re #37, only eight schools are Ivy League", so what?
All that tells you is that they don’t give sports scholarships, have reduced seasons, etc, so their ball-based sports teams usually aren’t all that good.
Yes these eight are “good” schools, but so are others. and people know that, else the admissions rates of those other “good” schools wouldn’t be so low. Particularly there are others in engineering.
IMO being a member of a particular sports league should be given very little or no consideration*.
And my alma mater is Cornell.
*(unless you love sports and want to see your teams on TV often, then definitely go elsewhere.
The “very little” can come in when you can use the association to impress your grandma, or some other peripheral person who is not knowledgeable. )
Okay, you can probably tell me recently how many nobel prize winners, field medalists and national medalists came from Ivy League schools compare to the ones like Northwestern University. Probably with the exception of MIT and Stanford University but what about schools like Northwestern University?
Since you are from Cornell University you can probably tell me how many nobel prize winner Cornell produced? It would be more than Northwestern University.
@IncorE206, Nobel Prizes have nothing to do with the quality of undergraduate instruction, nor do they award prizes for engineering. Physics is as close as it gets.
If we must judge by Nobel Laureates though, between 2000 and 2017, there are three Ivy’s in the top 10, Princeton #1 (not well regarded for its UG engineering), Columbia #4 (also not an engineering powerhouse) and Harvard #8 (definitely not an engineering hotbed). Two of the top 10 schools are CA public institutions. No Northwestern is not among them, but neither are Cornell, Brown, Dartmouth, Yale or Penn. Since 2000, Northwestern has been awarded 11 Nobel Prizes, more than Dartmouth or Brown. During the same time, Cornell had 15.
Again, this is a pretty specious argument for the OP’s purposes because Nobel awards 5 categories and only Physics is really germane to engineering, even then, peripherally.
So I didn’t say travel logistics were impossible for Ithaca, just difficult (and I assume pricey, especially at break time).
Of course the nice thing would be ease of getting to the airport (as compared for example to some midwest liberal arts colleges with no airports nearby). Also I think there are bus options to NYC etc. But I’m still glad my kid opted for a Boston school - lots of flight choices to Denver.
Well I did take classes from two Nobel Prize winners (in physical sciences, not engineering) so there’s that. I didn’t say my school was crap, just that others are also good.
Re #42 I disagree a bit, I think they actually do affect the quality of undergraduate instruction, indirectly. A school with better research faculty will attract stronger grad students. At almost all schools with doctoral programs, graduate students serve as TAs in homework sessions and labs. That’s (partly) how they get their funding. I’d rather be dealing with a smart TA than a dumb one. The engineering students took physics courses taught by the physics department, with those TA’s, so it did have some (minor) indirect relevance. IMO.
Re: Ithaca air transport, my understanding is that some students also use Syracuse airport and ride-share to get there. Re; Bus options, there are indeed buses from campus to/from NYC several times daily, and private bus companies go there too. People also ride share to NYC and other destinations.
@monydad, one of the reasons my son eschewed all the schools known for their PhD programs was to avoid large lectures and TAs. He’s in one of the largest ME departments in the nation (Cal Poly; approx 1000 UG MEs) and didn’t have TAs for labs or discussions. They were nearly all taught by instructors (some better some worse) with PhDs. Math classes at all levels are capped at 31 and physics classes are capped at 45. He didn’t have any large classes. Now, IF you are at a school that does educate with big lectures and TAs, then I suppose it makes sense that you want them to be smart. That however, especially today, doesn’t mean they are either good teachers, or understandable. The unfortunate truth is that many top programs attract grad students from out of the country.
@IWannaHelp, the depth of the Ivy League is actually pretty easy to beat, for engineering at least. The state schools in California and Texas are better as a group than the Ivy League for engineering. There’s Cornell, always known as a good engineering program and the rest riding the popularity of the conference, playing catch up to to schools that might seem pretty underwhelming to the uninitiated. I’d send my son to Iowa State before I sent him to any Ivy school save Cornell. Note: Engineering, not Physics.
For freshman engineering classes, I didn’t mind lectures (200 people?) that had weekly recitation sessions with TAs. Some TAs were better than other. The same was true for professors. I did have a few profs who were clearly more interested in their research than their classroom duties, but thankfully that was not the norm (Clarkson example, 1980s; I don’t any experience with these 4 more competitive schools).
@eyemgh
By depth, I mean the “bench” that certain people on CC use when it comes to comparing a non-Ivy to any given ivy school. In this thread, an unsubstantiated claim of Brown being more respected than Northwestern was hilariously supported by Princeton being ranked slightly better than Northwestern in engineering. If the field were chemistry, maybe Harvard would have been used instead. You never got the straight answer as to how exactly Brown is more respected.
These four will likely all have TAs in the larger underclassman lecture courses, AFAIK.
My friend form Cornell went on to Penn grad, where he TA’d. , He is the one who told me the workload/courses were the same (as I’ve posted elsewhere).
I didn’t have a problem with a TA as far as I can recall. I My son did have a problem with a TA (intelligence) , which is what motivated my earlier observation. But his U was not any of these four.
IMO the course content is more important than the delivery mode. For math and science.
I audited “physics for engineers” classes at a local community college, its classes were all small too, with no TAs obviously. But the comparable courses at Cornell covered more material at a higher level.
Physics and math courses are very democratic, whether the Prof mumbles or drools, or quotes Shakespeare, you still have to go home and figure out how to do the problems- which I was never able to fully grasp after any lecture, no matter who was doing it- , and be able to do them on the exam. It’s on you, for the most part. IMO, YMMV, etc.
OK this is now definitely off-topic, but another thing- This actually happened to my D1, who was in a math class at an LAC, with no TAs. She was having trouble with one particular type of problem, so she went to the Prof about it. He wound up changing his exam to put a problem drawing on that area- which he knew she wasn’t really getting- on his exam !
Now it’s on her that she didn’t master that material. Nevertheless, if it had been a TA she went to, then quite possibly that problem would never have made it on to the exam which is made up by the Prof, not the TAs. Point being- sometimes it may be better to be able to get help from somebody who isn’t the Prof !
Another case, also from D1, she took what was for them a relatively large course, again with no TA, and I noticed they gave her very little work. Just a midtem and a final? I forget exactly. In the type of humanities field that typically would also have term papers and other assignments. IMO the prof gave them so little work because the prof would be the one having to grade it all !!
As a professor at an engineering program, I am cognizant of the fact that sometimes the way I feel provides the most clear explanation on a topic may not be clear to my students. Generally speaking, I have been exploring these topics for a decade or more longer than they have. I also have later coursework and experiences that can help explain some of the confusing things from earlier courses that they haven’t yet taken. Therefore, while I always try to explain things in a way that I think will make the most sense to my students, I recognize that we are not yet peers on the topic and my estimation of “most clear” is not always correct.
TAs, on the other hand, are generally only a year or three removed from their own undergraduate studies and represent an expertise level somewhere in between that of the students and myself. Sometimes they are better at connection with students closer to their level despite my best efforts (and sometimes they aren’t; at the end of the day, the TA still needs to be competent). Therefore, in my opinion, there can be real value in labs, discussion sessions, and/or office hours held by TAs instead of (or ideally, in addition to) the professor.
Failing that, I always encourage my students to work together on homework so that they find a group to work with and hopefully at least one person in the group understands the material and can present it to the rest.
Is it a perfect system? No. I’ve had some great TAs and some truly awful TAs work with me. That said, I do think it is important to discuss that there are some benefits to the proper use of TAs.
I’m down to just northwestern and Cornell. Now they are about the same price after aid reevaluations. I’m still kind of stuck. I like the nerdy atmosphere of Cornell but the location is still a drawback, while northwestern has an amazing location but definitely feels different. The programs are about equal at these two I’d assume. Gonna be a tough few days!
Your gut will tell you and it will be right. You can’t go wrong.
That said, no matter which one you choose, you will find things you don’t like. All schools have warts that you don’t typically find until you’ve been there. Don’t let that cause you to second guess. There are warts at the schools you will pass on too.
Good luck! Cornell and Northwestern were my daughter’s top two choices as well. She ended up applying ED to Cornell, but she’s a Cornell legacy and while travel time is the same, Cornell is much easier to get to for us (cheap bus vs. plane). Had those things been different, she may have chosen Northwestern. My D is having a great experience at Cornell Engineering, and finds that there is a lot of support for those who seek it. I’m sure that you will have a great experience either way.
-Make countless pro/con lists
-Make weighted lists, weighting various factors by how important they are to you
-Agonize about it past oblivion
Then, at the last possible second, ignore basically everything, go with your gut and send “yes” back, just under (or even at) the deadline, to the lucky winner.
My 2 cents- and I am hardly objective-
If you think you like the environment at Cornell better, that’s a big plus.
Given that you will be very busy anyway, with school work and hopefully also some well-chosen extracurriculars, it is likely you will find plenty to do there. I actually agree with #19, I love Ithaca.
In fact we’re planning our summer and we were just discussing when we are going to go back up there.
Maybe traveling home will require a connecting flight, but how much of the time will you be doing that, vs. being in a particular environment day to day?
After Ithaca I lived in Chicago, and I loved Chicago too. But my view is living in a big city is possible/ probable after college, whereas you will likely never be offered the experience of being an undergraduate in a college town again. Northwestern is actually in neither, it is in a suburb, just like where a lot of its students grew up. And will live in again- for better or worse. Yes you can get to Chicago, which is a plus, not gonna lie. But like most big cities, Chicago is best for working people with money. (and with more free time than many engineering students have).On this board it’s been posted that lots of NU students actually don’t go there very much, or if so mostly just Rogers Park which is no big deal.
What’s particularly different about Cornell is its diversity. Due to its different colleges there are a lot of different “types” of people attending. Many students take courses in several of its colleges, most of which are different than just liberal arts colleges. The sense is that one is attending a great university, not just a great engineering school. That, and the natural beauty one experiences on a daily basis, just walking to classes.
Rogers Park is a dump. No, NU students don’t go there. Evanston has plenty of restaurants and things to do already and is a lot nicer. This suburb is more walkable, dense and urban than many “cities” in the US. The downtown is full of NU students in any given moment. Perhaps, it’s kinda like college town? I just don’t get what so special about “college town experience”.
Some NU students do go to Chicago regularly and there’s free campus shuttle between the Evanston campus and Chicago campus, which is right next to Michigan Ave. So you don’t even need to take the subway at certain times. At one point, I volunteered once a week in Uptown. I came out of the closet during my senior year and I went to Boystown in Lakeview just about every week, sometime even more than couple times within the same week! Yes, a lot of us didn’t go to Chicago a lot but a lot of that has to do with Evanston being pretty cool already. For those that want to go to Chicago every week, it’s there and easy. You may find Ithaca plenty and lovely but I grew up in a big city and I just can’t see myself being in the middle of nowhere for even a month.
