<p>“It has always been my impression that the faculty connection is one of the larger contributing factors.”
That’s one. and favoring non-faculty employees. Generally there is a strong incentive for preference, as it facilitiates town-gown relations. Cooperation of the community is important to the university’s success.</p>
<p>Think about it this way, would YOU want to be the admissions staff that breaks the tradition and doesn’t admit this girl? That would be bad joojoo. She will be admitted. Statistically she is “good enough” and has this fabulous hook in the legacy stories and campus involvement.</p>
<p>If I was adcom, I’d look at it a different way: what do the other ED apps from IHS look like? Would it be “fair” to defer/reject kids with similar stats? Or even worse, defer/reject IHS kids with better stats…</p>
<p>The local angle is important, IMO, since some (many?) of the other local kids who apply to Cornell are faculty offspring or children of Cornell employees, including regular folks like bus drivers and cafeteria workers. (One of the faculty perks is a discount for your kid…)</p>
<p>Maybe her grades aren’t her strongest point, but from what she mentions briefly in the article, her extracurriculars are good. Colleges don’t always admit straight A students who don’t focus on anything outside school, nor do they guarantee admission to legacy students. </p>
<p>And if she “can’t imagine going anywhere else”, does it sound like she is being forced into applying? No. It sounds like she’s passionate about attending. I hope she gets in.</p>
<p>I was just reading the alumni magazine, in the follow-up comments to that article
it turns out she was rejected. That must have been tough for her, but actually for the admissions people too.</p>
<p>It’s tough out there, these days. Evidently.</p>
<p>It might be tough for the development office people too…if the family had the potential to continue to contribute monitarily in a significant way.</p>
<p>" It might be tough for the development office people too…if the family had the potential to continue to contribute monitarily in a significant way." </p>
<p>In this case, from what I read, legacy yes, developmental admit, no.
Ancestor’s name is on the building due to his outstanding work for the University, not due to donating the building (etc).</p>
<p>Wow. I have to say that I did not expect such a public rejection. That has to sting. I hope she goes to a nicer climate than Ithaca, which would not be so terrible. My mom used to say that these things happen for a reason, but…</p>
<p>"It has always been my impression that the faculty connection is one of the larger contributing factors. "</p>
<p>I’ve read that’s the case at most top colleges.</p>
<p>I also wonder if there’s more to the story of her rejection than we can tell from the article. I do wonder, for instance, about the manipulativeness of an applicant who would publish that kind of article, which to me due to its public nature almost seems like daring the admissions committee to reject her.</p>
<p>I don’t think that most applicants in her position would have published such an article.</p>
<p>I don’t know about “manipulativeness”, she’d interned at the Alumni magazine,maybe she or someone else she knew there simply thought it would be a good story ,exemplifying the angst of the admissions process, without thinking very far about it beyond that. It’s probably a bit neat to get something of yours published, in and of itself. If there was an admissions calculation too, it might have been more in the natuire of it probably wouldn’t make a material negative difference.</p>
<p>And faculty connection as contributing factor may indeed be quite significant, yet not so significant as to reach from five generations beyond the grave. At which point one becomes just a regular (extended) legacy, rather than a faculty connection. Perhaps. Albeit one with a building on campus.</p>
<p>“I don’t know about “manipulativeness”, she’d interned at the Alumni magazine,maybe she or someone else she knew there simply thought it would be a good story ,exemplifying the angst of the admissions process, without thinking very far about it beyond that.”</p>
<p>It’s hard for me to imagine that the student wouldn’t have thought of the implications of publishing the article. She comes from a long line of Cornell grads and lives in Ithaca, so would have a far more sophisticated knowledge about the college and its admissions than most students would have.</p>
<p>Live in the public eye and … die in the public eye. </p>
<p>Despite the fact that any of us can only speculate about the reasons behind the rejection, I do think that the article and the subsequent publicity did hurt her already slim chances. Had she been accepted, tons of students with better grades and stats would have pointed to the legacy as the sole reason for acceptance. </p>
<p>After all the years on CC, I still do not understand the motives and reasons why ANYONE would discuss his or her college application publicly, let alone with ANY member of the press. Simply stated, NOTHING good ever comes out of such stories as the examples of the Virginia co-valedictorian with iffy scientific accomplishments, the ultra packaged and micromanaged Long Island/Stonybrook Intel finalists, and the Navi of Austin have demonstrated. </p>
<p>However, in many cases, the reason behind public disclosure can be tracked directly to the great dificulty of parents to stay OUT of the limelight. In this case, it seems that it was the girl who decided to embark on a publicity path … or did ill-advised parents plan the ECs and the publicity stunt all along? </p>
<p>Perhaps, they should have remembered that discussions about legacy admissions and development admissions are simply things that are better whispered than published.</p>
<p>About the Zits cartoon…S (HS jr) dragged himself out of bed at 12:30 today. Evidently he still has an “errand” to do. H had agreed to bring him. S has to work this evening from 430 to 8 or so. So, just now (it’s 1:20pm on CHRISTMAS EVE), H said to S, “When do you want to go do your errands?” S thought a minute and replied, “Oh, I don’t know, how about after work?” :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:</p>
<p>That would be at around 8:30 on Christmas eve. I just burst out laughing and walked out of the room.</p>
<p>“And faculty connection as contributing factor may indeed be quite significant, yet not so significant as to reach from five generations beyond the grave”</p>
<p>I think faculty connection would be more significant because the admissions officers are coworkers with the faculty, and would encounter them more and probably know them better than the admissions officers probably would know even local alums and their kids.</p>
<p>“Academically, I’ve never earned a final grade lower than a B. I’ve taken challenging courses, earning a 4 out of 5 on the Advanced Placement chemistry exam. After cramming with prep classes, I earned a 1910 out of 2400 on the SAT, and did well enough on my three SAT II subject tests to be ranked in the eighty-second percentile. In terms of extracurricular activities, I’ve rowed varsity crew for three years, taken singing lessons twice a week, tutored in Spanish, worked at Coop Extension, and volunteered at a local soup kitchen and the SPCA. Yet to Cornell, I’m just an average candidate.”</p>
<p>She had unremarkable ECs and low scores. The only way that she stood out is that she that she came from 5 generations of Cornell students and had an ancestor whom a Cornell building is named after. I’m not surprised that she was rejected.</p>
<p>Well that’s just it. Everyone here pretty much agreed about the credentials. What was at issue really was, there is presumably a legacy admissions bump, the questions are how big a bump, and does the bump get bigger as the legacy string, and list of other family involvements, gets longer. This woud be one data point towards addressing such questions. Unless, as was suggested, the self-publicity impacted the results.</p>