NY Times article on Cornell's image committee

Very surprised to see this hasn't been posted yet:

[www.nytimes.com]

Personally, I think Cornell's image is fine...very well respected. Although I do like those "C" logoed items. Anything with a classic look like that is pretty cool.

That article is currently the Times second most emailed article.

This is hardly new information to anyone that reads the Sun or the vast multitude of mailings and emailings that Cornel sends out. I wonder why the Times is picking up on it now. And maybe it's my own Ivy insecurity but it seems that the only mentions Cornell gets are when we lose to Harvard in athletics or a Cornell graduate is executed for being a seriel killer or some other dubious honor such as the Cornell entry in the DARPA Grand Challenge crashing into a guard rail.

Well, the real answer is high-speed rail.

Seriously, with first the decline of railroads in America, affecting Cornell through the cessation of passenger service to Ithaca by the Lehigh Valley Railroad in 1958, and the more recent decline of small-airport air service, Ithaca and, therefore, Cornell become more and more isolated from the rest of the world. The Lehigh Valley connected Ithaca very closely with both the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas. (Why do you think our main football rivalry is with Penn? Why do we play Lafayette, Lehigh, and Bucknell so much? Rail links.) While I was at Cornell, I happened to know a bunch of people who came to Cornell from the Pittsburgh area. Did that, perhaps, have anything to do with--once common, now on-again/off-again--USAir service to Pittsburgh?

No New York Times reporter is going to hop on a Shortline Bus and high-tail it to Ithaca, so we only get a mention when they do some feature story. Unfortunately, "Cornell Offers Outstanding Education in Bucolic Setting" doesn't sell papers. Why do we always see Harvard, Yale, and Princeton professors being quoted in PBS programs or on the nightly news, even in programs about subjects that are Cornell strengths (like, say, astronomy, physics, or architecture)? Well, it's a whole lot easier to get to Boston, New Haven, and Princeton than it is to get to Ithaca.

As Caesar might have reminded us all: geography is destiny. Screw the image and fight for some adequate, non-automobile intercity transportation.

I dunno, I see quite a few Cornell professors quoted in various areas. We've sure gotten our fair share of academic press from the Spirit & Opportunity rovers. Pretty much every article about that had a Cornell professor quote. I regularly pick up on a Cornell prof quote in CNN, etc articles about academic or scientific subjects.

Talking about Cornell as a school, maybe not so much. But then again, except for the whole Summers thing, you don't get that too often about anyone.

.

We get a ton of medical school professor quotes...probably because they're in NYC. But still...

DeltaOne81
I dunno, I see quite a few Cornell professors quoted in various areas. We've sure gotten our fair share of academic press from the Spirit & Opportunity rovers. Pretty much every article about that had a Cornell professor quote. I regularly pick up on a Cornell prof quote in CNN, etc articles about academic or scientific subjects.

Talking about Cornell as a school, maybe not so much. But then again, except for the whole Summers thing, you don't get that too often about anyone.

Ditto.
I also have a friend who mentions to me that she constantly sees Cornell being referenced for many things.

I dunno...seeing articles like this, it makes me feel like there are a lot of people with inferiority complexes.

Scersk '97
No New York Times reporter is going to hop on a Shortline Bus and high-tail it to Ithaca, so we only get a mention when they do some feature story.

We used to have a running joke about how the Times actually had extensive coverage of Ivy League football ... except for Cornell.

nyc94
or a Cornell graduate is executed for being a seriel killer

I didn't even know Wolfowitz had been indicted.

Scersk '97
The Lehigh Valley connected Ithaca very closely with both the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas. (Why do you think our main football rivalry is with Penn? Why do we play Lafayette, Lehigh, and Bucknell so much? Rail links.)

My wife and I were at the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum in Strasburg last month. It includes an exhibit of their dedicated line to Cornell. The Lehigh Valley president liked Cornell's colors so much (and was so appreciative of the revenue) that he made "Cornell red" one the the RR's colors. Note the reference below the photo of LV #95077 here: [www.railroad.net] or for Lehigh Valley Business Car 353 here: [www.nps.gov].

Anyone else think that this article and the students who were interviewed did more bad for CU's image than good? And messing with class sizes and offerings to jump in USNews rankings is not only absurd but sounds horribly pathetic. Instead that image group should try to highlight that CU is far too large and offers too many areas of study to be compared properly in those rankings with the smaller schools. Perhaps they should just repeat that quote from old Ez: "I would found..."

02
Anyone else think that this article and the students who were interviewed did more bad for CU's image than good? And messing with class sizes and offerings to jump in USNews rankings is not only absurd but sounds horribly pathetic. Instead that image group should try to highlight that CU is far too large and offers too many areas of study to be compared properly in those rankings with the smaller schools. Perhaps they should just repeat that quote from old Ez: "I would found..."

Well...yes and no. I think it's kind of pathetic that they're so focused on rankings, but on the other hand, I know I bought that magazine and paid some attention to the rankings, so they have a valid point.

Their efforts to improve the Cornell logo, website, bookstore clothing, etc are admirable. Those very topics were the subject of extended conversation among me and my roommates at Cornell. I still wish that the main page of www.cornell.edu had a more direct link to athletics, but, then again, considering the mess that website is, perhaps it's better they don't.

Class size is a sticky subject - I certainly wouldn't want to mess with Psych 101, but I think the lecture/section set-up doesn't do us many favors in those rankings. You'd have to drastically change the way introductory courses were taught at Cornell, or make the sections taught by professors (which a bunch of mine actually were), or something, to have an effect on that. Personally, I liked the large lectures better...but maybe that's because I also liked to skip class

Highlighting "I would found an institution..." belongs in promotional material, where you have the space to expand upon it. You can't convince USN&WR to put a nice little star next to Cornell that says "*too big and too varied in its studies to compete properly with others" when you want it to be in the same national group as the other Ivy League schools and not, say, the Northeast Region.

I haven't read the US News & World Report college rankings edition in a while, but I remember it being pretty vague on how exactly they combine their twenty odd factors to get the rankings. Figuring that formula out would go a long way towards knowing how to best to expend our efforts, assuming we care enough about it to want to be in the top 10 instead of the top 15. Because, really, out of the three or four thousand colleges in the country, a difference of four schools matters...

Liz '05
...I still wish that the main page of www.cornell.edu had a more direct link to athletics, but, then again, considering the mess that website is, perhaps it's better they don't.

Go to www.cornell.edu and click on "Athletics", at least today. How much more direct can they get? Sure, it's not up at the top of the page, but I think that's appropriate. I would much rather they revamped the athletics site to get rid of all the flashing crap.

I haven't read the US News & World Report college rankings edition in a while, but I remember it being pretty vague on how exactly they combine their twenty odd factors to get the rankings. Figuring that formula out would go a long way towards knowing how to best to expend our efforts, assuming we care enough about it to want to be in the top 10 instead of the top 15. Because, really, out of the three or four thousand colleges in the country, a difference of four schools matters...

The last time I looked it seemed obvious to me that regardless of the detailed weightings, the way to move Cornell up in the ratings was to decrease class sizes. It is one of the few factors that are directly controllable, unlike yield, for example. Acceptance rate has to be adjusted to get the entering class you want. You can knock the acceptance rate down by heavy recruiting of underqualified students, but that's iffy.

As a founding member of the Image Committee, I clearly have an opinion on this subject, but I won't lecture you. This Sun op/ed from Tuesday sums up our goals very well, not that NYT article that misquoted one of my friends.

[media.www.cornellsun.com]

The Myth of Ivy Envy

Editorial

Posted: 4/25/06

No it's not our style, 'cause we don't wear argyle. Most Cornellians will recognize that line from the Cayuga's Waiters famous parody of Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire," "We didn't Go to Harvard." And if you have read Sunday's New York Times article, "Cornell's Worried Image Makers Wrap Themselves in Ivy," you might think that most students at the University spend their time thinking exactly that - "we didn't go to Harvard."

We don't.

Cornellians, the Image Committee especially, just want public perception to match the quality of the institution. It's not about trying to rank higher in US News & World Report, but making sure that the world knows just what Cornell is - a world-class educational research institution, with world-class students, faculty and facilities, all serving (and making a significant impact on) the world.

One former Cornell student quoted in the article commented, "Cornell is Ivy and more."

Cornell is exactly that - The Hill is the only Ivy League institution to come complete with a hotel school and an agriculture college, though the article incorrectly refers to CALS as "one of several at the university that are run by the state." Cornell has four colleges funded by the state of New York, however, the educational operation is governed entirely by Cornell, not by the State University of New York.

Diversity of interests is one of the things that characterizes the University, and with it comes a larger body of students to study in each of those areas. So, when the article points to Cornell's admissions rate and says that it is higher than any of the other Ivies, it is important to consider that there is only a limited pool of qualified applicants; Cornell has a much larger class to fill than the rest.

We have used this space before to say that Cornell could increase the number of applications it receives by eliminating application fees and essays which would obviously reduce the admissions rate, but so what? The better question is: what is the quality of the accepted pool? For example, what percentage of admitted students were in the top 10 percent of their high school class? 85 percent of C.U.'s class of 2008 was in the top 10 percent of their high school's graduating class.

Columbia was only one percentage point more selective on that high school graduating class criterion, at 86 percent. Yet Columbia accepted less than half the percentage of their applicants than did Cornell this year (9.6 percent). The difference? Size. Columbia has fewer than 6,000 undergrads on its campus.

For Cornell to compete with Columbia's admissions rate while maintaining its current yield of an expected 44 percent, the University would need to receive 72,000 applications (72,000 applications x .096 acceptance rate x .44 yield = incoming class of 3,050). No Ivy receives even close to that many.

The point is, rankings are artificial, but Cornell still does very well in them. Even by US News & World Report standards, the University is ranked the 13th best National University out of the 248 measured in its category.

More important is what the school is, and what the school does; and, on those scores, its students and faculty seem to think it does very well. We just want the rest of the world to recognize it.

David Harding

Liz '05
...I still wish that the main page of www.cornell.edu had a more direct link to athletics, but, then again, considering the mess that website is, perhaps it's better they don't.

Go to www.cornell.edu and click on "Athletics", at least today. How much more direct can they get? Sure, it's not up at the top of the page, but I think that's appropriate. I would much rather they revamped the athletics site to get rid of all the flashing crap.

My bad. Last time I checked (granted, months and months ago) it wasn't a direct link, and it annoyed me. Good to see they fixed that.

I've actually noticed that many of the more "acedemic" colleges and universities don't include a link to their athletics website from the front page. I choose to believe based on this totally anecdotal evidence that these schools are subtly de-emphasizing the focus on sports with this maneuver.

judy
I also have a friend who mentions to me that she constantly sees Cornell being referenced for many things.

I dunno...seeing articles like this, it makes me feel like there are a lot of people with inferiority complexes.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's an inferiority complex. I would say that a third to half of the articles I read that mentioned Steve Squyres by name did not mention Cornell while any study that comes out of Harvard is cause for a special bulletin. Made up example: "Harvard researchers say obese children eat poorly and don't get enough exercise." If I am guilty of anything it is annoyance that the Harvard name lends instant credibility and that it conveys the assumption of brilliance. I guess my real issue is with the media. How many articles have you seen about former Harvard athletes in the pros that mention Harvard and imply that the athlete is also brilliant?

nyc94

judy
I also have a friend who mentions to me that she constantly sees Cornell being referenced for many things.

I dunno...seeing articles like this, it makes me feel like there are a lot of people with inferiority complexes.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's an inferiority complex. I would say that a third to half of the articles I read that mentioned Steve Squyres by name did not mention Cornell while any study that comes out of Harvard is cause for a special bulletin. Made up example: "Harvard researchers say obese children eat poorly and don't get enough exercise." If I am guilty of anything it is annoyance that the Harvard name lends instant credibility and that it conveys the assumption of brilliance. I guess my real issue is with the media. How many articles have you seen about former Harvard athletes in the pros that mention Harvard and imply that the athlete is also brilliant?

I remember this one time in 2002, right after I got my acceptance letter and had made the rounds thanking all my teachers for their recommendations, etc. My history teacher had a one-a-day tear-off calendar of ridiculous news headlines, and she read one aloud that said "Cornell University researchers find pregnancy, sex link." I nearly withered away right there.

02
Anyone else think that this article and the students who were interviewed did more bad for CU's image than good?

Me. I found the whole effort really embarrassing. Sorry Ben.

NPR's Day by Day program will feature Cornell and its imagae in today's (Monday 5/1/06) show. You can listen to Day-by-Day over the internet at NOON via West Lafayette, IN's NPR station WBAA 920 am.
[www.purdue.edu]

link to the Day To Day website:
[www.npr.org]

A lot of us pretend it's silly, unnecessary ... and yet we all wish Cornell were spoken of in virtually the same breath as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.

On a personal level, some of the logo-wear in the campus store seems quirky and I'm glad they're offering more traditional items.

billhoward
A lot of us pretend it's silly, unnecessary ... and yet we all wish Cornell were spoken of in virtually the same breath as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.

Sure, I'd like that. But to do anything about it* seems ... gauche.

*Other than, you know, improving the school.

Apparently the Cornell Story got bumped from Monday's show due to the "Day without Immigrants" stories. It was on today's show (which I did not listen to because there is afternoon baseball ) and the audio will be available after 3 pm.

[www.npr.org]