PARENTS4PARENTS is a new initiative aimed at highlighting the vast expertise of our parents community while helping other parents better navigate the college admissions process. aggies1989 is a UC alumnus and parent of two UC college kids. ASK HIM ANYTHING!
GUEST STUDENT OF THE WEEK: fintech3753 is a current student at the Wharton School. Majoring in finance, he is hoping to pursue a career at the intersection of finance and technology. ASK HIM ANYTHING!
Make sure to check out our August Checklist for HS Seniors. Consult these quick resources to get you started on the process this month.
As we work to adjust to the current reality, make sure to check out these dedicated COVID-19 resources: our directory of virtual campus tours, our directory of extended deadlines, as well as the list of schools going test optional this fall.
Cornell is now what you can call a “Public Ivy”?
Riversider
934 replies111 threads Senior Member
Often good public schools are labelled as “Public Ivies” by their loyal who wants to add prestige but for first time we really have a school we can call a real Public Ivy. There acceptance rate is higher than all Ivies and othertop 20 schools, they are huge and offer several public programs.
65 repliesPost edited by ccadminkris on
Tagged:
This discussion has been closed.
Replies to: Cornell is now what you can call a “Public Ivy”?
At the end of the day, the Ivy League is an athletic conference with 8 colleges and universities. Nothing about that has changed since 1954.
Cornell was established as part of a land grant and as such has a mission to serve the residents of NY state. Three of the seven colleges within Cornell are contract colleges and receive state money. That said, Cornell is primarily a private institution and has been part of the Ivy League, a football conference, since its inception in the 50s.
Cornell has always had the "highest" acceptance rate in the Ivy League. Nothing new. It was 10.6% this cycle - 3/10th higher than last year.
Is your point to identify that Cornell has a higher acceptance rate than the other schools in the same athletic league, or that individuals can be admitted through the public university system? Neither has anything to do with the public Ivy term that is only used to associate quality of academics.
UF, UCB, UCLA, UMIch, UVA, GT, etc. Cornell is a private institution and an Ivy, I’m confused why it’s being debated.
The Statutory colleges receive state funding, administered by SUNY, but they are not run by SUNY, they are run by Cornell which is a private university.
The relationship is explained here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statutory_college
FWIW, when I applied to colleges the ivy league member with the highest acceptance rates was Penn, not Cornell. This didn't change till sometime in the late 70s or early to mid 80, IIRCs.
Also, Penn has close to the same enrollment as Cornell, it just has more grad students vs undergrads.
As for the rest, as others have posted, there is really nothing new here, everyone who has been following things over the years already knows all this, for a long time already.
The Ivy League is what it is. and has been, like forever. And includes Cornell.
Cornell is what it is, which is a little weird. But it has been, like forever.
The endowed division of Cornell does not even receive state funding. There is really no way to construe these as "public".
By the way, what is the reason for their applications going down when every top 20 school recieved record breaking numbers of applicants?
Imagine, for example, a school with (just to keep the math simple) 20,000 applicants (including 2,000 early-decision applicants), seeking to fill a freshman class of 2,000, and a 50% yield rate (meaning 50% of those accepted choose to enroll). To fill those 2,000 spots the school could admit 4,000 of the 20,000 applicants, which generates an acceptance rate of 20%. Or it could admit 1,000 ED to fill 1,000 spots and fill the remaining 1,000 spots by admitting 2,000 RD. In that scenario they admitted 3,000 / 20,000, or 15%. But it's not necessarily a better class or better school. Now let's say they really want to juice the numbers. They could admit 1,200 ED, fill 600 more slots by admitting 1,200 RD, and then waitlist a bunch of kids, from which they can pull 200 more kids at essentially a 100% yield rate. In that version the school made 2,600 offers, for an admit rate of 13% - but again, there's no reason to think either the school or the class is "better" than the scenario in which the school has a 20% admit rate.
Add into the mix the tendency of some strong but not elite schools to reject great applicants because they assume they'll end up going to more prestigious schools and thereby decrease yield (sometimes called "Tufts Syndrome" or "Yield Protection") and you have today's somewhat messed-up admissions system, in which more and more spots go to ED applicants, tons of people get waitlisted, and amazing candidates don't get in to schools they once viewed as targets. (Just as examples, take a look at Rice and WashU St. Louis in recent years.)
I suppose some of the blame belongs to US News & World Report, who almost accidentally got this whole thing rolling. In any event, it would be great if applicants and schools stopped treating acceptance rates -- and, in particular, small differences in acceptance rates -- as evidence of anything meaningful about a college. I'm not holding my breath, though!
Yes, this focus appears to connect with a competitive personality trait among some that probably, for reasons I'll leave to others' sense of reasoning, undermines meaningful academics at some of the colleges that have reached ultra-low acceptance levels.