<p>it’s cause any knowledgeable junior/senior should know that ivy is only a athletic conference which has nothing to do with today’s college acceptance rate</p>
<p>hotelies, aggies, drag it down. as does the SUNY affiliation or whatever you want to call it. then there’s the ithica thing. </p>
<p>It’s just not that big a deal. if it werent in the Ivy league athletic conference it would be the university of Delaware.</p>
<p>The ivy league has, over many years, been transformed into a classification of top universities, so it’s only natural to associate acceptance rates with the ivies.
And i highly doubt that the ivy league affiliation is what’s keeping Cornell from being paired alongside U of Delaware. If cornell wasn’t comparable to the other schools in the ivy league, then i doubt the ivy league would carry the academic connotations that it does today.</p>
<p>Cornell is something like the 19th most selective university in the US (based on % admitted). 19% isn’t a high number, especially considering schools like College of the Ozarks, deep springs, Cooper Union and other that are traditionally lower ranked than Cornell have lower admit rates than cornell. To put it simply, Cornell doesn’t have a high admit rate.</p>
<p>Tbone, those schools you mentioned cover your full tuition, which is why they have such lower admit rates. If Cornell’s financial aid package was anywhere near as good at HYP’s of those schools, then I’m sure that our admit rates would be lower. The US News ranking is based on a variety of factors, of which admittance rates play a small, but significant role. People just like to play it up because it’s a simple number to use to compare schools as an undergraduate. You never hear pre-frosh talking about how great specific faculty member are, the research they’re doing, the strength of a specific academic program, or anything similar. It’s just the nature of our society to place a huge emphasis on numerical values that really don’t mean much in the end. College, regardless of admittance rates, is whatever you want to make of it–from drinking and partying all night to studying all night.</p>
<p>yes^^, acceptance rates are a rather juvenile deciding-factor for many juvenile minds.</p>
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<p>both schools you mention are actually the top in their field. and the SUNY affiliation does nothing more than provide extra money for the university in exchange for the maintenance of certain “obscure” (to most people), yet historically and culturally relevant, majors. and really, cornell = UD if not for the ivy league affiliation? LOL.</p>
<p>you know, you might have a shred of validity left if you spelled ITHACA correctly. that’s a really big IF. too bad you spelled it incorrectly AND you have no idea what you’re talking about. sucks to be you, right?</p>
<p>It’s not even SUNY… it’s a contract college… difference.</p>
<p>One more thing to consider:</p>
<p>When people dote on the admission rates of the top schools like HYP, they’ll often note the regular decisions acceptance rate. This can be deceiving as these schools tend to have very large pools of EA/ED applications with rate of acceptance for early decision generally between 15 and 20 percent. By having a smaller amount of slots to fill, and accepting many of their students early the are able to drive there regular decision acceptance rate down. THis gives promoters of these schools pieces of data which they can pick and choose at, effectively using the data as propaganda for the schools. Not to discredit the merit of any such schools.</p>
<p>But in general I agree, acceptances rates won’t matter in the long run.</p>
<p>harvard doesnt have ED anymore i believe</p>
<p>Ah very true. I wasn’t singling out those three schools, i simply meant to encompass all of the top tier schools, especially the ones that look down on Cornell :)</p>
<p>Is the OP serious?</p>
<p>Look, I’m just a little more zen about these things. I don’t think the intention was to be insulting or to put down Cornell. It is statistically underhanded in comparison to Harvard. As TchaikovskyPiano put it, at least. IMO it was an innocent question.
I don’t look down on Cornell- for some, it is a fantastic education and a great name as well as a good fit. I hope to attend Bowdoin, which has an 18.6% acceptance rate, yet often students are those accepted at HYPS and want a non-“Brand name” education. To say that these schools aren’t as selective as HYPS doesn’t make much sense, especially when you note a significantly smaller pool of applicants (due to their lowered prestige). In reality, the pools are self-selective at these unknown upper-tier schools. So I’m rooting for you in that I hope Cornell doesn’t get bashed, but I really feel that afraidtoapply wasn’t trying to be abrasive.</p>
<p>'… 20 % is a shockingly high rate. "</p>
<p>Well then you probably would have had an aneuriasm in my day, when Penn’s Arts & Sciences admissions rate was 41%. At that time, the two most selective colleges in the nation were Yale and Cooper Union, at 17%.</p>
<p>Traditionally the least selective undergraduate colleges in the Ivy League have been Columbia’s College of General Studies and Penn’s School of Nursing, don’t know about currently. Fortunately, students attending any of these colleges need not fear for their Ivy League membership, since that is after all an NCAA athletics conference to which their universities belong. </p>
<p>The admissions rates are what they are. Not all colleges in this country are equally difficult to gain admission to. Not all colleges of universities participating in any particular athletics conference are equally difficult to gain admission to.</p>
<p>Personally, my concern is that 16% (most current for Cornell CAS, so I’ve read) is too shockingly low, I’m worried that my son won’t be able to get in, should he want to go, despite legacy status.</p>
<p>Try 7% for regular decision Cornell AAP applicants.
AAP is their most selective school and on average, takes about 15% of the applicants, but for regular decision only takes 7%.</p>
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<p>This post should be stickied and posted everytime this question comes up. It is the most accurate, unemotional, and balanced response I have seen. It is the answer this perpetual question.</p>
<p>I don’t think a lot of new students realize how high admission rates used to be - UPenn was historically the highest, often around 40%, then they made a concerted effort to redefine their mission. But admission rates fluctuate wildly and different schools emerge at different times as the “easiest to get in” or the “hardest to get in”.</p>
<p>The truth of the matter is, most Ivies, especially the lower Ivies, are only selective if you are poor but not academic super star. If you are rich and can pay full fare, and have half decent scores like a B+ and higher (preferably) and do some decent amount of extra-curri (most rich kids have no problem in these areas, like fencing, tennis etc.) you are almost guaranteed a spot in the Ivies. It is a business after-all.</p>
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<ol>
<li><p>People in the Hotel School and Agriculture and Life Sciences go to the best school in the country for their chosen fields. If that drags a school’s reputation down, I can’t imagine what would bring it up. In fact, a new life sciences research facility was recently built to serve the emerging biotechnology industry … but I guess it’s easier to pretend everybody just squeezes cow teets. </p></li>
<li><p>The number one rule of leveling an insult on a forum of this nature is that you must have perfect spelling. When you can’t even spell the name of the beautiful city on which you are ragging, you fail. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>As someone who actually lived there, I can assure you that I have yet to encounter any alumni of Cornell - big city or small town alike - who did not enjoy Ithaca and all its natural beauty.</p>
<ol>
<li> I realize you’re just trying to be funny, but if Cornell weren’t in the Ivy League it would probably be considered more in the same category as the likes of Northwestern or University of Chicago or Johns Hopkins. In fact, I’d wager that Cornell’s reputation would actually be higher if it weren’t Ivy because people would stop comparing it to small liberal arts colleges like Harvard and Princeton, which have fundamentally different missions, and rather judge it on its own unique mission and merits.</li>
</ol>
<p>Here is why, in my opinion, Cornell has a “high” acceptance rate:</p>
<p>First of all, I feel that Cornell has one of the most self-selecting applicant pools in the nation. Everyone and their mother wants to go to HYPS, and I’ve seen so many kids go “Ah what the hell might as well apply.” When all these kids get rejected, it shoots their acceptance rates way down. </p>
<p>Similarly, almost every kid I know that wants to go into business lets themselves get rejected by Wharton (I would leave to see UPenn’s acceptance rate outside of Wharton, and would be willing to bet that if you took out Wharton and AEM-- the Cornell major with the lowest UG acceptance rate-- Cornell would have a lower acceptance rate overall). </p>
<p>Another thing is many of Cornell’s program’s are very specific, and are therefore oriented towards students who already have impressive resumes in those fields. Take for example, engineering. Last I heard, the acceptance rate for engineering was somewhere in the mid 20 percentile. Are you trying to tell me Cornell Engineering is “easy” to get into? A more probable answer is most of the kids who apply to the CoE are already pursuing a career in engineering, and therefore are competing against a smaller pool of applicants (yielding a greater acceptance rate). Apply this thinking to other specific programs, such as Hotel. </p>
<p>In a similar fashion, many of the kids who apply to Cornell are applying because they find themselves competitive applicants. I find that there are mainly two types of people who apply: 1) People who want a backup to HYPS 2) People who dearly love the school and area. If people are good enough where they see it as “backup” to HYPS, they are probably competitive applicants in their own regard. People in the second group could be chasing a non-realistic dream, but often times to fall in love with the school they’ve done a great amount of research and found something really special, which inevitably leads to great amount of fit. </p>
<p>Conclusively, I just don’t see people going, “Oh what the hell, I might as well apply to Cornell” like they do to HYP. Maybe in New York, but definitely not on the West Coast. Take my school for example: USNews Top 10 Ranked for years now, and from our career website:</p>
<p>In the last 4 years:
Applicants/ Avg UW GPA (of APPLICANT, not admitted)
Harvard: 109 / 3.76
Yale: 88/ 3.87
Princeton: 59/ 3.92
Stanford: 123/ 3.72
Cornell: 13/ 3.91</p>
<p>By no means am I saying Cornell is the most competitive school, but it is obvious that the people who do apply to Cornell actually know what they’re doing.</p>
<p>Exactly. Cornell is self-selective, but again, there could many reasons for the .2 difference in UW GPAs. I think when you figure it in basic math, Cornell is just as selective, but to go as far as calling it a better school might be a stretch. There are so many variants on these colleges that it is difficult to truly say which is better. Hence the number of kids that apply to HYPS that would never really enjoy it there.</p>