What's the easiest Ivy to get into?

xiggi
Sun, 11 Nov 2007 13:59:55 +0000

Should we not define the term “selectivity” before making a broad statement such as, “The top half of the Cornell freshman class is more selective than the Harvard freshman class?”

Should we define selectivity in the way the US News does, and base it on acceptance rates, percentage of 10% rank, and finally SAT scores? Accordingly, what numbers do we have to compare the 50% of Cornell to the entire class of Harvard?

Further, even if it were true that the top 50% of Cornell has higher admissions’ statistics than the entire class of Harvard, why would that be relevant? Is this an attempt to establish that Cornell does have MORE competitive students than Harvard?

Fwiw, I believe that it might be interesting to roll back the clock a bit and consider the admissions’ number before the use of the Common Application at Cornell added considerably to the number of frivolous applications. Also, I believe that the real story is still told by analyzing the EARLY rounds, and especially by comparing the statistics at schools that use restrictive early admissions.

Based on a closer analysis of the 2000-2005 (or prior) it would require a lot of data manipulation to deny that the easiest school to “get in” among all Ivies is Cornell, and this by a HUGE margin. While the margin has eroded because of the Common Application, this remains true today. Toss an early application in the direction of Cornell and your chances are still well above 35%. While this is no longer in the vicinity of 50%, it still compares very favorably to the admission rates at MIT (11%) and Stanford (16%) and the average of 26% for the entire Ivy League.

Wasn’t this the OP question?