One applicant's story - Cornell University ED

Parents Forum
41

<p>From the first, I was irritated by the applicant’s article. I finally figured out why. The applicant literally seemed to have been assuming her Cornell legacy credentials would get her in.</p>

<p>Despite being in a position to know exactly what is required to get into Cornell and despite presumably having all sorts of resources at her disposal including supportive, educationally sophisticated family members, the applicant appears to have gotten ordinary grades and scores and to have pursued very ordinary ECs.</p>

<p>I Googled her and the only thing she seems to have produced during her internship at Cornell’s magazine was this easy to write first person essay about wanting to go to Cornell. She also seems to have an undeserved high image of herself. Her scores and her ECs are not “average” for the Cornell pool. They were low for that pool.</p>

42

<p>I too have been curious also as to why she would have written/published this. Ithaca High school is a very insulated school, where many of the profs kids have gone to school together since kindergarden. There’s only 2 or 3 elementary schools that most of the profs kids attend, and one high school. Everyone knows about where everyone else stands relative to each other, the only exception perhaps being ones SAT scores. </p>

<p>I can’t imagine that there were any warm fuzzy feelings in the halls of Ithaca HS when this article came out. Publishing your (for Cornell) subpar scores data and trumpeting your long legacy status is unlikely to draw oohs of ‘wow, I hope you get in’ from your classmates, also applying to Cornell. This latter group would be almost all of the top 20% of the class due to the ‘relative’ higher likelihood of acceptance and tuition breaks with the possibility of living at home thereby reducing expenses to very low.</p>

43

<p>It may be in her best interest that she won’t be going to Cornell. For someone with her grades and stats, it would probably have proven to be too competitive an environment.</p>

<p>Cornell is not a particularly nurturing place. In my opinion, that works against those whose qualifications are on the low side – as this applicant’s were. She may not believe it now, but I think that later on, she will be happy to be elsewhere.</p>

<p>On another note, I hope that the family member who posted the news as a reply to her article on the alumni magazine web site had her permission to do so.</p>

44

<p>Not surprised that she was rejected after reading the article and reply from a relative, as it appears that the building was named after her ancestor because he was a long time professor at the school, not a big shot donor:</p>

<p>“Professor Rice was never monetarily wealthy that I knew of. You don’t get rich from an Egg and Apple farm, nor from doing numerous speeches, talks, and tours in the cause of outreach and extension, even today. His wealth was in the network of students, former students, friends at other universities, and producers across the world.”</p>

<p>(At the Ivy I went to, there were a lot of older buildings named after old Presidents of the University or professors. Older buildings named after professors or Presidents was probably more common than older buildings named after big donors. Not the case with the newer buildings. My, the world has certainly changed.)</p>

<p>She was just another legacy at Cornell.</p>

45

<p><a href=“At%20the%20Ivy%20I%20went%20to,%20there%20were%20a%20lot%20of%20older%20buildings%20named%20after%20old%20Presidents%20of%20the%20University%20or%20professors.%20Older%20buildings%20named%20after%20professors%20or%20Presidents%20was%20probably%20more%20common%20than%20older%20buildings%20named%20after%20big%20donors.%20Not%20the%20case%20with%20the%20newer%20buildings.%20My,%20the%20world%20has%20certainly%20changed.”>quote</a>

[/quote]
</p>

<p>As it happens, the buildings in Cornell’s newest group of residence halls were named after professors.</p>

46

<p>I don’t get why people are calling her ECs average haha.</p>

<p>They’re really not. Most of the people I know who got into Cornell had similar ECs (some kind of sport, some kind of interest in art, other random things like volunteering). I had similar ECs and got into similarly ranked colleges (didn’t apply to Cornell, though…Ithaca? No thanks haha). </p>

<p>Of course, it’s true that her grades seemed below average, as were her SAT scores, for admission.</p>

<p>But typical of CC to come down on a person much too hard :stuck_out_tongue: </p>

<p>I agree that the prudence of writing this article is questionable however. Yes, it’s going to be such great publicity if you get in with a 3.4 and a 19something on your SATs after bragging about being a legacy >< Tsk tsk. I agree with the better-whispered-than-trumpeted comment. I wouldn’t be surprised if she had not published this, if they would have been willing to give her a leg up…but I also wouldn’t be surprised if she wouldn’t have gotten in no matter what :P</p>

47

<p>

</p>

<p>I agree that I think the article actually hurt her significantly in the admissions process.</p>

<p>Think about it this way: if she hadn’t publicized her scores, grades, and/or ECs (which pale in comparison to the general Cornell student body stats), Cornell could have deferred her to the regular pool (thereby not worrying about a HS problem w/ Ithaca kids being upset/confused) and then admitted her in April quietly.</p>

<p>At top colleges across the country this happens. In fact, one top school I know actually encourage low-performing legacies or big donors to apply regular decision so that they can be admitted from the waitlist and/or asked to defer a year so that their admission doesn’t rankle the rest of their school/community. (You can’t waitlist an applicant who applies early action/early decision.) </p>

<p>Similar thinking/rationale to the Z List at Harvard.</p>

48

<p>I’m willing to bet that Cornell would have offered her a transfer option if she had not published the article. (Earn B’s at any other college and transfer in after one year.)</p>

49

<p>"I don’t get why people are calling her ECs average haha.</p>

<p>They’re really not. Most of the people I know who got into Cornell had similar ECs (some kind of sport, some kind of interest in art, other random things like volunteering). I had similar ECs and got into similarly ranked colleges (didn’t apply to Cornell, though…Ithaca? No thanks haha).
"</p>

<p>Her ECs were average for someone who had 5 generations of her family attend Cornel and who is applying to Ivies and lives in a community where there is an Ivy.</p>

<p>She came from a highly privileged environment and had lots of inside knowledge about what getting into Ivies require. Consequently, her ECs were very ordinary for that pool. The Ivy legacies I know who got into Ivies tended to have achieved more than most applicants had achieved – because the legacies tended to have taken after the type A behavior of their parents. One example of a Harvard legacy from my area: He was val or sal, played on a sports team and had been a sports teacher to adults (including my husband) since the student was in middle school.</p>

<p>If the legacies were more laid back, they didn’t apply to Ivies: They knew what the competition would be like for such schools. </p>

<p>"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. "</p>

<p>There’s nothing even average for an Ivy pool in her ECs. She doesn’t even mention being a club president, team captain or having the lead in a school musical (and those are average achievements in an Ivy applicant pool).</p>

<p>Judging by the lack of initiative displayed in her ECs and work for Cornell’s magazine (i.e. the only article she seems to have written for them was that personal essay), I suspect that she got the magazine internship through family connections, not through her own assertiveness. I wouldn’t be surprised if the essay she published was a variation of her application essay, too.</p>

50

<p>I didn’t think her ECs were below average but maybe that is just my perspective. I mean aside very the very levels of achievement in arts, debate, science, or the like pretty much everybody has average ECs.</p>

<p>Even at Yale the percentage of people with national level awards is not extraordinarily high, it is vastly more common that people have accomplished things on the state or regional level.</p>

51

<p>From what she listed, she lacked the typical ECs and accomplishments for Ivy applicants.</p>

<p>Such applicant pools are filled with students who are vals and sals, student body and class presidents, varsity team captains, Girl Scout Gold awards, students who are NHS presidents, have local and regional awards, etc. Those are typical accomplishments for students applying to places like Cornell: Those accomplishments are so typical of Ivy applicants that having some of them won’t necessarily tip someone in. </p>

<p>She doesn’t even list any club presidencies, and she thinks she has done well academically because she never got lower than a “B”. Meanwhile, applicants will be rejected who never got lower than As including while taking all AP courses.</p>

52

<p>I know that her stats (GPA, SAT) are below the average for a typical Cornell admitee, but everything I read on CC claims that certain “hooked” candidates can get into these schools with stats significantly below the average. </p>

<p><a href=“http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000420.pdf[/url]”>http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000420.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Looking at the cds, in this case her stats look to be around the 25% on SAT. It doesn’t say what her rank is, and it’s hard to tell. It only says she never got a grade below B, but that could mean one B or twenty Bs. At any rate, the CDS states that 88% of accepted students are in the top 10%, and like I said, who knows if she was in that group.</p>

<p>I know her ECs may be a little medicore, but she has a quintuple legacy and a geographical tip factor in her favor. So although I can understand why she might have been rejected, I don’t think it’s so cut and dried from the stats I read here. Maybe legacy doesn’t mean as much as people think.</p>

<p>And I know she put herself open by writing that article. But after this rejection which I’m sure she took hard, I hope she isn’t Googling upon this thread and reading everybody dissing her too. Just my 2 cents.</p>

53

<p>“There’s nothing even average for an Ivy pool in her ECs. She doesn’t even mention being a club president, team captain or having the lead in a school musical (and those are average achievements in an Ivy applicant pool).”</p>

<p>…<em>scratches head</em> </p>

<p>At my school:</p>

<ol>
<li>Being a club president is usually a LOT less work than being a varsity athlete </li>
<li>LOL, no-one accepted to an Ivy was team captain of anything (the team captain of It’s Academic! went to MIT and withdrew Ivy apps). Pretty sure the rest of the team captains were meat heads relative to the Ivy kids. Oh no, wait - the captain of the volleyball team got into Cornell, but she wasn’t even in AP classes! This girl was pretty mind-numbing, I was shocked</li>
<li>Nor were they lead of a school musical</li>
</ol>

<p>Look, I’m sure all of those people you mention look very nice to Ivies. But a super star student + team captain and this and that are NOT typical applicants - rather, those would be as close to “shoe-in” as it gets, not merely “average”. And they’re not even a typical acceptee, at least if my upper class public high school sending 10s of students to Ivies and other elite privates is any indication. </p>

<p>Yes, her academics were way below par. But if her academics had been more typical (3.8-4.0, 2200+ SATs), then her ECs would have been just fine. By that I don’t mean she wouldn’t have “definitely been in”, but I mean that she would have been a respectable applicant. Especially for Cornell (hey, I’m just saying). </p>

<p>Let’s not inflate this whole Ivy thing, really. Surely the students who go to them are fantastic, unique people, and many of them seem to be those impossible combinations such as drama star+straight As or sports star+straight As, but not all of them. I have great respect for my friends that go to Princeton and Harvard - but they weren’t “perfect” by any stretch. I mean, they were pretty “typically” nerdy (well, the Princeton girl was “merely” a lowly “member” of track, the only sport you don’t have to try out for, and let’s just say not exactly varsity material!). If they had put “chances” up people would say, eh, smart, but Harvard gets tons of “smarts”, you’re a dime a dozen :stuck_out_tongue: Well, they have to pick SOME of them…lol. Yes, even from high schools is nice ritzy suburban neighborhoods, what a shocker haha.</p>

<p>If you’ve got “mediocre” grades (idk, 3.8 and 2100 as opposed to 4.0 and 2300 haha), then you should be more heavily involved in ECs, like maybe lead of some school plays and whatnot. </p>

<p>If you’ve got “mediocre” ECs - just simply a “member” of things, not a “leader” - then you better be a “genius”. </p>

<p>It seems like a pretty simple formula but CC always assumes you have to “have it all” - you don’t. It’s nice, and that increases your chances, but it doesn’t make you “below average” to be on a varsity sports team, consistently volunteer, and hold down jobs.</p>

54

<p>"1. Being a club president is usually a LOT less work than being a varsity athlete "</p>

<p>I agree. Neither, however, will make one a shoo-in for an Ivy though many people erroneously assume that if one is a NHS president, class president or student body president, one is guaranteed an Ivy admit. Being a varsity athlete or even a team captain also doesn’t make one guaranteed to be an Ivy admit. </p>

<ol>
<li>LOL, no-one accepted to an Ivy was team captain of anything (the team captain of It’s Academic! went to MIT and withdrew Ivy apps). Pretty sure the rest of the team captains were meat heads relative to the Ivy kids. Oh no, wait - the captain of the volleyball team got into Cornell, but she wasn’t even in AP classes! This girl was pretty mind-numbing, I was shocked"</li>
</ol>

<p>I know some Ivy alums and at least one Ivy rejected student with high scores (but only a 3.1 unweighted) who were team captains.</p>

<ol>
<li>Nor were they lead of a school musical</li>
</ol>

<p>Look, I’m sure all of those people you mention look very nice to Ivies. But a super star student + team captain and this and that are NOT typical applicants - rather, those would be as close to “shoe-in” as it gets, not merely “average”. "</p>

<p>I’d be interested in where you live because I’m guessing it must be a place where relatively few people apply to Ivies and consequently people with lower than average Ivy stats and achievements get in due to Ivies wanting geographical diversity. </p>

<p>Even where I live – a small city in a college town far from Ivies-- students with her stats and ECs wouldn’t be getting accepted to Ivies nor would she be considered a superstar. She’d be a student probably bound for a second tier like BU, GWU or in NYS perhaps SUNY Binghamton. Even if she were instate for them, she wouldn’t make the cut at the flagship universities in states like Virginia, North Carolina or California.</p>

<p>I went to Harvard, interview for Harvard and have mentored a lot of teens in real life, so I have a good idea about what kind of stats and ECs one needs to get accepted to a place like Cornell.</p>

<p>I also would bet that since Ithaca is a town filled with Cornell and Ithaca college faculty members’ kids, plus the offspring of staff at Cornell get free tuition there, there are plenty of extremely bright and high achieving kids from Ithaca who apply to Cornell and whose ECs, and stats would leave in the dust the student we’re discussing. </p>

<p>Meanwhile, the things that I mentioned – including being a club president, class president, student body president or a varsity athlete-- are average achievements in Ivy admissions pools. Most such students are rejected. Varsity athletes with her stats may be accepted if they are exceptionally good at their sports such as being state level champs or record holders or are in a sport that attracts relatively few applicants to Ivies.</p>

<p>"Yes, her academics were way below par. But if her academics had been more typical (3.8-4.0, 2200+ SATs), then her ECs would have been just fine. By that I don’t mean she wouldn’t have “definitely been in”, but I mean that she would have been a respectable applicant. Especially for Cornell (hey, I’m just saying). "</p>

<p>I agree. Her coming from a 5-generation Cornell family, and living in Ithaca also would have tipped her in. Most private colleges – including Ivies – give preference to people from their cities and also give tips to legacies. </p>

<p>I think that if she hadn’t published her stats and ECs, she probably would have gotten a deferral followed by an April waitlist and a polite summer “sorry, we’re not taking any more students from our waitlist” letter. Instead, she got an outright rejection because Cornell probably didn’t want to encourage similar legacies to apply. Better to have mediocre legacies not apply than to lose the goodwill of alum when their mediocre offspring are rejected.</p>

55

<p>"I’d be interested in where you live because I’m guessing it must be a place where relatively few people apply to Ivies and consequently people with lower than average Ivy stats and achievements get in due to Ivies wanting geographical diversity. "</p>

<p>Affluent metro area on the East Cost - so make of that what you will, but most people are aware of these kinds of schools. It’s not Ithaca, that’s for sure. So true - she’d be facing stiffer competition living nearby as she does. </p>

<p>Secondly, I think we’re misunderstanding each other. I’m looking at this like, grades, ECs, two separate things.</p>

<p>Her scores/grades seem bad and are likely the reason she was rejected. Ex. the team captain was rejected because he had a 3.1</p>

<p>Her ECs, on the other hand, are fine. If they had been paired with better grades, they would have been enough, I think, to make her a respectable applicant.</p>

<p>Yet people are scoffing at her ECs like she should have done more - I don’t think so. Her grades is where her weakness in the application is, in my opinion. If she really wanted to go to Cornell she should have studied more for the SAT or something, sure, but I don’t see a weakness in her ECs, as well…</p>

<p>I’m only saying this because I saw several negative comments directed towards her ECs, and I didn’t see that as being the main problem. While most people going to Ivies aren’t drama-athlete-whatever stars necessarily, they ALL had great grades (well, the ones I knew). A lot of people on CC think you need to have it all, like I said, and that’s not really the case. A 4.0 AND team captain kid is not a typical applicant for an Ivy - he’s a strong one.</p>

56

<p>

</p>

<p>At many schools, being a legacy is not a hook anymore – it’s maybe a tip. It is a fallacy to think that schools will overlook weaknesses in the application for a legacy. </p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Yup. There are many posts on CC about legacies who didn’t get in – legacies with much higher SATs and GPA than this applicant, with excellent ECs. I know many legacies at Brown who did not get in.</p>

57

<p>"Her scores/grades seem bad and are likely the reason she was rejected. Ex. the team captain was rejected because he had a 3.1</p>

<p>Her ECs, on the other hand, are fine. If they had been paired with better grades, they would have been enough, I think, to make her a respectable applicant."</p>

<p>I agree that if her grades and scores had been stronger she would have gotten in. The reason I believe this would have happened would have been due to her being a legacy and being from Ithaca. With stronger grades and scores, even being a 5 gen legacy or an Ithaca resident may have tipped her in despite her mediocre ECs.</p>

58

<p>She wouldn’t make the cut in-state at UVa?!? (Sorry just read that - we both like to edit our posts it seems haha).</p>

<p>That is a totally unfounded assumption, especially without knowing her GPA.</p>

<p>After going through the application process, I learned that CC was good for many things, but not for determining which students can “make the cut” at certain universities. After reading CC all through the process, when acceptances came back I was just floored by some of the people that got into some of the schools they did (maybe they lied on their applications! Ahah).</p>

<p>For me:</p>

<p>I had a UC GPA of about 3.7. Got in the mid-600s on one of my SAT IIs. No big ECs, just the “mediocre” ones. Accepted OOS to UCLA and with large scholarship to USC. Hm.</p>

<p>High but not 4.0 GPA, high SAT scores, but “mediocre” ECs got me into Northwestern. Hm.</p>

<p>Many of my friends got into Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, etc, they were smart and had good grades and were involved, but they did not cure cancer, they were not 5th generation legacies, sheesh. Admissions can be a crapshoot but the “don’t even have a chance” line is not as high as CC puts it.</p>

<p>Maybe it’s just our HS. Or maybe CC puts certain universities on too high of a pedestal. I’m inclined to go with the latter.</p>

59

<p>" had a UC GPA of about 3.7. Got in the mid-600s on one of my SAT IIs. No big ECs, just the “mediocre” ones. Accepted OOS to UCLA and with large scholarship to USC. Hm."</p>

<p>No surprise to me. Most colleges don’t require SAT IIs. Only students applying to the top colleges need to take the SAT IIs, so virtually everyone who takes them is extremely smart, and a mid 600s score on the SAT IIs counts for more than it does on the regular SAT.</p>

<p>From your other posts, you had a 3.9 gpa, had a PSAT score high enough to get you National Merit scholar status in many states (though you probably were only commended in your state since it has a high cutoff). Presumably your SAT scores were 99th percentile. In addition, you are from an affluent suburb and go to a strong high school in a state with some very strong high schools, some of which I am familiar with because I used to live in your state (which I’m deliberately not mentioning, but was able to figure out from one of your posts).</p>

<p>All of these things plus your being from another region could have helped you get into UCLA/USC. I’m not at all surprised that you got into Northwestern, too. I know less accomplished students who’ve gotten into there recently.</p>

<p>“Yet people are scoffing at her ECs like she should have done more - I don’t think so. Her grades is where her weakness in the application is, in my opinion. If she really wanted to go to Cornell she should have studied more for the SAT or something, sure, but I don’t see a weakness in her ECs, as well…”</p>

<p>Her grades are her major weakness only because she’s local and was a 5 generation legacy. Her ECs are weak for someone who comes from a highly accomplished family and who wants to go to an Ivy.</p>

<p>I suspected that parental contacts and assertiveness, not a strong interest in writing or journalism, got her the internship at the Cornell alum magazine. The fact that a Google search for her name didn’t reveal any published articles except the personal essay we’ve been discussing added to my belief about how she got the internship. Another search revealed that her mom (who is the person who revealed that the student was rejected by Cornell) has a background in marketing and works for Cornell, which adds to my impression that the internship was arranged by her parent and the article probably was done by the applicant in hopes of boosting her Cornell application, and I would bet money that it is very similar to what she turned in to Cornell for her personal essay. For the 2008-9 school year, if she attended Ithaca’s public high school, she wasn’t an editor at her school newspaper, which typically is what students do who love to write. </p>

<p>Through Google, I noticed that she and her mother were appointed this fall to a city youth commission after they asked to be appointed after attending a youth commission meeting. Sounds to me like last minute resume polishing.</p>

<p>If I-- a stranger on the Internet – can pick up these weaknesses in her ECs, I imagine that the admissions officers who live in her small city – probably are aware of even more.</p>

<p>I notice that at least one graduate of Ithaca High and Cornell, Jessika Trancik (whose father was a Cornell professor), played on Cornell’s varsity tennis and ski team and became a Rhodes Scholar, adding to my perception that the local applicants tend to be excellent due to the large numbers of faculty kids who are in the area.</p>

60

<p>Am I missing something? Can any of you people who are talking about what her grades are tell me what her GPA is and where you see this?</p>

<p>This is the only thing I see in the article -</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>This could be true for someone with a 4.0 and for someone with a 3.0 and everybody else in between. How do you people know what her grades are? Either you are inferring something that isn’t here, or I am completely missing something.</p>