The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science & Art

New York, New York | Admissions Phone: 212-353-4120

E-mail: admissions@cooper.edu | Website: www.cooper.edu

ADMISSION

Admission Rate: 16%

Admission Rate - Men: 17%

Admission Rate - Women: 15%

EA Admission Rate: Not Offered

ED Admission Rate: 29%

Admission Rate (5-Year Trend): +9%

ED Admission Rate (5-Year Trend): +17%

% of Admits Attending (Yield): 55%

Transfer Admission Rate: 16%

# Offered Wait List: 182

# Accepted Wait List: 182

# Admitted Wait List: 10

SAT Reading/Writing (Middle 50%): 630-720

SAT Math (Middle 50%): 650-790

ACT Composite (Middle 50%): 31-34

Testing Policy: ACT/SAT Required

SAT Superscore: Yes

ACT Superscore: Yes

% Graduated in Top 10% of HS Class: 51%

% Graduated in Top 25% of HS Class: 85%

% Graduated in Top 50% of HS Class: 99%

ENROLLMENT

Total Undergraduate Enrollment: 858

% Part-Time: 0%

% Male: 61%

% Female: 39%

% Out-of-State: 35%

% Fraternity: 4%

% Sorority: 0%

% On-Campus (Freshman): 56%

% On-Campus (All Undergraduate): 13%

% African-American: 3%

% Asian: 21%

% Hispanic: 10%

% White: 31%

% Other: 5%

% Race or Ethnicity Unknown: 8%

% International: 21%

% Low-Income: 20%

ACADEMICS

Student-to-Faculty Ratio: 7:1

% of Classes Under 20: 72%

% of Classes Under 40: 99%

% Full-Time Faculty: 16%

% Full-Time Faculty w/ Terminal Degree: 82%

Top Programs

Architecture

Art

Civil Engineering

Electrical Engineering

Mechanical Engineering

Retention Rate: 91%

4-Year Graduation Rate: 71%

6-Year Graduation Rate: 88%

Curricular Flexibility: Less Flexible

Academic Rating:

FINANCIAL

Institutional Type: Private

In-State Tuition: $44,550

Out-of-State Tuition: $44,550

Room & Board: $13,017 (room only)

Required Fees: $2,150

Books & Supplies: $1,800

Avg. Need-Based Aid: $43,118

Avg. % of Need Met: 100%

Avg. Merit-Based Aid: $24,241

% Receiving Merit-Based Aid: 86%

Avg. Cumulative Debt: N/A

% of Students Borrowing: N/A

CAREER

Who Recruits

1. AECOM

2. Bloomberg

3. General Motors

4. AT&T

5. Credit Suisse

Notable Internships

1. Con Edison

2. Bloomberg LP

3. PepsiCo

Top Industries

1. Arts & Design

2. Business

3. Engineering

4. Education

5. Operations

Top Employers

1. Con Edison

2. Google

3. Bloomberg LP

4. IBM

5. Amazon

Where Alumni Work

1. New York City

2. San Francisco

3. Los Angeles

4. Boston

5. Philadelphia

Median Earnings

College Scorecard (Early Career): $64,900

EOP (Early Career): $64,300

PayScale (Mid-Career): $126,200

RANKINGS

Forbes: 58

Money: 66

U.S. News: 1, Regional North

Wall Street Journal/THE: N/A

Washington Monthly: N/A

Inside the Classroom

Tuition-free from its founding in 1859 until 2013, The Cooper Union is home to under 900 talented undergraduate students concentrating in art, architecture, and engineering. While tuition has returned (at least until 2029), CU remains an immensely popular destination for its unique programmatic offerings and world-class faculty; hence, it has an Ivy-level acceptance rate of 13 percent.

The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture offers a five-year bachelor’s program. The School of Art offers a bachelor of fine arts degree with concentrations in painting, sculpture, drawing, film and video, graphic design, photography, and printmaking. The Albert Nerken School of Engineering offers bachelor of engineering degrees in chemical, civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering. All undergraduates must pursue a core curriculum consistent with founder Peter Cooper’s insistence on not ignoring the humanities and social sciences in the pursuit of a practical education. As such, a four-semester sequence is required of all students that includes a freshman seminar that focuses on poetry and drama, and three history/sociology courses that follow a chronological sequence from the 1500s to modern day.

No matter your area of study at CU, students report receiving a high degree of attention and mentorship from faculty. With nearly three-quarters of class sections containing fewer than twenty students, learning is an intimate endeavor. Roughly 20 percent elect to study abroad through one of the school’s six- to eight-week summer offerings. Engineering students can travel to Spain, Iceland, or Germany while art students have additional options in The Netherlands, France, England, and Sweden. Undergraduate research opportunities are most common in the School of Engineering where all students must complete a senior project.

Accounting for 50 percent of the student body, engineering is the subject in which the largest number of degrees are conferred followed by visual arts and then architecture. All three schools shine in the eyes of employers as well as other institutions of higher education. Graduates of The Cooper Union obtain prestigious fellowships and scholarships at impressive rates. CU has enjoyed thirty-nine Fulbright scholars since 2001, thirteen National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships since 2004, and typically sweeps all four annual Royal Society of Arts-Architecture Student Design Awards.

Outside the Classroom

Most of campus is located in three large buildings: The Foundation Building, 41 Cooper Square, and one freshman-only residence hall where 20 percent of undergraduates reside. Yet, being located in the heart of the East Village, your “campus” is really all of New York City. When they aren’t up all night working on projects, students can enjoy the array of restaurants, shops, theaters, and museums within easy walking distance of the school or hop one of the nearby subway stops for access to Midtown Manhattan as well as the outer boroughs. CU does have five club sports teams—men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s volleyball, and a coed soccer squad. Two fraternities and one sorority have local chapters, but they fall well short of being a dominant force in the social sphere. Over eighty student-run organizations are active on campus including music and drama troupes, a student newspaper, cultural clubs, and professional societies that participate in intercollegiate competitions.

Career Services

The Center for Career Development employs three full-time professional staff members, equating to a 284:1 student-to-advisor ratio that allows for plentiful personalized attention. Undergraduates are always free to book forty-five-minute one-on-one sessions focusing on areas including résumé and cover letter writing, portfolio development, job and internship search strategies, interview preparation, grad school applications, and applications to competitive fellowship and scholarship programs. Current students and alumni can utilize Handshake for a wealth of job postings. Employers attend the fall and spring career fairs and stop by campus for recruiting sessions and on-campus interviews.

The office organizes a multitude of targeted information sessions and networking opportunities for CU students. Recent examples include a roundtable discussion with gallerists and curators, a graduate school information session with Carnegie Mellon, and lunch with alumni. Opportunities for experiential learning are facilitated by career services staff. For instance, art students can partake in the Professional Internship Program for Art that provides undergraduates with a stipend to work at one of a dozen partner NYC-based museums and galleries. Thanks to a full calendar of intimate events catering to art, architecture, and engineering, The Cooper Union’s Center for Career Development serves its students admirably.

Professional Outcomes

Due to the exceptionally low numbers of graduates from Cooper Union each year, it is hard to say that large numbers of alumni cluster in any particular company. However, it is fair to state that CU graduates regularly find their way into the most desirable firms within their respective disciplines. Recent graduates of the School of Architecture found homes at many of the world’s largest architecture firms such as AECOM, Gensler, Perkins Eastman, and HOK as well as any desirable boutique firm one can name. School of Art alumni can be found at every great museum of art in the county, including the MoMA and the Met, and at prestigious media outlets such as The New Yorker and the New York Times. Engineering grads waltz into an endless list of top companies including Deloitte, ExxonMobil, Google, Goldman Sachs, IBM, and SpaceX. By age thirty-four, alumni of The Cooper Union enjoy median earnings of $64,000.

Forty percent of CU graduates continue their education at top-ranked graduate programs. In the last few years Cooper Union diploma-holders have gone on to advanced study in architecture at Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, the Rhode Island School of Design, MIT, Penn, and Yale. Art students have been accepted to US-based programs at Cornell, Georgetown, NYU, and Pratt and internationally at The Glasgow School of Art; Oslo Academy of Art; and Goldsmiths, University of London. Engineering students pursuing master’s and doctorate degrees have landed spots at Carnegie Mellon, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, Berkeley, and Vanderbilt.

Admission

Among those seeking a spot in the Class of 2022, only 336 of the 2,574 applicants to The Cooper Union gained acceptance, a 13 percent acceptance rate. This is a self-selecting group of students, many of whom have slotted CU as their number one choice, a fact affirmed by the school’s robust 61 percent yield rate. The profile of the average accepted student varies greatly by program. Freshmen in the School of Engineering possessed middle-50 percent SAT scores between 1460 and 1540 and ACT composite scores between 33 and 34. Architecture students scored a significantly lower 1190-1410 (26-32 on the ACT). Freshmen studying art held the lowest standardized test scores with middle-50 percent SAT scores between 1080 and 1330 and 24-30 on the ACT. Successful applicants to all three programs generally had A/A- averages. The five categories rated as “most important” to one’s admissions prospects at CU are test scores, GPA, rigor of courses, talent/ability, and the level of an applicant’s interest.

The admissions office recommends that all applicants “take a well-rounded high school program, preferably in advanced coursework.” Program-specific recommendations include that “engineering students should also be well prepared in calculus, chemistry, and physics. Art and architecture applicants should take visual art classes” and that architecture applicants should take pre-calculus in high school. Additional application components are required by the various programs. Engineering applicants are required to submit two SAT subject tests, one in math and one in physics or chemistry as well as a writing supplement. School of Art students must complete a Hometest and submit a portfolio. Those applying to the School of Architecture must complete a studio test. While standardized test scores differ greatly across the three schools, all successful applicants to Cooper Union boast solid academic credentials along with demonstrated gifts in their area of interest. Those seeking to study art or architecture will face a holistic review process; those applying to study engineering will be judged more heavily by their test scores.

Worth Your Money?

After over one hundred years of providing a tuition-free education to undergraduate students, Cooper Union controversially decided, in light of a depleted endowment, to begin charging tuition. While plans exist to progressively reduce tuition over the next decade before returning to a tuition-free policy, those entering the school now encounter an annual cost of attendance of $63,092. However, the school does remain extremely generous with aid, awarding an average annual amount of $24k via merit aid and meeting 100 percent of demonstrated need for most students. Presently, 53 percent of undergraduates receive grants of over $43k per year. While it’s not as great as receiving a world-class education gratis, Cooper Union remains worth every dollar and is, undoubtedly, worth your money.