Hello all, I’m an alumni who graduated from Cornell undergrad this May and am willing to answer any questions anyone may have. About a year ago, I posted a sort of an "AMA (Ask Me Anything) type format in this forum, and I believe the moderators didn’t want to make it look like I was the only on eligible to answer questions, so you other readers, feel free to join in on answering questions about Cornell as well!
Anyways, feel free to ask any questions about Cornell experience, my (and others’) thoughts and opinions on different topics, etc. Feeling pretty bored and also nostalgic at the moment.
EDIT: For prospective students, I would prefer if we try to shy away from chance threads.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Anyone is free to ask or answer questions in this thread.
@ClarinetDad16 My D is a freshman this year and Cornell was her first choice. Other schools on her list were Northwestern, UChicago, WashU, JHU, Penn, Berkley, (as well as our state flagship). A lot of kids on her floor are from California and many of them applied to Stanford, Berkley.
Your post assumes that Cornell isn’t a first choice school and kids just “end up” there. I don’t think that’s necessarily true.
In my experience at Cornell, like other universities, lectures are taught by professors and recitations are given by teaching assistants. In my experience in math, engineering, and physics, the teaching assistants at Cornell were uniformly great. The quality of graduate students is pretty high at Cornell due to its reputation.
The winters are easy to get used to. I came to Cornell from high school in Mississippi and had only seen snow a handful of times. The key to handling the weather is to dress properly (e.g. layers and synthetic fabrics, with a windproof, water-resistant outer layer/shell). Waterproof boots is also pretty much a necessity. If you are coming from West Campus up the hill, you will want good traction as well.
The workload is definitely mangageable if you manage your time well. The key is staying on top of your class work. Keys to success (probably more tuned to science/engineering types_:
Do all your assigned reading BEFORE your classes
Take a look at any assignment/problem sets/papers THE DAY THEY ARE HANDED OUT. Knock off any easy problems early. Take a stab at the more difficult problems and make notes about what difficulties you had/
Go to all your recitations. Don’t blow them off. Your TA is your life-line. If you don’t like your TA, find another recitation section to attend if possible.
Ask your TA in recitation about the difficulties you have with the problem set.
Attend the office hours of your TA and your professor. The TA office hours are probably more important.
Don’t put work off until Sundays. Do some on Friday afternoon/evening and some on Saturday. Nothing more stressful and depressing than starting work on Sunday and realizing how much work you have ahead of you.
I used the above to pretty decent success, graduating in the top ten of my class in College of Engineering at Cornell after graduating from a public high school in Mississippi (no AP’s offered at my school). I went on to MIT and did a Ph.D. in electrical engineering.
For introductory level classes, lectures can go up to hundreds of students. This is because there’s a lot of general courses students need to fulfill as prerequisites for higher level classes. As students start moving up and taking more specialized courses, you’ll see the size start decreasing a bit. i.e. all engineers will have to take core math/science courses and in freshman year, you’ll see Mechanical Engineer majors in the same physics courses as say, Chemical engineers.
The only class I had taught by a TA was for FWS (Freshman Writing Seminar) and I personally thought the quality of teaching by the TA was just as adequate of that of a professor. I was an engineering major and I did hear from my peers that multivariable calc was taught mainly by TAs but other than that, haven’t heard of any cases (this might be different for other disciplines)
I did participate in research, albeit not very long. Cornell has many wonderful research opportunities for undergrads and can span a wide variety of areas. Even though my major was more quantitative and math heavy, the first gig I took on was in the CALS (College of Agricultural and Life Sciences) department where I applied basic statistical analysis for a research hypothesis they had. It’s pretty standard to start off doing really simple/menial work for your first research position, especially if you’re an underclassman. After a bit more experience, I eventually moved onto my major department, which is obviously more relevant and got to propose my own research question and luckily find a professor willing to supervise my work.
EDIT: I should add that billchu2’s post is quite accurate. The structure of many classes would be that the main lecture is taught by the professor and that recitations will be led on by TAs, who are usually graduate students, depending on the course level.
I had the fortune to say my experience was amazing! Cornell really tested my limits both academically, and just as a person as a whole, and I would like to say it’s responsible for some of the best (and sometimes, worst) moments of my life so far. Cornell is well known for having a really heavy study environment, so at times that could have been stressful, with many sacrifices to be made, but I can tell you it was completely worth it. Outside of academics, I got to meet some of my best friends that are today and also find my interests and passions.
Winter in Ithaca is pretty notorious and in my 4 years there, I believe 2 of them were mild, and 2 of them were extremely bad. I’m not going to sugarcoat this issue, it can get VERY cold there. My senior year, winter got to the point where just walking outside for 2 minutes was extremely painful to the face, hence I had to invest in a ski mask. That being said, it’s totally manageable and not the end of the world, and something people can prep to cope with.
I briefly touched on this, but the workload can get quite mountainous, especially for the science heavy majors (think engineering, pre-meds). I think architects had it pretty bad too, as they’re known for essentially camping out in their studios rather than going home. The workload can certainly be a pain at times, but that’s just sort of an element at Cornell. If you can learn to handle it, you’ll probably become extremely adept at time management and probably have a much easier time for future endeavors. I vaguely remember someone saying “the work load is so hard at Cornell that your future job will probably feel quite easy in terms of the hours”, though this claim should be taken with a grain of salt.
I sort of wish I attended sports more, but I didn’t so I have very little information on this (if someone can chime in here, please do). I think the general consensus though is that Hockey is probably the most popular sport to attend at Cornell, a long lasting tradition, and it can attract some big audiences.
I think a majority of my peers had Cornell as their first choice, but if you were wondering about other schools, it was typically other Ivies, and strong engineering schools (think Berkely, CMU, MIT, etc). I believe for labor relations, architecture, and hospitality, we are consistently ranked #1, so Cornell was naturally the students’ first choices.
My freshman daughter’s classes (she’s in CAS) are all taught by profs, except FWS as mentioned above. Her Linear Algebra class has about 40-50 kids (in lecture) and is also taught by a prof with a grad student TA. She says most of her other classes have about 15-20 kids, which is amazing. She loves it.
I am not sure if you are looking at a representative sample.
Three of five RD accepted students reject Cornell. And it simply isn’t logical to believe the 2000 RD enrolled students pretty much all had Cornell as first choice. Were they rejected from HYPSM? Or Columbia, Penn, Brown, Dartmouth? Did they get a higher COA from NYU, Chicago, etc? Did they not get a named scholarship at Vanderbilt, Rice, etc.
Here is the data: Cornell ranked, on the average, 4.7 on the list of preference for the RD admits - i.e. they were rejected by their top four choices before getting admitted to Cornell. In a poll, 87% mentioned that given a choice, they would have attended HYPSM, but either did not bother to apply, or were rejected.
Well, this is made-up data, but I am not sure how such data would help anyone. It a fine school, and I would imagine most people would feel good being admitted and attending it… There is plenty of cross admit data available on the web, which shows what people prefer when given a choice between Cornell and X.
Perhaps I misworded my statement. By “peers”, I was referring to a small sample (just as you put it) of people I knew, typically friends, maybe friends of friends. This does not, by any means, represent the rest of the university.
I still stand by what I said about the likes of other Ivies and strong engineering schools. To be more specific and extensive, HYPSM definitely comes to mind, perhaps Columbia, CMU, Caltech, UC Berkeley, Duke, UChicago. I only have very limited knowledge on this area and am even surprised people keep data on this matter. I suppose most students are not concerned about what other potential schools others would have attended once they come to their respective schools.
I apologize for any seemingly misleading claims and for the lack of information on this subject matter.
My daughter, a current student, also was accepted ED to Cornell – for Arts and Sciences. Other schools she considered included Columbia, Northwestern, and several LACs.
).