Brown vs. Cornell! Please Help!

Colleges and Universities A-Z Brown University
41

<p>I, too, know several people who went to Harvard, one to Cornell, and a few more to Brown. </p>

<p>Harvard was portrayed as socially bleak and infested with grade inflation (I'll never forget attending a Harvard friend's graduation; the president crowed--in Latin, I believe--that 'fully eighty-five percent of today's seniors are graduating with high honors!' I hope my laughter was drowned out by the deafening applause, but it seems that, at Harvard, EVERYONE--or nearly everyone--is performing at a stratospheric level...even the ones who don't go to class and skip tests, like my friends.<br>
Cornell has been depicted as nicely balanced between social and academic departments, and Brown and Dartmouth sound even nicer, Wish I'd applied to Brown (I only applied to Duke, and liked it a lot.)</p>

42

<p>Raita perhaps its because I have heard too many stories like this. </p>

<p>(bball posting on another page...sorry bball)</p>

<br>


<br>

43

<p>slipper dont make me out to be a cornell hater, trust me, there are ppl at every school that are unhappy, my friend at duke hates it, it's a personal thing.</p>

44

<p>I'd definitely take Brown over Cornell, for what it's worth</p>

45

<p>Well, I'm trying to transfer to one or the other, I'm applying to both. What's interesting is that Cornell's my first choice now, and Brown was my first choice when applying out of high school. It'd be interesting if I got into both, but that's still a long way away.</p>

46

<p>to disagree.</p>

<p>* "At Dartmouth or Brown research is more accessible, as are professors, etc."*</p>

<p>I believe this to be patently false. Cornell research and professors are just as accessible as Brown and Dartmouth.</p>

<p>* "Also Brown and Dartmouth are much tighter in terms of community, they have far fewer schools and are much smaller"*</p>

<p>Cornell’s College of Arts & Sciences has 4,335 undergrads which is slightly bigger than your beloved Dartmouth (3,996) and over 1,000 students smaller than Brown (5,772). Hence, my experience was that it delivered all of the wonderful community that you cherish about Dartmouth.</p>

<p>Like Bball says, every school has people that don’t find their niche. Here’s a Princeton grad lamenting his experience:</p>

<p>* "to be honest, i didn't enjoy my time at Princeton that much"* <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=89090%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=89090&lt;/a> </p>

<p>Even the vaunted Dartmouth community has its detractors:
* “Alcohol, to my thinking, is not a major problem;” an Art History professor commented, “rather, it is the misogynistic, racist and dysfunction culture of alcohol that seems to plague the existing social system at Dartmouth that needs to be addressed.”*
<a href="http://www.dartreview.com/archives/2005/01/31/interrogating_the_sli.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dartreview.com/archives/2005/01/31/interrogating_the_sli.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Or there is this:</p>

<p>* "President James Freedman (the Emperor to Wright’s Darth Vader) acknowledged that his ideal student was a ‘creative loner,’ and that he hoped Dartmouth would court said loners. Come again? We could use one or two pop-eyed, shell-shocked geniuses, but a whole school full of them? Some of us came here to make new friends, not to spend four years holed up in an attic, scribbling quatrains with a crow-quill pen."*</p>

<p><a href="http://www.dartreview.com/archives/2005/01/31/dartmouths_war_on_fun.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dartreview.com/archives/2005/01/31/dartmouths_war_on_fun.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>As I’ve said Slipper, I think Dartmouth is a fantastic school. I just like Cornell better.</p>

47

<p>Who are you kidding? Unless students from the different undergraduate schools live in different dorms, eat in different dining halls, study in differnet areas, and occupy entirely different parts of the campus, and go to different parties, then it's going to feel much bigger than just the size of people in your undergraduate school.</p>

<p>Maybe Cornell IS separated like that. But I know at Penn the Nursing, SEAS, Wharton and Penn kids all live together, study together, party together. I'm in the College, and it feels like I'm with 10,000 other College students, because here undergrad is undergrad.</p>

48

<p>Johnny,</p>

<p>Cornell is just like Penn. Everyone is mixed together in the dorms, although the freshman all live together on what is called North Campus. </p>

<p>My point of bringing up the size of Cornell’s College of Arts & Sciences is that academically it is the same size as Dartmouth & Brown, hence the accessibility to research and professors is completely on par and there is in fact a sense of community among the students and faculty of CAS.</p>

<p>Wharf</p>

49

<p>The Princeton guy in that link seemed to be upset with the fact that Princeton has TAs. That makes Ptown no better than Brown or Cornell. If you don't want TAs, you have to go to an LAC.</p>

<p>Or you can be a grownup and do your shopping for competent TAs and take advantage of Office Hours.</p>

<p>Heck, if I were a Dartmouth professor, I'd probably be bored enough to want to invite my students to my house too...</p>

50

<p>Whart,</p>

<br>


<br>

<p>I am not talking about "academic community", I am referring to social community. Some don't need that type of tight-knit spirit, but for those who do like to know many people around them its crazy to argue Cornell size is a factor. Also, Brown and Dartmouth only have the main graduate schools, not other schools like nursing, agriculture, hotels, etc</p>

<br>


<br>

<p><a href="http://www.dartreview.com/archives/..._war_on_fun.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dartreview.com/archives/..._war_on_fun.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Those comments are within Dartmouth Review articles, which is an off campus publication with a small following, it does not speak for the general student body. Freedman left in 1996, since then the college has upped its diversity (and liberal tilt) significantly. The art history professor brings up a good point, I agree that the alcohol culture can be intimidating. However, I would say this happens at many schools including Cornell.</p>

<p>Anyway Wharf, I also think Cornell is great, its just a very different experience from the more LAC-like Brown and Dartmouth.</p>

51

<p>Slipper,</p>

<p>Thanks for the kind words about Cornell. As someone said previously in this thread, we are perhaps dealing with the "narcissim of small differnences."</p>

<p>I think you may be off base with the faculty comment, though. Again we have to compare an apple to an apple. Cornell's College of Arts & Sciences has 4,200 students and 500 professors. This makes for a student to faculty ratio of 8.4.</p>

<p>Brown has 5,701 students and 628 faculty for a ratio of 9.08.</p>

<p>Dartmouth has 4,079 students and 350 faculty for a ratio of 11.65.</p>

<p>You tell me what school affords the better chance to know the professors?</p>

<p>I knew all my professors well at Cornell. They were very accessible and very willing to interact and mentor students.</p>

<p>Again, this is not to put down Brown or Dartmouth, rather it's an attempt to counteract a misconception that Cornell's overall size makes it a materially different experience. When comparing Brown and Dartmouth to their natural counterpart at Cornell, the College of Arts & Sciences, I think you'll find them all to be very comparable.</p>

<p>Here are my data sources:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.arts.cornell.edu/facts.php%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.arts.cornell.edu/facts.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://www.brown.edu/web/facts.shtml%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.brown.edu/web/facts.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/home/about/facts.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dartmouth.edu/home/about/facts.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Wharf</p>

52

<p>I think y'all are missing the boat.</p>

<p>The rate limiting step for student research ain't the faculty, it's the student. The motivated, smart student can find research opportunities at any major university. Even students who attend fairly mediocre colleges will be taught by professors who themselves tended to attend elite colleges and who are far more interested in their subject matter than the vast majority of their students. And when you start talking about schools that are academically identical such as the ones in this thread, almost every professor would welcome student research...</p>

53

<p>Slipper,</p>

<p>Did you mean to address me as "Whart" in your last post? Or was it a typo.
Either way - VERY FUNNY.</p>

<p>Take care,</p>

<p>Whart (I mean Wharf)</p>

<p>PS - any interest in a wager on the Cornell vs. Dartmouth football game?</p>

54

<p>It is arbitrary to compare one school at Cornell to entire University at Dartmouth and Brown. Might as well subtract the engineering students at D and B, since they are not included in figures for C Arts and Sciences. What about students in Art, and Architecture, who are in a separate college at Cornell, but part of the mix elsewhere?</p>

<p>According to common data sets, at Dartmouth 15% of classes have greater than 39 students, 10% greater than 49. At Cornell the figures are 28 and 22%. B does not publish its CDS. Cornell is much bigger and classes are larger. This does not make it worse, just different. C offers more than 3 times as many courses as D. This does not make it better, just different.</p>

<p>All three offer great educations. Each would be ideal for some people and terrible for others. No number, or set of numbers, even if accurate, can prove superiority of one of these top schools over the others.</p>

55

<p>i think cleareyed guy makes a great point. It's all about being motivated on your own.</p>

<p>If you need your hand held, go to an LAC. Cool people go to universities.</p>