On Thursday, March 28, Cornell sent notices to 5,139 students who were accepted into the Class of 2028. This date is in common with all of the Ivy League.
Although Cornell is much less forthcoming than in the past regarding the demographics of the entering class, Cornell reports that the admitted students “reside in 50 U.S. states plus Washington, D.C., Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and Puerto Rico, as well as 93 countries. Based on citizenship, admitted students represent 107 countries outside the United States.” Additionally, 16.5% of the admitted class are first-generation students.
One difference between the present year’s admission process and the previous one is that the number of students admitted during the early decision period fell. Another difference was the addition of an essay asking students to write on how their life experiences as part of a community would inform their contributions to Cornell’s learning community devoted to “any person … any study.”
This allowed minority students to ask for special consideration in a manner consistent with the recent Students for Fair Admission Supreme Court cases.
Unlike some past years, Cornell will withhold the racial and gender makeup of the accepted students until after they make their decision to enroll. In March 2020, Cornell announced that it would no longer release its Early Decision or Regular Decision admissions statistics at the conclusion of each cycle.
Each accepted student is expected to make an enrollment deposit of $400 by May 1 to save their place at Cornell. Admitted students are also invited to visit campus during Cornell Days, April 13, 14 and 21. Cornell has also built an admitted student webpage. That webpage, in turn, steers prospective students into Cornell’s diversity equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts to emphasize identity politics and “belonging.”
Traditionally, Ivy schools release the total number of applicants at this time, but Cornell and Princeton have yet to make theirs public. Applications for the Class of 2028 grew at four Ivies: Columbia University (+3,119), Dartmouth College (+2,816), the University of Pennsylvania (+~6,230), and Yale University (+5,215). Applications for the Class of 2028 fell at Brown University (-2,404) and Harvard University (-2,929).
