<p>There are 100,000 people in the metro area. Ithaca is a hip little city, which hits quite a bit above its size. It is not NYC but it is not nowhere.</p>
<p>Perhaps more significantly, when you add 28,000 students to the mix it can become very much somewhere, even if there were nothing else there but their own substantial presence and consequent energy.</p>
<p>The truth is, if you think this is absolutely in the middle of nowhere, you are very sheltered. You might think you are worldly or cosmopolitan, but that doesn’t mean you understand or recognize a vast majority of the rest of the world. </p>
<p>Ithaca is not in the middle of nowhere. It is not NYC, LA or Chicago. But it has so much going on. It is actually a very exciting, culturally diverse and environmentally beautiful city.</p>
<p>i’d like to know if there are people who go into Cornell who are very big city people, but who come to love Cornell and Ithaca and its “remoteness.” are there people like this? or are the big city-lovers pretty miserable?</p>
<p>you will find both types of people. Interestingly enough, you’ll also find that people in the latter group rarely care to venture around Ithaca and don’t know much about the town.</p>
<p>you can lump me into the former group.</p>
<p>wow, so there are actually people who just do not like it there?</p>
<p>i’m kind of a city person. but i figured i would GROW to love Cornell if i was accepted… but i guess this doesn’t always hold true?</p>
<p>there are some people who would rather sit around, do nothing, and expect fun to be delivered to them and then complain about boring Ithaca. I never understood this mentality, but so it goes. I was always busy at the hockey games, club events, shows, movies, Ithaca events like apple fest, beer fest, or the chili cookoff, or I’d do wine tours, go boating with some friends, pillage the food at Wegmans, pillage the artisan cheese counter at Triphammer mall, or go restaurant hopping, or intramural sports, or the big food and wine parties my architecture friends would always throw, or meeting friends at the Big Red barn for a brew, or Jazz night at the ABC cafe, etc…</p>
<p>Of course, some people wind up not loving cornell, for any number of reasons. its retention is not 100%. the same can be said for just about every school.</p>
<p>Some reasons are more common than others. There have been a number of posts on CC by people who were less than thrilled with Ithaca. So clearly it does not “always hold true”.</p>
<p>I know I like it, FWIW.</p>
<p>My experience/impression was, most students did not have much time to really explore Ithaca. Many hardly left the campus environs, it seemed to me. There was a lot to do around campus, and also we had a lot of work. I did not really come to appreciate the area myself until I stayed over the summer, with a car. After that, I stayed every summer. </p>
<p>Also, to really love it, you have to like what there is there, and not love what there isn’t. That is an individual thing. If you like nature, hiking, music, its pace of life, you’re good. I did not know I liked some of those things before I lived there, once I was exposed it turned out to be the case. But on the other hand, if you must shop at 4,000 boutiques maybe you aren’t good, I don’t know.</p>
<p>I think the OP’s snap judgment of Ithaca based on basically driving through missed a LOT that’s going on there. Not surprisingly, the people who say this “middle of nowhere” tripe never actually live there. Not all interesting cities scream at you with flashing lights to tell you where to go. Sometimes you’ve gotta look a little on your own. I’ve lived in major cities and still think Ithaca has a lot going on.</p>
<p>As has been said on here many times, you’ll have your whole legal drinking life to take in all big cities have to offer. Probably won’t have many opportunities to live in a vibrant, cultured, funky little enlightened city (voted most enlightened in the country some time back) built around waterfalls, wineries, and lakes until you’re too old to fully enjoy any of it.</p>