<p>[Cornell</a> Alumni Magazine - Color Me Red](<a href=“Color Me Red – Cornell Alumni Magazine”>Color Me Red – Cornell Alumni Magazine)</p>
<p>Let’s not chance her, please. I just thought that it was an interesting article, and wanted to pass it on to any one who is interested. I’m not sure we will ever find out how it turns out for her. The CAM publishes names of legacy admits, but it comes out substantially after the admissions cycle.</p>
<p>Of course she will get in…there’s a hall on campus named after her great-great-grandfather. (We’re not talking about a “regular” legacy candidate here.) What she will always have to contend with is her fellow students wondering if she got in because she was smart enough, or because of that hall…</p>
<p>It’s a nice article. She better get in.</p>
<p>To me, the article highlights the anxiety associated with the process. When the admit percentages become sufficiently small, few applicants can be completely comfortable.
They each have their own excellences and attributes, but they are not in a position to evaluate their application comparatively, or confidently assess the weight that will be applied to their individual academic vs. non-academic factors.</p>
<p>And there is a particular anxiety on the part of legacy candidates,and in this case also local candidates, because it is widely believed that they are supposed to be given a “leg up” in the admit process. So what does it mean then, if they don’t get in, even after a “leg up” ? It can become all the more disappointing, even embarrassing.</p>
<p>D2 went through this, fortunately she was accepted. But I well remember the bitterness a friend of mine expressed, when his lovely and wonderful legacy daughter was rejected from his top school alma mater. The school sent him a letter saying it was due to the large volume of great applicants they received that year. and this made him feel worse.</p>
<p>And then if you do get in, you’re not sure how much was due to this “leg up”, and then do you really “deserve” to be there? D2 expressed relief that she was also admitted to a highly selective “unhooked” school, else she might have felt some anxiety in this regard.</p>
<p>It’s just a stressful process, let’s face it. Because the process, criteria, and weighting are not completely transparent, or formulaic. But ironically, candidates who have obvious “hooks” might feel even more anxiety than others.</p>
<p>The point of that article was to signal to alumni that they should be nervous about their kids getting in. If that girl is nervous, everybody should be nervous.</p>
<p>Of course she’ll get in. Did she forget to mention that half the staff in the admissions office are also relatives? (More seriously, Cornell accepts more than three times the number of kids that HYP do, and Ithaca is not very big. It has room to take care of its qualified local ED candidates.)</p>
<p>With those test scores (1910), she should be nervous. If not outright acceptance, she’ll easily be offered a Guarantee Transfer Option and become a Cornellian the year following.</p>
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<p>Does the average candidate have a 1910 on the SAT (after “cramming with prep classes”) and score in the 82nd %ile on SAT subject tests? She doesn’t list her GPA; she says instead that none of her final grades are below a B.</p>
<p>Not dissing her qualifications; I don’t know anything about Cornell admissions and am wondering where she’d fit into the mix.</p>
<p>I am currently reading Price of Admission. Never new how many different ways there exist for a hooked candidate to be admitted. Of course she will be there - one way or another ;)</p>
<p>“If not outright acceptance, she’ll easily be offered a Guaranteed Transfer Option…” </p>
<p>…Assuming she applied to one of the contract colleges there that uses GT. I have never heard of a Guaranteed Transfer at the endowed colleges, if any of them do use GT it must be pretty rare.</p>
<p>“Not dissing her qualifications; I don’t know anything about Cornell admissions and am wondering where she’d fit into the mix.”</p>
<p>It varies by college there:</p>
<p><a href=“http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000003.pdf[/url]”>http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000003.pdf</a>
<a href=“http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000176.pdf[/url]”>http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000176.pdf</a>
<a href=“http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000177.pdf[/url]”>http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000177.pdf</a></p>
<p>But these stats don’t break out people from IHS. Or 5 generation legacies with buildings named after them.</p>
<p>They don’t list Writing section scores, IIRC they treat this section like another subject test.</p>
<p>“The point of that article was to signal to alumni that they should be nervous about their kids getting in. If that girl is nervous, everybody should be nervous.”</p>
<p>That may indeed have been the intent of the article, but the message would have been more powerful if the same candidate had 2250 + saluditorian. Someone with her stats might reasonably be nervous. a bit anyway.</p>
<p>If the candidate had 2250 SATs and was salutatorian at Ithaca High School, no one would actually believe she was nervous, even if she weren’t the great-granddaughter of a building and a campus fixture herself.</p>
<p>I happen to know Ithaca HS quite well (see screen name:)). Back in my day and I doubt much has changed,</p>
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<li> Nobody wanted to go to Cornell (who wants to stay in Ithaca?), rolls eyes.</li>
<li> 20% of the graduating class did go to Cornell, that’s after the portion that attended other IVY/equivalent schools. So how many were accepted? There was not a <em>single</em> kid that went to Cornell that was excited then (or even now) about doing so.</li>
<li> Faculty/staff children had free tuition (of course it was about 4K back then), probably not an issue for this gal. Maybe not true anymore.</li>
<li> Highly unlikely she is applying ED to Cornell because she ‘loves’ it so much.</li>
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<p>She really couldn’t put the cellphone down for the duration of the photo?</p>
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<p>Do you really think most students will waste one minute of their time wondering about how someone else in their class got in? I sure don’t. The students who would sit there and ponder whether someone was truly smart enough or whether it was just due to her family’s legacy … well, they’re the people with no lives, really.</p>
<p>The vast majority of Cornellians won’t. But I bet it’s thought about at IHS, probably by those with better stats than her who may not be admitted. It’s not that big a school. Not that that’s a big issue in the end.</p>
<p>Eh, she’ll get in but she has right to be concerned…</p>
<p>I have a 1910 on my SATs, a 4 and a 5 on my AP tests, and haven’t ever gotten a grade below a B. I wouldn’t ever get into Cornell.</p>
<p>My sister-in-law essentially grew up in Ithaca and went to Ithaca High School. She would have been class of 1967 or 1968, although her family moved and she spent her last two years in Ohio. She never wanted to go anywhere other than Cornell. In fact, her mother told me that she refused to apply anywhere else, even though this was before the era of ED, and she would have been up a creek if she hadn’t been accepted there. She was a VERY strong candidate for any college (and has grown up to be a well-known academic in her field), so it wasn’t remotely a question of taking what she could get.</p>
<p>Out of curiosity, thinking about the high schools that are in the backyard of pick-your-prestigious school, are there some that give super-love to the hometown kids and others that only give a little love? I guess it would be hard to separate that from legacy and faculty-kids. Has anyone ever looked at or tried to quantify that? I guess what I’m asking is … what % of Cornell’s entering freshman class would be from IHS, versus other schools and their backyard public high school?</p>
<p>Well, given the size of Ithaca (relatively small) and the size of Cornell (relatively large), I would guess that a very small percentage of Cornell’s entering class is from Ithaca High School (<1%), even though the absolute numbers, I am sure, are pretty high (~20 minimum). The percentage at Harvard from the combination of Boston Latin and Cambridge Rindge & Latin is probably twice as large, with similar headcount.</p>
<p>RE #10: </p>
<h1>1. Nobody wanted to go. Well she does, she’s applying ED. And you’ve decided it’s not because of $$, per your #3. So did somebody beat her into it?</h1>
<p>D2 knows several locals who are there now, they seem happy with their choice as far as I know. And they chose it.
Several “faculty brats” I knew went, even if they didn’t want to go, their parents certainly wanted them to, per your #3.</p>
<p>I can certainly see the disincentives: grew up there so inclined to get out, does not seem like such a big deal when such high proportion from your school is getting in. But “nobody” is a lttle strong.</p>
<p>Despite her legacy connection and the fact that she can write, I would not count on her getting in. It sounds as though her grades are not especially high, and that’s not an impressive SAT score by Cornell standards. </p>
<p>Cornell cares a lot about GPAs, and “never got a final grade below a B” is not going to look good when surrounded by a sea of people who have only a very few final grades – if any – below an A. </p>
<p>Full disclosure: My daughter got into Cornell as an ED legacy applicant and is a junior there now. But I don’t think she would even have thought of applying to Cornell if she had an SAT of 1910. She would have considered Cornell to be way out of reach.</p>
<p>If you believe wikipedia articles, then IHS historically had around 10% of its grads or 37.6 students per year from 2000-2004 who attended Cornell. It sounds like a lot for any given HS. It has always been my impression that the faculty connection is one of the larger contributing factors. I am not sure how to find numbers for public school students at other schools who matriculate at Cornell, although most private schools share this kind of thing on their websites.</p>
<p>At Princeton, a large number of local students apply, and there are also many faculty who live locally. Being in a more populated area, there are a number of excellent public and private high schools in greater Princeton, and high numbers of students from the area apply.</p>
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<p>Over the past years, a couple of cc kids have been offered a GTO to CAS – it maybe rare, but it does occur. (One cc poster was a neighbor in SoCal…)</p>