Calling all Cornell 2008 applicants

R1?

Yes. Had my interview this week.

Also, I'm an international applicant. I'm wondering if that's a factor.

sucks

bigtime

For those who were dinged... did anyone get a reason why? I thought they usually tell you the weak parts of your application so you have something to work on improving, but for me it was a very general letter.

same here.. very general letter...

I think you have to ask for feedback.. which I will do, but it will take them a few months......

on the whole, I was quite displeased with Cornell. A few reasons of mine, although some may attribute this to a grapes gone sour phenomenon...

1. Absolutely no communication with applicants.. its like those old Honda motorcycle gas milage ads.. "Fill it, shut it, forget it"... I submitted my app on 4th October, and got my results on 7th December with no emails in between..zip, nada...zilch.. even when they lost my online recos, and I had to re-post them.. did not even get to know my recos were lost.. or my app became incomplete.. thank god I was a nerd for checking my app 10 times a day.

2. No love shown for West Coasters..(at least for Los Angeles) I guess Cornell focuses on East Coast, but apart from that world MBA thingy (its a zoo... and I wont get into that)...it never showed its face here.. no info session events, no student events, no chance for applicants to schmooze with some current students or alumni

3. Excessive emphasis on school visits.. I do not disagree with this one, but I cannot agree also.. I know Cornell is in the middle of nowhere, and students committed enough must make a trip to that place, but why should applicants be penalized if they do not make a class visit? I went to UCLA several times to hang out in the campus and meet current students, but I never made a class visit. Does it mean I am not committed to UCLA? (anyways, UCLA is another basket case..when I get dinged I will compile an extra long reason list for my UCLA rant ).....people will tell me that how can a school judge a student from thousands apart, especially a yield focussed one like Cornell if some dont come to the school, make the extra effort, instead of finding out everything online..True, I agree with this fact, but not everyone lives close to Cornell.....especially its not easy to take a few days off, hop off to Cornell, and forget that I have a job where I have to go back to humbled if I dont get into B-school....

4. Absolutely horrendous response from ad-com on any matter....I tried to interact with ad-com to find out if there is alumni who live and work in southern Cal, if they received my online letters of recommendation, etc... for every case barring my last email.. I got no reply.. again, I can understand that Cornell was swamped with apps this year, people had no time.. but I do not buy the story that emails go un-replied coz folks are busy.. if that were the case, heck I would never reply to half the emails that come from my manager...(I believe ad-com, or the generic mba email address is the online gateway for the school and applicants to reach out to each other.. and in a timely manner)

5. 400 word essays.. this is my favorite part... someone justify to me how a school can even know what a candidate is like based on a couple of essays that are shorter than my current post????????

One is why mba and why cornell. and goals in life.. the other is leadership.. the leadership essay can still be tackled, but if I am going into selling myself, there is no way on earth other than in text message form to write out about my need for an mba, what i have done in life, why cornell, and what my goals are.. its doable, but the end results are poor..

with my essay I had barely space to even put a name of a course that I would be interested in Cornell....

I know essays are boring business.. and there is the optional essay to let ad-com know more about me, but my opinion of optional essays are.. they are optional... they are like the emergency exits, use them if you have something you need to explain about...

ad-com doesnt want to read essays.. fine with me.. make them shorter.. better.. but 400 words.. thats like speed-dating, except here you try to know the person in under 10 seconds... not fair.

Now these are my personal feelings.. not rock solid beliefs that I adhere to... Cornell is a great school that I would love to go to.. and I know that the students there are really great.. but I wish that somethings about it were a little bit more appealing.. but hey.. not everything in life is about the way I want things to be done...

enough of my rant... back to writing R2 essays..

Sorry to hear about the dings guys. If it makes you feel any better, I have received no explanation or reasoning for my own 2 dings (not Cornell..).. best thing to do is to get some peers or some of the more successful applicants to review your essays. Although 2 400 word essays seem very hit and miss.

Cornell seemed to approach this application pretty poorly this year. I never heard rumors of any of what has happened during the last several days. Did they get a new dean of admissions or was this just something completely unexpected. Admissions411 doesnt show any shocking difference in admits compared to last year but the way those two days went seems like a nightmare. Hopefully no other schools have the same problems.

I don't want this to turn into a Cornell bashing thread, but I will add some more points.

1. I like that they invited me for an interview early on the process, but they had no understanding on my situation. They wanted me to come to Ithaca within 2 weeks of notifying me. I originally told them that I wanted to interview in 4 weeks, but the adcomm member said that 4 weeks was too much time. I didn't want to pressure them too much, so I just played their game. $1,000 for a round trip plane ticket to ithaca and back. All told, the trip cost me ~$1500. If I had to do it again, I would pay again. I did learn a lot from the interview and it probably helped with my Yale interview.

2. I was probably dinged because of my interview. I had a second year student "sit in" on my interview, but he was just as involved (maybe more) than my designated interviewer. Throughout the interview, he had a huge frown. Not the type of sad frown, but the type of frown you give when you don't understand something. NO expression, but the da** frown. No smile, no nod, just the frown. About 20 minutes into the interview, I finally asked him about the frown. I tried to say/ask him about it as elegantly as possible, but anytime you ask somebody about a frown it sounds bad. I couldn't stand the thought of walking out of the interview without asking him about the frown. He was surprised I asked him about it, and he just said that he was concentrating on my answers. (he still had the frown even after I asked him about it)

The interview really felt like a bad cop/good cop ordeal. My designated interviewer would ask a question and I would answer and then the second year would ask follow-up questions. Every answer I gave (no matter how complete) needed a follow-up. I didn't mention the interview to the adcomm for obvious reasons. (it'll hurt me more than help me). Now that I'm officially dinged, I will report the interview. My desginated interviewer was a really sweet lady. We grew up in the same neighborhood and I would've aced the interviewer if it wasn't for that second year student. He had an impressive profile and I see why the adcomm chose him, but he was quite literally a square.

3. Don't even get me started with the whole fiasco on Dec. 7 notification day. Or the fact that they personally call some admits, notify other admits on the online system, and then notify others with a fedex confirm number. What a lousy system. Notify everybody the same way. You don't have to call everybody, but if you do call some people, make sure you call every admit. Just common sense. Granted, they did have an increase of applications, but that's absolutely no excuse.


I probably sound like a bitter reject, but now that I'm dinged, I can voice what I really feel for the school.

I second everything you've said.

I met Randall Sawyer twice. Once at the Los Angeles MBA fair and again when I visited campus ($1500 down the drain). On campus he remembered my name and was very cozy. He almost made me feel like an admit. In the info session he came in and put his hands on my shoulders. I almost felt at home. But then the ding came after an agonizing and futile wait for an interview which never came.

The least they can do is notify candidates whether they will be interviewed or are dinged at the same time! This would save us dinged candidates a lot of agony. LBS has an excellent streamlined process. I'd suggest that they imitate it. But they won't. They'll keep doing what they are doing without any respect for the excellent candidates they disappoint.

The whole process was mismanaged terribly, from beginning to finish.

Now, now, Let's walk away with some class.

Anyone else notice the three admits all have about 30 combined posts?

Alot of people lurk on these forums. I know I did for the longest time.

I differ with you on this kidderek..

It was an airing of grievances.. nothing nasty....

the admits are not very vocal.. lets put it that way

Yeah.. it's always like that... I'm not trying to be the police of posting, but it's always like that...

No posts... and then the 1st post is something like...

"770 Q51 V 48...Wow... So many people to thank....."

Second post...

"I got the call. Good luck everyone."

Peace.

Well I think it's time for me to bid farewell for awhile to my fellow Cornell applicant friends. I don't think I will be much of a presence on gmatclub in the near future. After being rejected by both schools I wanted to go to, I've decided I should probably put an MBA on the back burner for another year and get more work experience. Which of course requires me to actually get a job which isn't proving that easy, but hopefully soon that will change. So thank you to all for your encouragement and advice. I've enjoyed sweating it out with everyone. I wish you all the best of luck in your MBA endeavors and hope you all get accepted with scholarships to the school of your choice!

What are you talking about?

R2 deadlines are for a month away. Your farewell speech is too early.

nono, i don't think anything written was crass or inappropriate. trust me, through the experience my opinions of johnson have changed as well. but, if you have nothing nice to say, then . . .

as for the lurkers, i wish they would be more vocal. they obviously did something right.