<p>For those of you lucky enough to have either received a "likely letter" or have already been accepted in rolling admissions, I have a question.</p>
<p>Will you be attending Cornell?</p>
<p>Or will you weigh your options.</p>
<p>Ask me that in May :)… Hope I get accepted as a transfer!!!</p>
<p>I hear ya dragon</p>
<p>I’ve been willing to say “yes” to Cornell since October 07.</p>
<p>Hopefully next month they’ll finally say “yes” back</p>
<p>I’ll chime in as I got my likely letter yesterday. </p>
<p>I’ve got other schools to look at with some good and sow not so good financial aid, as well as other schools Im waiting on. I will wait until I get everything from every school before deciding but if the financial aid is decent then I will without a doubt be enrolling (assuming I get rejected from Harvard, Dartmouth, Princeton and Brown). If I hadto choose right now though oh of the schoolsI have, it would be Cornell in a heartbet.</p>
<p>I’m also waiting to hear from the rest of my schools. I just got into UC Davis with almost a full ride so hopefully Cornell will be generous as well! </p>
<p>I got accepted into CALS for biology and society</p>
<p>Hmmm…most likely, yes. Out of all the schools that I’ve heard back from so far I would pick Cornell in an instant, but there are two other big ones that I am waiting for. And there is always the question of financial aid. Hopefully we will benefit from Cornell’s generous program.</p>
<p>Well Yale has been my dream school since forever, so I’m waiting to hear back from them (I already got accepted to Cornell). But in all honesty, even if I get accepted to Yale I will still be facing a horribly tough decision, because I’m pretty sure Cornell’s campus can’t be touched by New Haven. And then there’s the question of financial aid… :/</p>
<p>In short, my answer is “I plan to weigh my options.”</p>
<p>i never thought i would get into a top school after U of Chicago rejected me early decision, so i was uber shocked and tremblign when i got my likely letter today. i had already resigned myself to going to a school like Penn State or UC San Diego and got into the mindset of Thats okay, itll be better for me to not kill myself studying and enjoy the college experience.
Cornell seemed IDEAL to me when i first started researching colleges, but then i heard about how its in the mdidle of nowhere (although gorgeous) and its considered the “easiest ivy to get into but the hardest to stay in” and it went down a few notches. now im just scared if ill be able to handle it, and being on the other side of the country (i live in AZ and i have a big family here :(). unless i get accepted to stanford or columbia, which i doubt, this would be the greatest choice for me, but im still unsure. plus im poor as hell so financial aid will be a big one.</p>
<p>^^^I’m in AZ too! adapting to the weather is certainly going to be a challenge :)</p>
<p>^^ Lol at least you guys can get cold sometimes. I’m in constant 75+ degree weather.</p>
<p>yes, no doubt about it. cornell is my dream school…</p>
<p>Not sure, I would like to go to Cornell but I am a little hesitant about the community there. The school is so damn big and I don’t know how anybody could possibly form a close-knit community, granted that it splits up into the different years and different colleges. But still, 13000 undergraduates!? I have been doing a little research, if you can call it that, and am a little afraid of the coursework.
In the many blogs i’ve read people made it sound miserable, discussing the rainy weather, and the fact that they hardly get any sleep at all. I love the cornell i read in the brochures, but is that just a guise?
I guess I will have to wait for Cornell Days, which i’m still trying to figure out how i’m going to get up there for it; airfare from Texas to NY is expensive!</p>
<p>I made a visit and the community was fantastic. My host introduced me to tons of people, they were all really friendly. He would introduced me to people we just ran into walking around campus and whatnot.</p>
<p>13000 may seem like a ton but I mean honestly, with an entering class of like 3000, it’s really not that big. </p>
<p>As far as the coursework, if you can get in, I’d say you can handle it. I took AP computer science A last year, and was looking at my hosts homework from his comp sci class, and although I didn’t know the language, I understood a lot of the questions and concepts and whatnot. I haven’t taken spanish in 2 years (took up through PreAp spanish 3) and I looked at his friends intro spanish homework and understood quite a lot of it.</p>
<p>IMO, don’t let the work scare you if you took hard classes in HS and are willing to put in some hard work.</p>
<p>Cornell is no harder than any other top college. There’s no reason to even guess. All of the data is out there:</p>
<p>[Cornell</a> University Registrar: Median Grades](<a href=“http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Student/mediangradesA.html]Cornell”>http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Student/mediangradesA.html)</p>
<p>[Grade</a> Inflation at Cornell](<a href=“http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/grade_inflation_at_cornell/]Grade”>Grade Inflation at Cornell – Outside the Beltway)</p>
<p>Whenever a student goes to college, there’s naturally going to be an adjustment/recalibration of grades. The average GPA at places like Harvard and Cornell is 3.4. Most of these kids had straight A’s in high school. So, there’s naturally going to be a GPA drop when they go to college. The difference is that, at places like Harvard, when a student’s GPA drops, he looks for ways to improve his grades. At Cornell, people just blame the (non-existent) grade deflation. They make excuses for their poor performance. Add in the fact Cornell students are generally not as strong as students at other top colleges and the fact Cornell takes in a lot more community college transfers, there’s where the whining comes in.</p>
<p>If your own academics is strong, then you do will wonderfully at Cornell. The classes are great and are graded fairly. I had Harvard-like HS stats and I found Cornell to be a breeze (I had at least a 3.8 every year and averaged over a 4.0 at Cornell my last 5 semesters). I was a bio major and did premed so I can only comment on those aspects of Cornell academics but I reckon most other majors to be similar.</p>
<p>Chaotic Order–
My brother already goes there (he’s a senior) and the only thing he can say about it is that “it was the best four years of his life.” My brother is smart–but granted, had fairly low HS stats compared to the majority of Cornell applicants. But, if you work hard and focus on school, it definitely pays off, and he was able to make the dean’s list for the past three years. And trust me, as hard as he works, he parties hard too.</p>
<p>As for the size…the school I currently go to (I’m transferring to Cornell next fall) is 3 times the size of Cornell. Even with that many kids, it’s very easy to make friends right away. Whether it’s your hallmates, people you might meet in class or clubs, or whatever-- it’s easy. Everyone is in the same boat as you are. If you think it’s really going to be an issue to meet people, there is always greek life!</p>
<p>Yeah, thanks for the input, i’ve been looking at it a lot more and have started to turn my perspective around. I really do like Cornell and look forward to Cornell Days, though i hope they are generous in finan aid. Still have some forms to fill out. I’m leaning towards the big red though.</p>
<p>the funny thing is that i had my heart set on cornell for six or seven years…then junior year rolled around and i forced myself to broaden my horizons. i’m shooting for cornell vet school, so i don’t know if i could spend 8 years in ithaca.</p>
<p>So now that all but one of my top choices have responded to me, I have pretty much made up my mind on whether I’m going to Cornell or not. There are two possibilities:</p>
<ol>
<li>I get rejected at Columbia SEAS. I go to Cornell</li>
<li>I get into Columbia SEAS, then I have a very difficult decision. Cornell has the better engineering reputation and I absolutely love the place to death, but I think I might love NYC even more, it’s amazing.</li>
</ol>
<p>Basically if the more likely happens (#1) I’m going to Ithaca.</p>
<p>LOL. If you got into Cornell, TRUST me, you will get into Columbia SEAS.</p>
<p>Columbia SEAS scrounges for students. They try to accept as many cross-admits as they can from places like MIT, Stanford, Cal, Cornell, so that students will possibly be tempted to go to Columbia instead.</p>
<p>Yes, NYC is nice, but you will have the rest of your life to live in a city but only 4 years to live in such a beautiful scenic environment. </p>
<p>Columbia’s engineering isn’t well regarded, in the slightest. I have several friends who are in Columbia SEAS and from their descriptions about math/science/engineering classes, their work and courses are not rigorous, not in depth, and not well taught.</p>
<p>Cornell is no harder than any other top college. There’s no reason to even guess. All of the data is out there:</p>
<p>Cornell University Registrar: Median Grades</p>
<p>Grade Inflation at Cornell</p>
<p>Hmm, after reading that, I feel a lot more confident about going as a PreMed than I did before. Not that I’m looking for a grade inflating school, but that I’m looking for one sans deflation.</p>