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The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/2001/02/02/track-teams-face-yale-bucknell-in-new-haven/)

February 2, 2001

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Track Teams Face Yale, Bucknell in New Haven

By ryan | February 2, 2001

The men’s and women’s track teams hit the road again this weekend, for a trip to New Haven, Conn., to face-off against Yale and Bucknell.

Having put up formidable performances against Harvard and Brown last Saturday, the Red will look to continue readying itself for the all-important post-season.

“[These meets] get us ready for Heps and [IC4As for the men and ECACs for the women],” said distance runner Max King.

In this meet last year, which took place in Ithaca, the men and women defeated both the Elis and Bulldogs.

A similar result is possible tomorrow, especially in light of the Red’s performances against the Crimson and Bears. The men placed first last week while the women took second.

“[Yale and Bucknell] are not the caliber of Harvard and Brown,” King said. “We’re definitely capable of winning.

Victories this weekend should translate into psychological benefits down the road, especially for the post-season meets.

“They help us build our confidence,” King noted.

But the meet will also be a key opportunity for the Red to earn individual berths for the post-season by reaching qualifying marks.

“We want to get into a couple of fast races with good competition,” King said.

If last week is a satisfactory predictor, Cornell should be led by sprinter Katy Jay, distance runners Lena Mathews and Jessica Parrott, jumper Danielle Brown, and thrower Karen Chastain on the women’s side, and jumpers Tyler Kaune and Travis Offner, distance aces Geoff Van Fleet and King, and thrower Jeremy Blanchet.

Next weekend, the Red will leave the friendly confines of the Northeast and head to Indianapolis for the Canon Classic.

Archived article by Shiva Nagaraj

Related

Early Admissions: Ivies Alter Policies, Outlook

By ryan February 5, 2001

The first step of the nerve-racking and highly competitive Ivy League admissions process is over, and the results are in. This year, early decision (E.D.) applications are up in all eight of the Ivy League institutions. One of the major elements of Cornell’s E.D. process changed when it decided to deny some early applicants outright. The University had previously either accepted or deferred all of its early decision applicants to the regular decision pool. Most of the Ivy Leagues reject from a quarter to a third of their early applicants. Admissions officers decided to incorporate that element into their early admissions process by denying some students who they knew “will not be competitive in the regular decision pool,” said Doris Davis, associate provost of admissions and enrollment. “Rather than defer these applicants to the regular decision pool and deny them in April, Cornell and many other schools believe that it is more fair to the student to deny the applicant early,” Davis said. Unlike many of the other Ivies, including the University of Pennsylvania, Yale, Harvard and Columbia, Cornell has always been proud of the fact that it has never accepted more than one third of its incoming freshman class early decision. Many universities have been criticized for accepting such a high percentage of their freshman classes before considering the regular decision applicants, since “underrepresented students do not apply early decision in as large numbers as other students do,” according to Wendy Schaerer, Cornell’s interim director of admissions. “When you have Ivy schools that fill 50 to 60 percent of the class through an early process, then this sends the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) message that E.D. is the ‘better way’ to apply to a school,” Davis said. In the Nov. 29 issue of Columbia’s student newspaper, the Daily Spectator, a student wrote an opinion piece titled “Early Decision is Discriminatory,” in which she criticized Columbia’s policy. “As Columbia admits more students from the early decision pool, its ‘need blind’ admissions policy is undermined,” the student wrote. “There isn’t a lot of geographic, racial or socio-economic diversity within most E.D. applicant pools,” Davis said. “And so, to ensure that the entering class is diverse … we need to be mindful of the number of students who are admitted E.D.,” she continued. Most schools reported that their minority admissions had gone up modestly this year. Dartmouth reported an increase from 47 to 61 minority students receiving early spots in the incoming class out of a pool of 1,135. At the University of Pennsylvania, numbers of Latino early applicants rose from 59 to 74, while African American applicants remained steady at 69, out of 2,833 applicants. Out of all the Ivies, Dartmouth’s philosophy most closely resembles Cornell’s. Dartmouth’s student newspaper, The Dartmouth, reported that the college accepted about one third of its Class of 2005 early, rather than the 40, 50 or 60 percent of its peer institutions because it is trying to decrease the pressure on high school seniors to pick an elite university and apply to it early decision. However, “more and more students are applying early decision,” Davis said, and there is a statistical advantage to applying early. Yale University had the highest percentage increase in E.D. applications, at 17 percent, while Princeton’s and the University of Pennsylvania’s increased by 11 percent. Cornell saw a seven percent increase this year. This increase in applications meant a decrease in the percentage of early applicants accepted to their school of choice, but the actual number of accepted students stayed about the same for most schools. For instance, Yale’s acceptance percentage dropped from 36 to 29 percent, but the number of accepted students only dropped by 21, from 547 to 526. All of the Ivy League universities accept a larger percentage of the early applicant pool than of their regular applicant pools, which makes it tempting to apply early to the especially selective Ivy Leagues. “The trend of Ivy schools regarding E.D. applicants is difficult to predict,” Davis said. “It will be interesting and important to monitor this in years to come,” she concluded.Archived article by Maggie Frank
Cornell 101: Rushing Back

By ryan February 5, 2001

After spending a month galavanting around the world, partying as the clock ticked down to 2001 and feasting on home-cooked meals, the freshmen of Donlon 2 were surprisingly anxious to return to Ithaca. “Home was relaxing, but definitely slow at times,” Kate Blosveren said. “I was ready to come back. The break was long enough, and when I left, pretty much everybody else was gone or leaving shortly.” Whether they crossed the Atlantic or crashed in their old bedrooms, the freshmen couldn’t leave their classes too far behind