CORNELL COMPETITIVE?

Q: I have heard that Cornell is the easiest Ivy to get into and I was wondering what any of you thought about that. Just how competitive is it in general? (SAT avgs, acceptance rates, stuff like that)

A: -According to the 1997 US News rankings, Cornell had an acceptance rate of 33%, SAT 25th-75th percentiles of 1250 - 1430, and 81% of freshman from the top 10% of their HS class. Overall, US News put Cornell's selectivity rank at #15 in the country. While Cornell might be one of the "easier" Ivies to get into, entry there is still quite competitive, to say the least. (Note that average SAT scores and GPA/ranks can be misleading - there may be some 1200 SAT scorers admitted, but these will be star athletes, concert musicians, legacies, kids who started drug rehab

programs while in HS, etc. A purely "academic" candidate, i.e., one with average ECs, had better be at the higher end of the scale...) - Applying to Cornell is something like applying to Oxford. You don't really apply to "Cornell," but rather to one of their many colleges, each of which has different admission standards, admissions committees and even tuition. You will find that the SAT and GPA numbers for the College of Arts and Sciences are not much different from those of Columbia and Penn, while those for the School of Hotel Administration are not quite so stellar. The university publishes statistics for each college, which you might want to look at.