@doschicos acceptance rate numbers really don’t tell the whole story. Some of the Ivies and other privates use ED vo their advantage and to the advantage of wealthier families. Some of the schools fill 50% of their classes that way with kids who get an edge because they can afford to not compare financial aid or because they are legacies–or both often. UC Berkeley and UCLA–no UC’s --use ED or are allowed to take legacy into consideration. It’s not comparing apples to apples when you look at schools that don’t use ED to basically manipulate their numbers and compare them to schools that do.
When Penn’s ED rate is 18% and Cornell’s ED rate is 24%, that isn’t altering the overall acceptance rate much. It’s not like half of the ED candidates are being accepted. We’ll see how things shake out in 2018.
Just want to add that Cornell’s admit rate for the Class of 2021 was 12.7%. The prior year’s figure was 14%. Doesn’t impact the discussion.
I’m not saying Cal or UCLA are harder to get into but that looking only at admit rates can be very misleading. For example Cal’s admit rate for class of of 2020 was 14.8 percent without using ED or legacy. Cornell filled 43% of its freshman class with early applications-- 1325 accepted out of 4775 for a admit rate of almost 30%. Penn filled 53%!! of its class with ED–1299 accepted of 5149 for an admit rate of @25 %.
I’m horrible with numbers and maybe someone else can actually crunch those numbers but it does seem obvious that it’s more complicated than simply saying, as @doschicos did that “the published acceptance rates for Cornell, Penn are lower than UCLA and Berkeley. There’s nothing to agree or disagree with here. It’s just fact.” It really isn’t “just fact.”
I think of Cornell’s undergraduate peers as Brown, Dartmouth, Duke, Johns Hopkins and Northwestern. That’s heady company. (and i’m splitting hairs among our elite schools to come up with that group. In my mind i keep public and private schools separate in terms of peer groups; otherwise i might have Cal and Michigan in with them based on sheer academic power)
Nobody should ever feel like they have to use the Ivy tag to justify an application or acceptance of an offer to Cornell. It is one of America’s greatest colleges and one of the world’s great universities.
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Having just shown some love, regardless of whether it was tainted with righteous indignation, i’ll tell you that I found Northwestern’s campus to be entirely unimpressive. UW is on a lake too and – despite the Vietnam-era bomb-shelter eyesore that is Humanities (but which i don’t hate for sentimental reasons)-- has better old/gothic and modern building designs than hoity-toity Northwestern. They really ought to do something about that.
@pog2016 Also look at the common data set for gender and you will be surprised by what you find there.
Engineering colleges are always accepting a much higher percentage of girls than boys, and thus the numbers are even more skewed, so the average is way way off for any given child. If your child is first generation college student,
their chances go up significantly, so the average is very misleading.
@dragonmom3 Cornell is an Ivy…but it has elite undergrad departments (+ elite law, vet, medical, engineering schools), beautiful campus, massive endowment, powerful network, Greek Life, huge student body relative to peer schools. You’re off base about the average Cornell applicant just being a shameless Ivy credential hound. Have you ever even stepped foot on Cornell’s campus?
@pog2016 Your using bad data. The admit rate for the class of 2020 was 17.5%. In 2017 for the class of 2021 it actually climbed slightly to 18.2%. (The acceptance rates for Cornell and Penn declined further last year). It was even higher for CA residents at 19.7% and OOS at 22.1%. International students brought the overall total down since only 8.8% were accepted.
@doschicos
My numbers came from the Daily Cal–Berkeley’s student newspaper. Anyway I feel that is obscuring my larger point-- to say it is a “fact” that the numbers you posted prove without a doubt that those schools are more selective is misleading. All statistics can be manipulated to support a position–there are "lies,damned lies and statistics-- I’m simply pointing out that the numbers are not purely enough to conclude very much–especially when they are so close together. So I’ll just go back to what @preppedparent said and agree to disagree.
You go @pog2016 The ED numbers really tell a different story about how hard it is to get into the ivies. Cal and UCLA don’t have ED or EA. @pog2016 You are my hero today.
@preppedparent or legacy
Exactly @Old_parent. a family friend–denied at UCLA and Berkeley–went off happily to Brown as a full pay double legacy. A very smart young man. Now in grad school at Berkeley.
There have been many claims here in CC posts from kids in California, who were denied at UCLA but admitted to Stanford (a top ivy equivalent?)
It’s not an ivy equivalent, but it ain’t no UCLA either (8 clap here…go Bruins!)
I would not be surprised if a few got denied at UCLA but got into Stanford. This is because IMO UCLA looks at hard stats more. There are many kids with almost perfect GPAs and test scores who get denied from COMPETITIVE majors. At the same time, I know many kids from CCs and Santa Monica colleges who got into UCLA’s “not so competitive” majors with something like 3.4 GPAs. So overall, UCLA is definitely easier to get into but this is not the case for very competitive majors. I know several Asian-American kids with 1560 SAT, near perfect GPA, NMFs and decent ECs who got denied from CS majors at UCLA and Berkeley. However, I am sure there are way more kids who got into UCLA but denied from Stanford. Admission numbers from my kid’s HS support this. Every year, same groups of kids apply to UCLA, Berkeley, Stanford and HYPs. Around 30 kids get into UCLA/Berkeley out of 130 kids – a very good stats. Only 1 or ZERO student get into Stanford or Harvard every year. Almost no one ever gets into these schools early. And it’s not the kid with perfect GPA and test score who get into Stanford or Harvard.
Thinking back on it, I didn’t like Hamilton even without visiting. I got mail from them and went online to research them more and I just got a bad vibe. Same thing with Colgate.
Let’s end the detour and get back to throwing shade.
When it comes to a throw down over “my school is tougher to get into than your school”, using admit rates alone is like bringing a knife to a gun fight. Lame weak sauce. You gotta do better than that to impress this crowd.
Because admit rates can be significantly impacted by a variety of admissions practices, including the very powerful tool of ED. Filling about half your seats via ED (where yield on offers is almost 100%) really lets you dramatically depress your admit rate.
Maybe you should use USNWR’s “selectivity index” which is a combination of test scores, top 10% students, top 25% student, and admit rate. FWIW, the selectivity indexes of the woeful “lower” Ivies are:
Penn 6, Dartmouth 11, Brown 11, Cornell 19 (oh the shame!). Cal is 19, UCLA 26. For public Ivy comparison, UVA 23, UMich 37, UNC 39, WM 33, Ga Tech 22.
Or use test scores – Cal 1300-1530, Cornell 1330-1530, Brown 1370-1570.
Party on.
Much of the ed spots are legacy and athletics and so what looks like higher admissions chances during Ed is a mirage. Also factor in that many ivys and other private colleges, though smaller than large public universities, may have an equal number of sports slots to fill. In Ivys that have thirty sports teams, and 1/3 legacy, 800 slots can really be 400.
@Old_parent – I agree with your comment about the true number of unhooked Ivy ED spots. That effect is more noticeable at a school the size of Dartmouth vs Cornell because both schools will recruit the same # of athletes but have very different entering class sizes. Legacy effect should be similar regardless of class size.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Yes please, which means not debating USNWR rankings or analyzing ED spots for legacies.