<p>College acceptance is a subjective decision. For someone who gets accepted to Stanford and rejected from Cornell, it was harder for that person to get into Cornell than Stanford… When you are applying amongst 30000+ other kids that all have virtually the same stats as you, class-fit becomes more important than scores. It’s almost like a random draw, and while there are much more spots available at Cornell than any other school on this list, you are still being compared to thousands more students. </p>
<p>Also, specific colleges have different expectations and requirements as you indicated, so it is difficult to really gauge the acceptance rate (or difficulty of admission for that matter) at any given school within Cornell. For example, a brilliant engineer might have no problems getting into MIT or Stanford (or Cornell Engineering for that matter) but the same applicant may be rejected from Cornell’s Architecture school and AEM programs (true story). </p>
<p>The fact is (based on 2014 stats - flip your early projections), more students got rejected from Cornell than even applied to Columbia, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, or Penn. If you got accepted to Cornell this year, there are more angry rejects (most of which have elite SAT/GPA scores) than the ENTIRE BODY OF APPLICANTS at other schools.</p>
<p>Finally, admit rate does not indicate the intellectual capacity of a student population nor the value of a schools undergraduate education, which is what I’m arguing should be the basis for prestige and respect within Ivy League schools. Facts are facts, Cornell students have more to learn (both from each other and from their coursework) than any other students. Most of the coursework offered in other Ivy or semi-Ivy undergraduate institutions is thoroughly impractical, while Cornell offers a never-ending supply of genuinely useful knowledge.</p>
<p>Cornell undergrad offers countless one-of-a-kind top-notch programs. Every other school’s undergrad program is mundane and ordinary by comparison: essentially the same classes in the same subjects with the same majors. Cornell offers the only truly innovative and unique education, with the widest variety of talented and brilliant students. </p>
<p>That’s why Cornell is better than every other Ivy, because (not in spite) of having the largest accepted class, from the greatest applicant pool.</p>
<p>well said
we agree on some things disagree on others.
my opinion, schools like Yale and Princeton are far more difficult to gain entry and rarely lose a student to cornell, but you are correct as cornell probably has far more specific programs than the others which makes it such a diverse place to spend 4 years.
PS - you are very passionate about cornell. and I wish you well.
If you go to cornell, you would be a great student ambassador!!</p>
<p>It’s easier to get in cornell than HYP. The quality of education though, is pretty similar. Academics is certainly one of Cornell’s greatest strengths. The only possible downside is that you get a lot of students in Cornell for the same class sometimes, though there is a pretty low # of students per class.
Among arts and science / engineering schools of the non-HYP ivies, the difficulty is comparable.
Other schools don’t really have something of a standard to measure to, but if you are talking a school like CALS, it’s definately easier. Schools like hotel / architecture are more specific, so it may be just as hard as its own way, although those schools are less score-based in admitting students
one of the best things about Cornell for me is the freedom in choices of study after you get in, especially in CAS.</p>
<p>I disagree with the point from willhemakeit too. A lot of things constitute prestige. I can argue that Cornell holds more prestige than brown, dartmouth, and perhaps penn (non wharton) - one of the many reasons why i got argued out of ED penn A&S. But not so much columbia, and def not HYP.
But the second post… what?</p>
<p>Most viewed Universities on Collegeboard for students that viewed the Cornell University Profile:
all of these other schools (except maybe Tulane) admit between 10000-20000+ students though, do they not? </p>
<p>Okay, application count may not be the best measure of prestige either. Yield is important to take into account, as well as caliber of applicants. If we’re going to be jerks about it, reject-count should be considered pretty important too.</p>
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<p>Um… check Harvard’s CollegeBoard profile… both these schools are on Harvard’s page as well. they are possibly paying CollegeBoard for the promo space… or cURLing the system…</p>
<p>^ Specialty colleges at Cornell, like its number one ranked College of Architecture (AAP), along with its highly regarded School of Hotel Administration, emphasize admittance factors other than SATs. The College of Architecture, Art, and Planning emphasizes strength of portfolio; and the school of Hotel Administration emphasizes targeted extracurriculars and interview. These are the major reasons why Cornell’s aggregate SATs aren’t quite as high as the other fine schools you have listed. The SAT argument is not so valid for Cornell’s unique and diverse university.</p>
<p>Cornell admissions is not as hard to get in as say harvard. The difference in standardized testing exaggerates that difference though, which is in my mind, pretty small anyways. If you truly wish to compare these schools, compare say the arts and sciences with each other and the engineering schools with each other.
The people that hotel school, art and architecture, CALS, CHE, ILR look for are kind of different. In those areas (especially art and architecture, hotel, and perhaps ILR) I can only presume that scores do not matter as much. CALS requirements are certainly more lenient. Then take into consideration the size of the school itself and URMs, legacies, all that, etc.</p>
<p>The selling point for me over other Ivies was that Cornell has so many majors that if something went south, there’s always a few layers of contingency before you’re hit with the IM.</p>
<p>As has already been addressed, some of the specialized schools (ie Hotel Administration, Architecture, etc.) don’t weigh SAT scores as heavily as traditional liberal arts schools. Instead, these schools tend to focus more on commitment to the field (and social skills in the case of Hotel). These facts weigh down Cornell’s overall average SAT, but don’t impact the quality of Cornell students as a whole. </p>
<p>Another huge influence on Cornell’s SAT averages is that more so than any of the other Ivies, Cornell recruits out of public schools, many of which are underfunded and poorly managed. I don’t really want to start up this debate right now, as it constitutes an entirely separate thread, but there is an argument to be made that SAT scores (reading and writing) are a reflection of the background of an applicant, rather than their intellectual capacity or motivation to learn. Students that are lucky enough to benefit from resources (private sat prep classes, sat books, supportive parents, etc.) are often unwilling or incapable of drawing the connection between SAT scores and economic/ethnic background.
[National</a> Statistics on Education and Equity Issues, By Race and Ethnicity](<a href=“http://www.maec.org/natstats.html]National”>http://www.maec.org/natstats.html)
<a href=“http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and-family-income/[/url]”>http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and-family-income/</a>
I’m not saying SAT’s are useless or that you shouldn’t study hard for them, I’m just saying we should analyze what is really being tested here… Idiomatic english (of the white middle class) and useless vocabulary? What do these scores really reflect? </p>
<p>With that in mind, let’s compare the math SAT scores of incoming Engineers (a case where SAT scores reflect something of value) between incoming Cornell Engineers and other top Engineering schools:
[SAT</a> Scores for the Top Engineering Schools - Compare SAT Scores for the Top Engineering Schools in the United States](<a href=“http://collegeapps.about.com/od/sat/a/top-engineering-sat-scores.htm]SAT”>SAT Scores for Admission to Top Engineering Schools)
oh what a surprise, Cornell’s stats are identical to MIT and outright beat Stanford.</p>
<p>Regardless of how you feel about the validity of the SAT as an indicator of intellectual propensity, Cornell’s A&S school does value them very much. I don’t have any source to cite for this, but I’ve been told the Arts&Sciences (liberal arts) college has an avg. SAT 25-75 of 690-785. Please correct me if anyone can prove this to be inaccurate. What this tells you is that for the programs that Cornell offers that are comparable to other Ivy’s, the Cornell student body is virtually indistinguishable.</p>
<p>So let’s see if I can understand this. Now you want to compare the SAT scores of Cornell Engineering, which makes up only 18% of the Cornell majors with with other schools now?</p>
<p>then you only want to compare only the Math SAT and not the CR SAT?</p>
<p>then you are comparing apples with oranges by comparing Cornell’s Math SAT for its Engineering School with Stanford’s overall SAT scores?</p>
<p>Do you realize how ridiculous you are getting now?</p>
<p>Stanford beats the cross-admit battle for Engineers with MIT, Caltech and Harvey Mudd for the best Math SAT testing students in the country. If the SAT’s of Stanford Engineering students would be itemized, they would blow Cornell’s Engineering school SAT’s away.</p>
<p>… other than Columbia, those percentages are virtually identical. Even including Columbia</p>
<p>15% * 14000 > 29% * 7000</p>
<p>Also, ethnicity isn’t a full representation of background. Columbia does not publish what percentage of their students come from public schools. More of Columbia’s students come from family’s with college-educated parents and a smaller percentage of Columbia’s student body receives financial aid.</p>
Yeah. CoE is the only college at Cornell I could find individualized data on. I’d like to isolate the schools where SAT is most relevant to admission for analysis.
Well, we can compare reading or math, it really doesn’t matter. We’re talking about a difference of 10 points, or approximately 1 question. +/-. In math, Cornell Engineering brutally murders Stanford, and in reading they’re pretty identical.</p>
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My bad, I didn’t see that, I assumed that engineering students were being itemized because it didn’t indicate (general admission) next to the name of the school like it does for Cal Berkeley.</p>
<p>Ok, no problem. But first - I don’t have any source to cite for this, but I have been told that the Cornell Arts & Sciences college has an avg SAT 25-75 of 620-720. Please correct me if anyone can prove this to be innaccurate.</p>