Make New York Post a Preferred Source Prominent college advisers have told The Post their clients are seeing red over Cornell University’s alleged gross mishandling of its reputed fraternity gang rape — with scores of families whose students planned to apply early to the Ivy reversing course.
“All seven of the college applicants we work with for 2027 who planned to apply Early Decision to Cornell have decided not to apply at all,” said Manhattan Private Schools Advisors founder Amanda Uhry, referring to three young men and four young women.
“The parents will not permit them to go after what happened,” said Uhry, noting that three of the parents are even Cornell alumni themselves.
Sought-after college adviser Christopher Rim said his family clients are “shocked” at the way the upstate New York school has allegedly “covered up” for the accused rapists, adding that his international clients are especially concerned.
“They ask if it’s safe to go there and if that’s how all US schools handle [serious allegations],” he said.
“Parents who live halfway around the world just want to know their kids are in a safe environment,” said Rim, the founder and CEO of Command Education, a New York City-based education and college-admissions consultancy. “And that remains to be seen.”
The concern comes after a former Cornell student says multiple Chi Phi fraternity brothers at the school drugged and raped her during an hours-long assault at their Ithaca house in the fall of 2024.
The woman, who was 20 at the time, claimed in a lawsuit she filed against seven frat brothers and the school earlier this month that most of her attackers were let off the hook by Cornell, which allowed them to “mitigate their conduct by submitting essays.”
The school has not denied the writing assignment but said it also suspended and expelled at least some of the students, although it refused to say how many.
“What did Cornell expect was going to happen?” Uhry said of the droves of prospective students now second-guessing their decision to put the Ivy League institution on their list of go-to schools.
“They made these kids write an essay, and then they helped them get jobs in wealth management – instead of going to the police,” she said, referring to the campus-police decision not to alert Ithaca city cops.
“They thought they were above the law. They are putting a stain on all the Ivies,” the adviser added.
Uhry predicted a steep drop in applications to the Ithaca university, where about 7% more women than men are enrolled.
“Nobody’s thinking about [applying to] Cornell anymore.”
Horrified parents who are preempting their daughters from attending the Ivy League school fear “that could be my kid,” claimed Uhry.
“Harvard, Columbia, they’re still feeling the aftershocks” of the post-Oct. 7 fallout, with Columbia’s uptown campus still shuttered to outsiders, she said.
This isolated incident is “very bad,” according to Uhry, but it’s also a harbinger.
“Who knows what’s going on elsewhere, and why do Ivy League schools think they’re above the law? They’re not.”
She predicted deep-pocketed donors will be the next to jump ship.
“When money and power come into play, anything can be covered up — that’s the way it works.”
