranking of selectivity. Of course, it is meaningless.</p>
<p>The talk about the lottery aspect is meant to be useful. As one of the college guides said: It is ironic that the most qualified candidates have to apply to the most schools due to the randomness of the selection process at the top colleges.</p>
<p>wow, sometimes i wished cornell was not an ivy, b/c it gets such a bad rap when comparing it to schools like harvard, yale, princeton. They are in different leagues. Cornell belongs in the league with like Northwestern/Chicago/JHU/Penn/Duke.</p>
<p>uh ooo, devil is gonna come here and tell me Columbia/Penn/Duke, then......Cornell/Northwestern/Chicago/JHU, sorrrrry Devil, my mistake bro....lol</p>
<p>jaug1, even though you hated Brown, I agree almost completely with everything you said. Colleges try hard to maintain the "institutional culture" that makes them unique. Its what makes it fun.</p>
<p>Harvards personality...I dunno. But they are the only Ivy League school that won't share their library.</p>
<p>BTW, if you want to know the answer, just look at admission percentages. Cornell and Penn rank as "easiest" followed by Dartmouth, Brown/Princeton, Columbia/Yale/Harvard.</p>
<p>I think the "institutional culture" comes more from what they do with the raw material after it matriculates rather than how they select the raw material in the first place. I don't see what an applicant can fill into the blanks on the form in order to distinguishes themselves as Yale material as opposed to Princeton material. If there is a certain way to fill in the blanks, or chose or EC's, or something that a person can say in the essay, or something a teacher can say in the recs that will make it more likely to get into Harvard over Brown or vice versa, then that information should be shared. It just seems that they all want the best they can get, and they work on instilling the instituational culture after you get there.</p>
<p>What I'm getting at is that if a person applies to all eight Ivies and is accepted to three of them, and another person applies to all eight Ivies and is accepted to a different three; then the results are based on randomness instead of each college trying to select applicants appropriate to their own institutional personality.</p>
<p>I think to a degree the shaping comes afterwards, and a good applicant will be accepted no matter what, but I still think adcoms look for applicants who will do best at their school and who will maintain the student body they want.</p>
<p>moattomoat said: "a good applicant will be accepted no matter what"</p>
<p>I may be beating this into the ground, but life tends to be more random than fair. Especially the part concerning Ivies picking people. Any extremely selective school is trying to try to creat a freshman class that mirrors society as a whole. Within any of the little unofficial societal categories, they only have a finite number of open slots for people of that type. Obviously, people who are not the top of the heap for that particular category will be rejected, but there will still be four or five people for each open slot who are practically indistinguishable from each other. When that happens in some of the categories, the applicant who is actually selected won't be chosen by a roll of dice, but they may as well be. They just don't have room for everybody. That is why they waitlist more people than they accept. It is difficult for people sitting around a table to deny someone when they just accepted the person's clone, so they waitlist instead of deny. </p>
<p>I have used the analogy of the Miss America pageant. They start with about 50 beautiful women. They get it down to five finalists. They only have one slot for Miss America. Does anything think that whoever is chosen is really a lot more beautiful than the four losers? </p>
<p>If you are applying, realize that luck is involved and take that into account when you chose your safeties, matches, and reaches. If you are already in an Ivy, realize that luck was involved in your getting in. When Napoleon was asked what quality he most wanted in a general, he said "good luck".</p>