wavedasher

I've moved on from SSBM since I made this account, but glad to see you got the reference.

You make it sound like people like me act like this in the real world. We don't - plain and simple. However, I do appreciate the rest of your post. I agree with a lot of your points. All I'm saying is there is nothing wrong with becoming a bit more selective; at the least it'll get the other Ivies off our backs.

You do know that not anyone can apply to the top colleges in Asia right? Unlike in America where you just pay the application fee.

Yes, I can. Like previously mentioned, Harvard has an extension school and many other elite institutions have online classes. That's much different than what Cornell is doing.

norcalguy, just wait for Lazykid, oldfort, and monydad and this thread will be complete.

Calling everyone who disagrees with your opinion an idiot isn't smart; I'm sure that strategy will get you far in life. Why don't you actually address some of the problems I proposed if you think I'm such an idiot, instead of getting angry because you're a transfer yourself and auto-dismissing anything I say.

majoreco

As a community college student myself I'm disappointed in this thread. Can you really blame Cornellians (and consequently students at other Ivy's) for disliking the contract schools? Let's take ILR for example:

I personally love labor relations, but let's assume a student wants to transfer to that school. To be somewhat competitive, all they really have to do is get a 4.0 at a community college (which despite popular belief, varies in difficulty WIDELY between community colleges), have decent extracurriculars and you have a decent chance. The problem with this is two fold:

- If you divide these 4.0 CC students into groups, the dumber group will more likely than not struggle at Cornell. This will be seen by other Cornellians who will then associate the students with the contract college, exacerbating their hatred.

- There are students who as freshman were denied despite having near perfect stats. Why do that if you're going to accept a bunch of community college students?

The two reasons above are probably the main reasons to why the contract schools are frowned upon. Cornell should accept community college students, but should be more selective. Get the truly elite community college students (eg. Jack Kent Cooke Scholar Nominees, Coca Cola All-State team members, other prestigious two year school awards) and setup programs to ensure that these students succeed. Amherst does a fantastic job of making sure their 2 year school transfers succeed. IIRC the median gpa for Amherst transfers was like a 3.6, which is high when you consider 80% of the transfers are community college students.

cortana431

Lazykid actually hasn't been seen since January; he's probably really busy.

Anyway there is a brutal discussion in the RD discussion thread for the class of 2016 on this board where the above posters mentioned (lazykid, oldfort, and norcalguy) attacked the topic. read that first before opening up a new debate

norcalguy

Yea, I wouldn't reopen this debate again. I think the contract colleges add a lot to Cornell and are an unique and welcomed part of Cornell. But, there are aspects of admissions I'd like to see improved.

Colene

Agree with pretty much what has been said. Love the contract colleges, dislike their methods of selection half the time (taking some underperforming kids from instate/ ccs who just come here to drink), which they're obligated to by their status as contract schools.

DarkIce

I'm not angry, and I didn't say anything about transfers. I don't see any problem being a transfer...in fact it's a point of pride that I have. I always laugh as I think about all the insane highschoolers who attend 25+ clubs they have no interest in and spend 4-5 hours per night studying, while I had a life and had fun, yet still went to an Ivy League/top 15 school like Cornell and graduated with a 3.5+ in the end. I'm not unintelligent - I made very good grades in high school and did well on my SATs, but I didn't want to spend my free time working my way up the Key Club.

No, I'm not at all angry about being a transfer. I love it. I have the same Cornell degree as anyone else who attended, did better than many of my freshman-admit counterparts, and the opinion of a huge anti-Cornell troll such as yourself, Wavedasher, honestly doesn't bother me.

Colene

He's really not a troll. There are a significant amount of people that feels that way, within and outside of Cornell. However, I just think that their feelings are kind of put in a wrong direction - it doesn't have so much to do with the % of people accepted or the scores (or with the departments/programs - they are amazing), but in their methods of preferring less qualified in-state candidates over more qualified out-of-staters and taking a ridiculous number of transfers (ILR is roughly made of transfers students - basically 1/2 student is a transfer. Not even kidding. They also historically offer roughly as many spots for guaranteed transfers as acceptances for high school seniors - we have way too many transfers. This really turns off kids who worked all their lives to make it here, while other kids just simply head off to a CC and get an easy 4.0 to transfer here, with legitimatized credits and higher grades from the CC. They don't look at SATs, they don't even look at class rank within the CC.)

wavedasher

This is exactly why cc transfers are frowned upon. Freshman admits who worked 10x harder get denied, yet Cornell goes and takes a bunch of cc transfers who just partied all of high school. Yes, you're really doing your best to put the transfers in a good light aren't you?

I can see why you're from a cc. Like I said before, calling anyone who disagrees with you idiots is really going to get you far; I'm sure that you know everything and you're always right. Also, you should really go look up the definition of a troll. I'm probably one of the most fervent proponents of increasing selectivity and making Cornell a BETTER school; I guess to you that makes me a troll right? Also, if you really didn't care about others' opinions, you wouldn't have made this thread in the first place.

P.S. I don't really care about you either. You make it sound like I won't be able to get any sleep tonight cause you're calling me a troll. I'm going to stop responding to you in this thread since it seems like you're adamant and can't seem to consider other people's views.

Thank you. Someone's making sense. And here we have DarkIce laughing at the freshman admits who worked much harder than he and wondering why there's a stigma toward state school transfers.


majoreco, well said. I'm glad that you being a cc transfer hasn't blinded you from the problem.

Colene

^agree with the freshmen admit paragraph/part.

Also, I would rather they limit the number of people they take in because they are taking our dorms on west/ relegating us to Schulyer... Please take care of the people currently in the school before you take more people in.

pch340

Yeah this is part of the problem. The fact that you got lucky and were able to transfer is not impressive and the fact that you weren't able or weren't willing to put the effort in during high school is very unimpressive.

When it comes down to it, you WILL have to tell employers and grad schools all the colleges you attended and they know the difference between a freshman admit and a transfer...you're not getting away with anything...

morrismm

OMG, enough already. Cornell undergrad is much larger than the other selective schools. It must accept more, hence less selective.

It's esoteric contract schools have many fewer students to select from. Again, less selective.

It' s a great school with a very diverse student body. Some brilliant an some not so much.

D1 graduated from one of those "dumbed down" contract schools. Her High-school stats were higher than a classmate who got into MIT and another that got into Stanford.

She now works in a very elitist finance job in NYC. Her coworkers, boss, graduated from Yale, MIT, Harvard, etc. All analysts get evaluated and ranked evert year in their job evaluation. There is average and half have to be ranked above and half below. She ranked the highest this year and got the greatest bonus.

So obviously this contract kid is doing well, at least at this point. 1 1/2 years out of Cornell and she is making a lot of money and doing well. Things could be different next week, but for now, she has done better than over 90+% of all college grads as far as compensation and prestige.

Colene

That is not the point of the post - neither is your daughter's "making lots of money". Good for her, but that's beside the point - that has to do more with her connections too. OP is asking for source of discontentment, we gave it to him. Like I said, it isn't selectivity that's an issue - it's fairly selective alright, but it's selective against the wrong crowd (the more "qualified", out of state ones) - hence the biases. People just want that opportunity, a Cornell acceptance, to be given to more qualified HS seniors rather than CCers/transfers who do not have to report class rank or any other supposed "metric" by which high school seniors are judged by in the contract colleges.
As for the quality of education, there is no doubt that it's top-notch and it would give the students lots of opportunities, but we're talking about how to distribute this opportunity to the right crowd - the crowd that worked harder and deserved it more.

Colm

On the practice of accepting a relatively small percentage of transfers:

The contract colleges accept a good portion of its transfers as GTs. So, this being the case, aren't these applicants accepted up-front, as seniors in high school, on their full merits (SAT scores included)? A certain percentage of these GTs choose to attend an accredited cc in order to save money, and stay close to home for a year. You can argue that Cornell should limit the GT to one year at 4-year schools, but that doesn’t change the fact that these GTs are fully evaluated up front in high school. Additionally, Cornell says that the non-GT transfers it accepts are carefully screened, but I agree with the call to have SAT scores be required of them.

Finally, isn't the percentage of transfers from cc’s relatively small? Transfers from cc’s comprise less than 2% of students according the poster behappy—and behappy seems to be quite well versed in Cornell stats (…couldn’t find the percentage online myself); and this demographic would include the GT transfers who were fully evaluated as hs seniors.

Colene

Cornell Administrators Dispute New York Times Transfer Article | The Cornell Daily Sun
About 1500 GTs offered every year for the contract colleges alone - that's roughly how many students it accepts directly (If they all take it, that pretty much adds 40-50% to the enrolling class size). If you include GTs as acceptances, then that's about a 50% acceptance rate for some of the contract colleges v. 20% for eng and 14% cas (maybe even lower for both this year). Frankly I really don't think that 50% of high school applicants are that qualified. I think the selectivity is fine right now for contract colleges - but 50% is too high.

And no, they take in quite a good number of CC kids without GT as well. For them, high school performance, SATs, and class rank in the community college are not even concerns. Now is that fair.

Colm

I'm sure that a significant portion of GTs don't matriculate. Many get into other great colleges, some get into less expensive schools, and some attending lesser schools decide they like that school (and the friends they find there). On the other hand, I agree that non-GT transfer applicants should be evaluated a bit more stringently.