<p>Admissions is not about about producing statistics so that insecure and overly competitive students can compare themselves to others by saying "ohhhh my school has 5.87% lower admit rate than yours" or "my school has a 54 point SAT score advantage"....</p>
<p>Quite frankly I would rather see as many kids as possible have the privilege of a Cornell education than seeing students rejected so that Cornellians can cite superior statistics in such pointless comparisons.</p>
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And the "every person, every study" doesn't mean "every applicant"...a resource is desirable if only a few have access to it, not if anyone can get it.
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<p>No. Water and oxygen aren't valuable at all.</p>
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And the "every person, every study" doesn't mean "every applicant"
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<p>Wow. Why don't you bastardize the motto a little bit more?</p>
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<p>You're hanging out with the wrong people.</p>
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Not quite. You have to understand where the financial aid money comes from at Cornell. It doesn't come from the endowment. The endowment mostly goes towards professor salaries and programmatic support. It comes from tuition that full paying students provide. So if you decrease the number of students enrolled, yes, the number of students requiring financial aid will decrease. But so will the number of full-paying students subsidizing the financial aid packages.
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<p>How can this possibly be true when the cost of educating a student at Cornell is by far greater than full tuition +room/board (50,000)? Even if Cornell educates a student at full tuition it is making a loss. Therefore, it is not possible that full tuition students are paying for the education of those on financial aid when they aren't even paying for the cost of their own education fully.</p>
<p>I mean even Biddy Martin said that Cornell can't offer financial aid on par with other Ivies because of its relatively low endowment for student.</p>
<p>The biggest flaw in your argument is that it implies that tuition at schools with better financial aid programs should be higher to make the good financial aid programs possible (and it isn't). I don't think more people pay full tuition at other Ivies either because lately other Ivies have become much more socioeconomically diverse, so the only way the other schools can offer a better financial aid program according to your logic is if they charge a higher full tuition, which they don't. I really don't buy your argument at all because it doesn't hold under further scrutiny.</p>
<p>Cutting class size would greatly aid our financial aid program.</p>
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Wow. Why don't you bastardize the motto a little bit more?
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<p>I think what the person was saying was that "Any Person...Any Study" was in regards to admitting students without regards to race, gender, creed, etc. Cornell was revolutionary for doing this and this was the context in which Ezra Cornell made this comment.</p>
<p>Well, Cornell isn't interested in making money. So it isn't taking a loss. It receives a lot of money from the state and federal government, annual donations from alums (not endowment), and programmatic support from various foundations and agencies. </p>
<p>There are a lot of fixed costs on higher education and they come with economies of scale. But believe me when I tell you that the full tuition students are paying for a large part of Cornell's financial aid packages. I believe over 20% of all undergraduate tuition money is dedicated to this purpose. And that if you decreased the student body at Cornell, you wouldn't be solving any of Cornell's resource issues.</p>
<p>I have never argued that a larger endowment wouldn't help to make Cornell's financial aid packages more generous. I've argued that reducing class size wouldn't do all that much to help.</p>
<p>Nice debate, but I would just like to point out that applicants that need financial aid do not necessary represent a better pool of students. I would like to even go further to say that students that went to top private schools are probably better prepared for Cornell than students from lower rated public schools. How much financial aid a school provides is just a small indicator of how good of a school is. When people are talking about lack of resource because a school is too large or too small(like state schools or small LAC), they are referring to lack of course offerings, lack of lab equipments, fine arts facilities, and clearly Cornell does not lack any of those resources, even for a school size of 13,000.</p>
<p>I agree that Cornell's financial aid is a bit subpar.
I've got a question... I'm an upstate NY resident and want to attend Human Ecology. Say I get in and go there, will I get any sort of package? (I don't think I have any need, but my family income is only barely above getting financial aid, meaning that we can't afford regular tuition at most colleges)</p>
<p>No. You will need to go to a school with merit scholarship or take out a loan.</p>
<p>Okay. We can basically pay the 34000 a year for humec tho.
So yea for Cornell!</p>
<p>cornell's financial aid is much more impressive than other private liberal arts schools...</p>
<p>Most people are paying 50,000.</p>
<p>i would like to know how many students or what % of students pay full or close to full tuition...</p>
<p>i'm certain that less than 10% of students get 30k+ in help...</p>
<p>631 students received 100% full ride last year.</p>
<p>4,000 students received more than a 50% ride last year.</p>
<p>All of this info is publicly available. You just have to look.</p>
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I have never argued that a larger endowment wouldn't help to make Cornell's financial aid packages more generous. I've argued that reducing class size wouldn't do all that much to help.
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<p>Reducing class size would increase endowment per student, hence increasing the amount of financial aid that can be provided for each student.</p>
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Well, Cornell isn't interested in making money. So it isn't taking a loss. It receives a lot of money from the state and federal government, annual donations from alums (not endowment), and programmatic support from various foundations and agencies.
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<p>Of course Cornell isn't interested in making money. But, if they are losing money on educating full-tuition students, the tuition money of full students doesn't really pay for the tuition of those who are on financial aid.</p>
<p>"Quite frankly I would rather see as many kids as possible have the privilege of a Cornell education than seeing students rejected so that Cornellians can cite superior statistics in such pointless comparisons."</p>
<p>If the percentage of admitted students gets higher and higher with each year, this will reflect in the quality of the graduates. If everybody is accepted, than Cornell's no longer a privilege, but a right. One of the keys to college progress is the free exchange of ideas between students; if I take the same classes as a guy who doesn't know how to compute the square of square root of 2, what interesting ideas can he share with me? How he can chug 5 beers in 30 seconds?</p>
<p>In the end of the day, a school is really only as good as the quality of its students. Motto or no motto</p>
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If the percentage of admitted students gets higher and higher with each year, this will reflect in the quality of the graduates.
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<p>No, it won't.</p>
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If everybody is accepted, than Cornell's no longer a privilege, but a right.
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<p>Cornell is still selective as hell. This is absolutely wrong because not everybody is getting accepted. We are not talking about Penn State here. We are still more selective than schools like Duke, Chicago, Northwestern, JHU etc. and you don't see their alumni b1itching about their selectivity. Seriously if you have this kind of attitude maybe you should have attended college elsewhere.</p>
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One of the keys to college progress is the free exchange of ideas between students; if I take the same classes as a guy who doesn't know how to compute the square of square root of 2, what interesting ideas can he share with me?
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<p>I can assure you everyone on campus knows how to compute the square root of 2. The admissions office doesn't admit idiots here.</p>
<p>I am ambivalent towards this issue. First of all, I despise the elitism that's on CC. Student selectivity has become a proxy for quality of undergrad education which couldn't be further from the truth. I personally don't think an extra 50 points on the SAT makes much of a difference. If you look at the number of top notch academic departments, Cornell ranks up there with any college in the nation. </p>
<p>However, I do think Cornell's resources are stretched thinner than most other top schools. It is the largest of the top schools (which I like) but that means it has to watch its financial aid, student-faculty ratio, etc. There comes a point when a university can no longer sustain top level education due to overcrowding. </p>
<p>And Cornell should work on improving its image. Cornell is perhaps the least understood out of the top schools because it is the most unique from the other schools (the 7-college system instead of the traditional liberal arts college + engineering college set up, one of the few top schools to be in a semi-urban location, the largest out of the top 20 colleges, all the myths about suicide, weather, grade deflation, etc.). Let's face it, there are a lot of negative connotations about Cornell. It would really benefit by providing more information out to prospective applicants.</p>
<p>I agree with norcalguy..</p>