It sure has been an Ivy but now it’s a huge school with many public schools and higher acceptance rates unlike other ivies.
You say that like this is new news.
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.
What “first time”?
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.
Public Ivy is not a label just used by loyals. There is a context to the term and it applies to specific schools - UVA, UNC, W&M, UVM, Michigan, Miami of Ohio, UCB and UTA if I am recalling them correctly.
It was a label coined by an author. There is no real context.
It’s news as ALL other elites saw big increase in applications and decrease in acceptance rate.
That IS the context in which the term is used. I’m not familiar with people using the term with schools they are fans of as you suggest.
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.
This term literally defines today’s Cornell, no matter how it was used in the past.
Um. Your post makes no sense. Cornell is an ivy (yup, has been for a long time). Cornell is a public university (yup, has been for a long time). Nothing is new. Maybe it is news to you…
The top public universities in the US are, in no particular order:
UF, UCB, UCLA, UMIch, UVA, GT, etc. Cornell is a private institution and an Ivy, I’m confused why it’s being debated.
Not to split hairs, but Cornell is actually wholly a private university. It has two divisions" an “endowed” division and a “Statutory” division.
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.
(got timed out)
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”.
Its a stupid term but to be fair, Cornell has more in common with UT or UVA than with Princeton or Yale.
By the way, what is the reason for their applications going down when every top 20 school recieved record breaking numbers of applicants?
If you go that route and I agree with it to some degree then it has a lot more in common with Penn.
The pervasive but superficial focus on acceptance rates as an indicator of a school’s quality makes me crazy, and, unfortunately, at times seems to warp some admissions-offices’ behavior. Don’t place too much stock in such numbers – they are easy to manipulate, if that’s a school’s goal (which, unfortunately, it sometimes rationally might be, because potential applicants and ranking groups do look at those numbers).
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!
Well… it is private, but it is a NY land grant university, and it operates some of its colleges as public colleges (contract colleges). Those contract colleges have to accept a certain % of New York State students.
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.
Cornell is a great school and its athletic teams compete in the Ivy League.
@CupCakeMuffins Applications to Cornell were down slightly this year after increasing by 10,000 applications over the prior 3 years from 41,000 in 2015 to 51,000 in 2018. So perhaps just a pause in the climb after three years of huge increases. Meanwhile Cornell’s yield rate has increased from 51% to 61% over those same three years so perhaps more ED admits and more RD admitted kids choosing Cornell over other options.
@cupugu With more public school programs, aid and easier acceptance, yield is bound to increase. That’s a no brainer, not like applicants are picking it over HYPSM etc