Worst Ivy School

<p>I agree with viva…while I think Cornell’s greattt for engineering, it is not that strong in history. So I chose Yale, which is superstrong in history, but not so great in engineering…it really just depends on the department/person!</p>

<p>slipper’s posts on Cornell have always been negative regardless of the topic. He’s bashed the social life, the academics, the atmosphere … everything possible (except the food, for which Cornell owns all). This is just another thread where he can bring on something else against Cornell. And no, I’m not the first person to make this observation here, it’s been said before by other posters as well. </p>

<p>Without any proof (the page of one law school doesn’t count as an overall answer), I’ve never seen anything about how Cornell doesn’t feed students just as well into grad schools. Top students at all the ivys are about as evenly matched as one can get … the only difference I can see is the fact that Dartmouth, Brown, and Penn are quite heavily grade inflated. This does give a slight advantage with half of all kids getting A’s.</p>

<p>Slipper, like I said, you are wrong. You started by saying: “Cornell does much much worse than Dartmouth and Brown when it comes to placing its grads into top graduate programs, and bringing in top recruiters”. So even if you were purely refering to Harvard Law, you would be wrong. Cornell does not do “much much worse” than Dartmouth or Brown. There is indeed a difference between 1/120 and 1/160, but you tried to make it sound like night and day and that clearly isn’t the case. </p>

<p>But that’s not what you were referring to initially, and that is not what I meant when I said you were wrong. When prompted to explain your ridiculous claim, you pointed to the WSJ report we all know and love! According to that report, Cornell placed 115 students into top 5 graduate programs out of 3,600 graduates. As I already indicated, of those 3,600 graduates, over 1,600 of them are part of the Human Ecology, Architecture, Hotel or Agriculture colleges. Most of those students do not chose to follow a path that would lead them to a graduate professional program or to Wall Street firms. There are simply not inclined to follow such a path. I’d say that of the 3,600 students who graduate from Cornell annually, fewer than 2,000 belong to the colleges of Arts and Sciences, Engineering and ILR. So if you wish to compare Cornell to Brown or Dartmouth, you should modify Cornell’s numbers to fit its reality. 115 of 2,000 is roughly 6%, which is only slightly lower than Brown’s 6.5%. Dartmouth does indeed place a higher ratio of its students into professional graduate programs, but Brown and Cornell place more of their students into PhD programs. Although this is unscientific, generally speaking, Brown and Cornell attract a larger percentage of students interested in academe than Dartmouth, which along with Penn, is arguably the most pre-professional of the Ivies. </p>

<p>Again, there is absolutely no way to prove that Dartmouth (or Brown for that matter) is better than Cornell. I personally think that attempting to identify the “worst Ivy League” is the height of ignorance. There is no way this can be done. Harvard, Princeton and Yale are in a league of their own, the remaining 5 Ivies are among the top 20 colleges and universities in the nation.</p>

<p>Alexandre, every single graduate school that gives out data places Cornell the lowest among the Ivies. Every document of revealed preference has Cornell losing out. Dartmouth and Brown are much richer when it comes to endowment per student. If you look at Consulting firms and Banks, Cornell is a “core school” at a lower percentage. I firmly believe on a “general” level Dartmouth and Brown (and Columbia and Penn) provide an undergraduate infrastructure that is superior to Cornell’s. We can agree to disagree.</p>

<p>“Fanhood, those numbers are for admitted students which are usually 20 or 30 points higher than the numbers for enrolled students. Also, the engineering SATs at most schools is usually higher than the SATs for the school overall.”
Right. Although I do remember seeing SAT ranges for accepted students in A&S and engineering and they were similar to what I posted. I can’t remember where to find them now though.</p>

<p>Regardless though, the main point is that Cornell is a very unique school. It’s general mission is to provide study in damn near anything, so it has a lot of majors that are untraditional, so people in these majors may not have the highest SAT scores or even try to get into MBA, Law or Doctorate programs. Even in A&S, Cornell has majors such as Archaeology, Dendrochronology and Medieval Studies which a school like Dartmouth doesn’t have. In addition, unlike the other ivies, Cornell is strong in the sciences and engineering, so their physics, chemistry and math majors are more likely to pursue research and academia rather than transition into business or law. </p>

<p>There is a reason why Cornell has a higher PA score than Brown, Penn and Dartmouth and that’s because the evaluaters can see that Cornell is structured very differently and extremely succesful at its goal.</p>

<p>I agree that in certain areas Cornell is a great choice and its unique among the Ivies in its breadth of programs. What it important to consider, however, is whether a strong program is relevant to your future goals. IMO if you want to go to professional school or into business (generally) Dartmouth and Brown have a leg up based on their undergrad oriented focus and the relationships (with top firms) that they’ve made over the years with countless successful and fiercly loyal alums. If you want to major in Econ and go into consulting or if you want to major in anthro and go into law or get a PhD, for example, Brown and Dartmouth tend to have a stronger record of success.</p>

<p>IF, however, you have more specifically focused goals (such as working as an engineer, architect, or Hotel operator) no Ivy can beat Cornell.</p>

<p>And I firmly believe that you are wrong. Everything I have seen (and I have seen a lot more than you realize), points to a tier of rougly 10-15 universities directly proceeding H,M,P,S and Y. The facts are pretty substantial and clear in this regard Slipper. You are wrong in your assumptions. It is not a question of “opinion” or grey area. I am actually pointing to facts and black and white realities. Your attempting to cloud the issue with statistical differences lacking common references and urban legends will not alter reality. There is no separation between Brown or Dartmouth and Cornell. None whatsoever. Ask anybody in the know and they will tell you that those three schools are peers. </p>

<p>Recruiters from exclusive companies and elite graduate school adcoms do not approach the Brown or Dartmouth campuses or candidates any differently than they approach the Cornell campus or candidates. Equally capable and qualified applicants from those three campuses will be exposed to equal opportunities and will be given equal consideration. Recruiters from exclusive companies and elite graduate school adcoms admitedly give special preference to Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale campuses and students, but those schools are special and they are superior to Brown, Dartmouth or Cornell. Nobody denies that. Those are in a league of their own…and they will remain there for some time to come. But the 10-15 universities that proceed the “Big 5” are all pretty much in the same bracket. One must resort to superficial, shallow and non-existant trickery to segragate these schools.</p>

<p>Alexandre, you are wrong. You continually discount endowment per student, every piece of evidence that points at graduate placement, everything that points at selectivity or revealed preference, and everything that points to recruiting (why is Cornell not a core school at so many of the elite consulting firms or banks). I think your “HYPS and then after that everything in the top 15” including Michigan is flat-out wrong.</p>

<p>slipper1234, I’m inclined to agree with your second-to-last post, but can you provide evidence beyond the highly questionable WSJ and revealed preference rankings?</p>

<p>It would take some time, but look up the placement at Yale Law, Wharton, Columbia MBA, and the others that publish it. For finances per student, look up endowments and then divide them by undergrad student population. For recruiting, look up Vault published core consulting schools (a little outdated).</p>

<p>I don’t think there is a big difference between Cornell and its peers, I think its focus is different (its more like a Michigan or a Berkeley). I believe that this makes the school incredibly strong at specific niches where program rank matters (engineering, computer science, architecture, etc), but because of lower selectivity (it does seem to have an impact on opinion) and a smaller endowment per student it is slighly less strong at recruiting and overall reputation. I think this logic applies to all the big schools.</p>

<p>Slipper, I do not discount any of these things. In fact, I always admit the importance of such criterea. That is why Brown and Dartmouth remain at the top of my lists. Well, actually, Brown’s endowment per student is practically as low as Cornell’s and Penn’s and Brown does not benefit from the same economies of scale that Cornell and Penn do. Also, Brown does not place a higher ratio of its students into top graduate schools than Cornell or Penn. </p>

<p>But let us not forget other important factors that you discount all too often, such as academic quality, peer assessment, diversity of courses and academic opportunities, accessibility to world class research, overall size of endowment, access to rare documents etc… There are thousands of factors that go into determining the quality of a university. You focus on very few of them. Statistics mean very little if not taken into context. I repeat, recruiters from exclusive companies and elite graduate school adcoms do not approach the Brown or Dartmouth campuses or candidates any differently than they approach the Cornell campus or candidates. What does revealed preferences have to do with quality? Graduate school placement is just as much a factor of student demand as it is a factor of quality of the institution. Half of Cornell’s students have absolutely no desire to pursue a career on Wall Street or to attend Medical, Business or Law school. You said it yourself, Cornell is the best choice among the Ivies for students who wish to become Architects, Engineers etc… By that reckoning, we must deduce that a large chunk of Cornell’s students will not pursue careers on Wall Street or in the three professional fields mentioned above.</p>

<p>At the end of the day Slipper, there is no way to measure the quality of a university simply by looking at statistics, particularly if context is removed from the equation. There are many components that must be taken into account when determining the overall quality of an undergraduate institution. We can only group universities of equal worth together without resorting to shallow and superficial means. The attempt to differentiate between Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth and Penn is futile. Those are 5 amazing universities that are considered equals in most enlightened and refined circles. Several other great universities (I will not bother naming them because this is a thread about the Ivies) match those 5 Ivies.</p>

<p>As for Michigan, I have stopped discussing it altogether on the general forum and have bannished my thoughts on that seemingly taboo subject to the Michigan forum, in case you had not noticed. Besides, I will not start a debate on this subject on this thread as we are discussing the Ivies.</p>

<p>Hey what’s up guys. This is my first post ever on this board. I actually started going to this page while I was in high school and have periodically come back to it since, as I find it a good way to kill time on the Internet, and there is actually some pretty useful information on this site even for current college students. I am currently a senior at Cornell University. I usually just browse through this page but this time I simply could not stand by and watch slipper continue to spread misinformation about Cornell. </p>

<p>Next year I will be working as an investment banking analyst at a bulge-bracket, top 5 Wall Street bank (generally considered to be Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanely, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, JP Morgan). In the incoming full-time analyst class for investment banking, there are 7 analysts from Cornell and 2 from Dartmouth. Goldman Sachs heavily recruits at Cornell, and they have repeatedly said that Cornell is the one of the top 5 most represented schools at the firm. Top 5. That means it’s actually beating either Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford or MIT in terms of school representation. Abby Cohen, their chief U.S. investment strategist, and Stephen Friedman, former Chairman of the Board from like '90-'94 back when it was private, are Cornell alums (I know, I know, Paulson went to Dartmouth, but just pointing this out). The HR contact at Lehman Brothers flat out told me that Cornell was the most represented school in their investment banking analyst class after Penn. </p>

<p>So I just wanted to clear this up and make sure that high school kids especially didn’t get the wrong impression of Cornell. The Cornell-hating on these boards is sometimes ridiculous. It’s an INCREDIBLE school to go to if you want a career on Wall Street. Certainly as good as Dartmouth/Brown, possibly even better. These are the facts.</p>

<p>It’s obviously Harvard for undergrad. Why would someone want to go to a school where only 1/3 of the students are undergrad??</p>

<p>A lot of the grad students at Harvard are in Business, Med, and Law schools, which don’t do undergrad at all. So if the concern is that undergrads would be an afterthought for professors who have twice as many grad students as undergrads to worry about, that’s probably a bit of an overstatement.</p>

<p>“Goldman Sachs heavily recruits at Cornell, and they have repeatedly said that Cornell is the one of the top 5 most represented schools at the firm. Top 5.”</p>

<p>I should also point out that Goldman Sachs is the #2 overall employer of Cornell university students - behind only the university itself.</p>

<p>No, Columbia is probably worse than Harvard in terms of grad-undergrad ratio (5500 undergrads, 15000 grads). Basically Cornell’s numbers flipped upside down.</p>

<p>And ignore slipper. He never provides any data to back himself up.</p>

<p>Additionally, Cornell’s suicide rate is, in fact, well below the national average.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www-tech.mit.edu/V120/N6/comp6.6n.html[/url]”>http://www-tech.mit.edu/V120/N6/comp6.6n.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>*Cornell University is one peer institution that does maintain moderately complete records of their student deaths in response to a common perception that they have a high suicide rate. Cornell had eight students take their own lives in the past ten years. With about 19,000 students on campus, Cornell has a suicide rate of about 4.3 per 100,000 student years for that time period, far below both MIT and national rates. *</p>

<p>^
Chicago is like that too (although it doesn’t matter in the context of this thread). Duke is 50/50, but you barely ever see grad students.</p>

<p>i would say princeton…</p>

<p>I have no idea what the answer is to this question: Do some top research-minded professors prefer larger universities like Berkeley, Michigan, and Cornell over smaller schools like Princeton, Brown, and Dartmouth because the bigger places are more likely to have more extensive facilities and more grad students (gofers)?</p>

<p>I think it’s Cornell.</p>