Brown or Cornell?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Cornell University
1

Obviously there aren’t many days left to decide haha, so I’d really appreciate any thoughts.

I love both schools, and right now these are the factors I’m struggling with:

  • Atmosphere/Student body - Reports on Brown seem to vary. How about for Cornell? Some people say they thought Cornell students seemed stressed/overloaded with schoolwork and had little sense of community. I know it's impossible to typecast a whole school, but just curious about what you guys thought. People I've asked think Brown has an edge since its LAC-type atmosphere seems to draw students who are similarly intellectually engaged, passionate, creative, etc. Not sure if I fit into that--I do love nerding out over my favorite subjects and would love to find a college where having that kind of "intellectual" conversation is easy, but at the same time I'm fairly reserved and not that intense. What do you guys think of Cornell's atmosphere? Especially with Cornell's size, do you think anyone could find a niche?
  • Cornell's greater variety of courses vs Brown's open curriculum - Not exactly sure yet what I want to study; interested in English/History/Comparative Lit/Religion/all that good stuff haha. The only required course at Cornell that I really don't want to take is math LOL - the science and even PE courses sound pretty fun :D But at Brown it seems like it would be a lot easier to double major (if I wanted to) and explore areas that would in the end probably be more relevant to me (people also say Brown is better in the humanities, but I'm not sure how that's quantified or if I could even tell the difference). Some Brown students I've asked think that though Cornell has more courses, Brown's open curriculum would ultimately allow me to take a greater variety - do you think it'll make much of a difference?
  • Size - Brown's small, LAC-feel seems to foster lots of close relationships with professors, which I think I would really enjoy. Cornell is huge, but I was admitted into CAS which some people say is like an LAC within Cornell - can anyone comment on Cornell class sizes/interactions with professors?

So sorry for the long post. I’d be so so grateful for any comments! BTW, financial aid is the same for both.

Thank you so much for your time!

2

Cornell and Brown are two awesome schools, so you probably can’t go wrong either way! I can’t really speak about anything in comparison to Brown, but I will comment on everything you brought up in regard to Cornell.

How stressed Cornell students appear really depends on the point in the semester. Everyone has stressful weeks depending on when your prelims are, so any given time is going to be somebody’s stressful week. I wouldn’t say I’m “overloaded” with schoolwork. It’s a top school, so obviously everyone works a lot, but reaching the end of your stressful week is such a great feeling because you can really see how much you’ve accomplished. People definitely aren’t all stressed 24/7 and there is definitely a “work hard play hard” mentality here. Also, “little sense of community” is probably the least accurate phrase I have ever heard to describe Cornell or Ithaca. I grew up in Ithaca, and I can attest to the fact that it is the strongest community in probably the world. And Cornell definitely adds to that; everybody at Cornell is proud to be there and we all come together to bash other schools during hockey games or to help out our community/other communities when they are in need (e.g. a fire last week destroyed an apartment building and we all donated money and supplies to the people affected; we are also all helping out this week to gather funds for those affected by the Nepal earthquake).

As far as having intellectual conversations, the students at Cornell are the most intellectual people I have ever met. You won’t have a problem having really great discussions both inside and outside the classroom. You don’t have to be intense to contribute; I’m also fairly reserved but am working at making valuable and intellectual contributions during discussion sections.

As far as not knowing what to major in, Cornell’s CAS is fantastic for that. I still don’t know what I want to major in, but CAS makes it easy to take courses in everything. I’m also not just wasting time and money taking a wide variety of seemingly random classes: everything I’m taking fulfills some sort of CAS distribution requirement and I’ll be done with almost all of them by the end of next semester, so when I do finally declare a major, I can just focus on that for the remainder of my time. It’s easy to double major in CAS as well, from what I’ve heard. You can take classes in all the topics you mentioned within CAS.

Class sizes really vary. Typically intro courses are much larger than seminar courses later on. But even professors of large courses hold office hours and most are very accessible. Last semester I took Psych 1101, which had about 900 students in it, but it honestly wasn’t overwhelming. It’s also the 2nd biggest class at Cornell, so most aren’t like that. But I also am in a course with only a few other people, and the professor is wonderful and I have a great relationship with him. Writing seminars are capped at 18 people and mine this semester only has 10, so I got close to the other students in it. And a lot of large classes will also have discussion sections which are much smaller so you can actually discuss the material at a more comfortable level.

I hope that answered your questions; please let me know if you have any more I can help you with!

3

Fantastic response.
Just curious: What is the biggest class? (You mentioned Psych 1101 was 2nd.)

4

I do agree Ithaca itself has a very strong community feel. Cornell, not to the same extent IMO.There are very diverse types attending its different colleges. Community feeling is far from absent, the referenced examples are no aberration. But everyone is not always marching to the same drummer there either. Everyone is not the same there, It is not a small LAC. (Though neither is Brown.)
You have on the same campus frat people and not frat people; Manhattanites and people who grew up on farms. People majoring in areas ranging from philosophy to computer science to hotel administration to fine arts to agriculture. Only 30% of the students are enrolled in the arts & sciences college.

There are definitely nerdy people… There are not -at -all -nerdy people. There are all sorts of people. Typically one finds their group of people they like, and hang mostly with them. Which usually happens, That’s what freshman year is for.

I think there are some people who can benefit from Brown’s open curriculum. But for most people who chose arts & sciences colleges, it is not a material burden to fulfill typical distribution requirements such as Cornell’s, or they affirmatively actually prefer to have a broad education. If the only issue is math, it should be mentioned that the presence of multiple colleges at Cornell does have some advantages; that requirement may potentially be met by a qualfying course taught at one of the other colleges.

Which brings up a unique point about Cornell generally. Before you graduate you will probably take courses in more that one college of the university, Many people find there is more of value there than just arts & sciences.

Class sizes do vary, and D2 had some seminars, but most of her courses trended towards larger frankly,.They were still good though. And D2 still developed relationships with some Profs. Not just through classes but extracurriculars. She liked her classes at Cornell better, on the whole, than at the LAC she transferred there from.

5

But class sizes do vary. The university reports a sizable # of courses with 20 or fewer students. IMO it would be reasonable for these to be disproportionately allocated to the humanities areas, which tend to lend themselves to a discussion format.

A French lit seminar was probably the best course I took at Cornell myself, but that was seven billion years ago.

More (but still not that) recently, in 2005, CC poster Wharf Rat posted “As a history major who took a lot of classes in English, Govt., and philosohy, after freshman year, I had 7-10 people in my classes on average”.

My D2 did not share that experience, uniformly, but perhaps she selected different courses.

6

@sleepistemporary Last semester Intro to Oceanography was the biggest class. That and Psych 1101 usually go back and forth between which is bigger, and oceanography was only larger last semester by like a handful of students.

And @monydad I agree that the diversity often does not lend itself completely to a community feeling in a number of different examples (Greeks vs. non-Greeks, Engineers vs. Hotelies, etc.) Cornell is definitely less of a community than Ithaca itself is. But I think within Cornell there are a bunch of smaller communities that you will find, whether it’s within your major or within a club. And I think Cornell definitely does have the ability to join together as a community, whether it’s to help out a fellow classmate (such as with the Chapter House fire last week) or to come together against other universities in sports or other competitions.

7

I agree @Ranza123 . I just wouldn’t want OP to feel they’d been misled if they showed up there and everyone in the dorm, the whole of Psi U, etc., didn’t all come sit on the lawn outside the dorm to sing “kumbaya” together.

I agree it’s more the case of people finding their “smaller communities”, or their niche,in OP’s words.

8

I agree with the comments here but just wanted to emphasize monydad’s comment about the ability to take classes outside one’s own school. I took classes in five of the seven U/G colleges plus one course in the Johnson School that was open to undergrads. A student can enroll in any class he wants, as long as the pre-reqs are satisfied. Now, the wisdom of a non-math/science person taking a 300 level engineering class w/o owning a calculator…ill advised, but I lived to tell about it.

RE: student body. All types at Cornell…truly, all types. Difficult to imagine someone not finding his ‘people’.

Rumor had it that Pysch 101 had 1000+ students back in the day, but I also had classes where six students and the prof sat around a table the size of my kitchen table.

9

Thank you everyone for your thoughtful replies! I have another kind of specific question - one of the things that’s drawing me to Brown is the liberal arts college atmosphere. Obviously Cornell is a lot bigger so it’ll be different, but someone told me they think the CAS is like a liberal arts college within Cornell. Is there much of a distinction between the different colleges at Cornell? Can anyone comment on that person’s statement?

10

I think, with this query you have made your preference very clear. At least, that’s how i interpret your post. In my opinion, if one wants to enjoy the freedom of learning, then Brown wins hands down! You will enjoy the challenges of the freedom that you get in creating your own sphere of learning in the midst of a very liberal and enlightened teaching staff. Having said that I must add that Cornell is a very fine place to study and the campus is simply mind blowing:)

11

It’s not really that clear-cut unfortunately - the liberal arts college atmosphere is a fairly strong draw for me, but it’s really the only advantage Brown has to me personally over Cornell. Additionally, I’m not sure that I’d fit in with the kids at Brown–I’m extremely introverted and not at all social, as well as not much of the super socially conscious activist-type that seems to dominate Brown. While I’d probably adapt to Brown after maybe the first year, with the gorgeous nature (fairly important to my peace of mind) and presence of one of my closest friends at Cornell I feel like I’d be more immediately comfortable there. The answer to the question I just asked about Cornell’s CAS might end up being a determining factor.

Now this post makes it seem like I like Brown more, but honestly I don’t know. Just super torn… I may have to flip a coin tomorrow if I still can’t decide haha…

12

“… someone told me they think the CAS is like a liberal arts college within Cornell. Is there much of a distinction between the different colleges at Cornell? Can anyone comment on that person’s statement?”

I’ll try. But I hope someone more recent pipes in.

IMO college afiliations do not necessarily play a major role in defining social interactions. Freshman year, everyone is together in the dorms. Turns out where one eats, hangs out, does laundry, etc. plays a larger role in forming social connections than which quad one goes to class in. One might suppose that people in the same college may wind up having more in common, hence may wind up socializing mostly together. And perhaps if one were to do a statistical ananlysis one might find some tendency to that effect. But I didn’t really see that. My own circle of friends, and that of many others I noticed, crossed across colleges. Just thinking right now, I had personal friends in the engineering college who dated women enrolled in :CAS, Hum Ec, ILR, Hotel, [Engineering]… a few of those couples wound up getting married.

Academically there are distinctions between the different colleges . But the extent to which they manifest themselves depends on how insular a particular program, or course, within a college is. The majority of majors in the colleges of Architecture, Engineering, Hum Ec, Ag & ILR probably don’t get tons of people from other colleges enrolling in them. Though some of them, and some courses within them, do. But back in the day it would be unusual to see anyone who wasn’t an engineering college student in an engineering college class. Ditto for an architecture class.

It’s the same story for CAS as for these others, but it’s also different. Because CAS offers all the “normal” courses people might tend to take, either as foundation subjects underlying other areas or for general interest. So in general there are more people from all the other colleges enrollling in CAS courses. Lower level survey-type CAS courses will have a lot of enrollment from people in many colleges. Upper level CAS courses will typically be mostly CAS students, but it probably varies a lot by how attractive the subject/course is to others. Some upper level CAS courses (eg in Biology & Psychology?) are actually cross-listed with other another college, so they count towards a particular major in both colleges.

Your typical junior philosophy course probably is pretty much all CAS students.
Whereas a particular Government class of wide appeal could have enrollment of
3/4 CAS, 1/4 (ILR+ Hum Ec Policy Studies + 1 engineer with broad interests).
Just to make up some numbers.

That’s just a “for instance”; it goes something like that. etc.

Then, on the other side, there is also cross-enrollment with graduate school students . Basically all of my senior year math and physics courses had graduate students in them as well as undergrads.

So as compared to a stand-alone LAC, CAS will cover the same subjects. And you should expect students in the classes to be smart and interested . That engineer taking your government class wouldn’t sign up if he wasnt interested, or thought he couldn’t hang in there with the CAS guys. So the fact that he is in engineering instead of CAS is of no practical consequence.

You should not however expect the same class sizes as an LAC, uniformly.
Intro classes of popular subjects, (eg Economics) which might have enrollment of 50-200 students at an LAC, would be structured at Cornell as multiple hundred people in lecture 2-3 times per week, then divided into recitation sections which meet once per week led by a TA. Many upper level courses that might be seminars at an LAC would be lectures with 30-50 students at Cornell. While others would still be seminars, probably.

13

On the other hand, LACs do not have the huge range of course offerings that Cornell does. My D1 attended an LAC. She got interested in a particular sub-area of her field, and it turned out her school offered no courses in that particular sub-area whatsoever. That type of thing would be a lot less likely to happen at Cornell (which actually did have the courses she would have wanted). And then you get the people who start out in science and decide they want to be engineers. Or the people who decide they want to switch to an undergrad business major. They can potentially make that kind of switch at Cornell. Or at minimum take courses in those subjects. Not at most LACs though. Most LACs do not offer subjects outside of the typical LAC range.

The opportunity to explore additional vistas provided by the various specialized colleges is a unique aspect of Cornell, as compared to any LAC, and one that many CAS students wind up taking advantage of. Even if they don’t realize before matriculating that these will become advantageous. My own D2, while a CAS student , did an extracurricular project involving a professor from the Ag school, which was published and turned out to be her biggest achievement in college. And two different elective courses she took in different areas of the ag school (AEM and another) each directly contributed towards her subsequent employment since graduating. Years before, though not a student in the ag school, I did an independent study course in solar energy with a professor in the ag school.

14

The other thing is, stand-alone liberal arts colleges tend to have very strong prevailing campus cultures because they are so small. That can be great, if you fit the prevailing campus culture well. But if it turns out you don’t, there are fewer places to turn.

My D1 didn’t want to apply to Cornell out of high school. She didn’t want to go anyplace that had football teams or fraternities. But as it turned out, she didn’t have that great at a time at her LAC, quite frankly. She would probably have been better off, socially, at Cornell.

15

This has been bothering me,
re#11:
when I wrote “Many upper level courses that might be seminars at an LAC would be lectures…” that didn’t come out quite right.

Most of them probably would not really be seminars at an LAC either. They would still be mostly lectures. But to a smaller class.

In my dotage I have been sitting in on some local college classes. Most of them are small, and in most of them the Prof. lectures.

Depending on the subject, there’s so much material to get through during rhe course of a semester. And student’s opinions are not needed, or wanted frankly, on every topic (“this is how the lymphatic system works, Elaine, how do you feeel about that?” Nope)

16

Thank you so much Ranza and monydad! Cautiously excited to say I’m committing to Cornell now. Your insights were really helpful and I’m grateful for the time you took to give such thoughtful responses. Thank you!

17

You’re welcome.
I’m sure you’re relieved to be done with this decision. I know how stressful it can be. My kids have been through it themselves and my oldest has just been re-living it with grad school.
IMO after you send in the deposit, the next important thing you should do is get off of CC for a while; you don’t need to be reading people second-guessing a decision you just made, with great agony, right after you made it.

Focus your energies now on making the most of what lies ahead.

There is a summer “Outdoor Odyssey” program that I recommended to a friend’s kid, and he loved it. It was fun in and of itself, and it really got him off to a great start there. During the first weeks, when all the new freshmen are walking around nervously , the people who did that program already knew a bunch of people. Plus, it’s wonderful up there in the summer. I think it would really be helpful for you, if you can do it.

18

I’m an alumnus who started at a liberal arts college and ended up at Cornell, so perhaps I could offer something of value. I found the options open to me across wildly diverse colleges within Cornell gave me an education I could never have received at a liberal arts college. That assessment has nothing to do with how good an LAC might be; it’s just that they’re not structured to educate in that way.

I was able to make connections between seemingly unrelated fields – like understanding natural systems to understanding transportation systems to putting it together in a poem. That sort of “renaissance man” approach to education really worked for me. Other people are more comfortable staying in one lane.

I found that I also didn’t have a niche, but rather multiple niches of completely different types of friends / groups. From the performance arts crowd to the hippie crowd to the rich kid preppy crowd and even some farmers. Cornell really gave me a swath of perspective at a high caliber across the board that you simply can’t get everywhere. It doesn’t feel as big as it looks once you settle in.

Lastly, the opportunity to live in a bucolic, fascinating city like Ithaca, walking over waterfalls on your way to class, is an experience many alumni cherish their entire lives.

19

Hey applejack, what’s cooking?
Now we need gomestar to post, then I can retire again.

20

My older daughter started as a math major. She then added econ as her second major. The surprise was when she added gender studies as her minor. She was able to take courses at Hotel and AEM. She also became interested in art history, so she took some 300 level courses. I don’t know if this would consider “designing her own major,” but she certainly got a very well rounded education.
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