Case Western vs. Cornell University

<p>Hi, just wanted to get some advice from you guys about my predicament as of now. I got the trustee scholarship from case (paying $16000) a year and absolutely nothing from Cornell (paying $45000). Now, I basically freakin out about which school to
go to and i've got bout 2 weeks to decide. I mean they both big on engineering and science research, case dorms and food aren't quite comparable to Cornell. My parents have decided that they can pay for my college but I'm worried about grad school or med school. If, you were in my position, what would you do? And, do you think that 30000 extra is worth the ivy league education?</p>

<p>u can take out loans and win scholarships, and since ur parents say they will pay why not go to cornell.</p>

<p>depends what kind of engineering. BME? go to Case. Want to go to med school? Go to Case. Want to get a job right out of college? Go to Cornell. Cornell will make it easier to get a job bc of the name. Case will make it easier to get into grad school, bc you will most likely have a higher GPA at Case. (Don't hold me to these, this is what I hear from my friend who is a sophomore at Cornell. She was BioE, but dropped to Bio.)</p>

<p>Well, I'm interested in doing ChemE; so I guess Cornell has the better ChemE (at least that's what U.S. news said, Cornell ranks 18 while Case ranks 40 in chemE). Yeah, the GPA is a big factor as well. I do want to go to med school or grad school but I'm not too sure that getting a high GPA at case is harder than at Cornell. By the way, does anyone know the avg gpa for engineering at case? (cornell's is 2.8). Thanks for the feedback guys, I really appreciate it.</p>

<p>Again, med and law schools know Cornell and know what your gpa means. It is reasonablly easy to get a decent gpa at Cornell and, in any event, you are judged agains other Cornellians, not against other schools where gpa's might be inherently higher. I suggest a 3.5 at Cornell is a heck of a lot better than a 3.7 or 3.8 at CWRU, even if it is easier to get the higher gpa at Case. Case is a fine school. Cornell is certainly better.</p>

<p>whoa, do you know how hard it is to get a 3.7 or 3.8 in engineering at all?? VERY lol. Case and Cornell are both known for being relatively easy to get into, but notoriously hard to stay in. From what I hear, however, Cornell is hard for the sake of being hard. 100% of Case (engineering and bsuiness) graduates have higher starting salaries than the national median.</p>

<p>I'm so sick of people saying the median GPA is ~2.7...it's more like 3.2.</p>

<p>Cornell's avg gpa for engineers is 2.8. I visited and that's what every single engineer i met told me.</p>

<p>Well either they are lying, you are lying, or they are misinformed. The median GPA in the CoE is ~3.15. 30% of students have a GPA >= 3.5.</p>

<p>hmm wat if u wanna go to engineering grad school after majoring in enginerring at cornell? won't it work as a disavantage since cornell engineers have generally lower gpa than people from other schools? or do grad schools know this difference and factor this into admission?</p>

<p>Did you go to Cornell is an engineer for your undergrad Gouverneurmorris?
Oh, by the way, the cornell avg gpa NOT MEDIAN is 2.8. They're not the same thing. Maybe the median is 3.15, but median means middle, not the sum of all gpa's divided by the number students.</p>

<p>Medians do tend to be higher than means. I hate it when professors use the medians instead of means to curve tests ;)</p>

<p>Median != mean, but I doubt there's a 0.35-0.4pt difference. Besides, median is more helpful here because it tells you where you stand in concrete terms. I think that people on this board either confuse the two terms or dwell on the fact that many large classes like PHYS and MATH are curved to B- (upper classes are usually higher).</p>

<p>Actually, I think the mean tends to be higher on tests because there are usually a few "curve breakers" that skew the mean toward the high end. Very few students usually get below a 40 on a test with a mean of 65, but there are always some who get > 90. Like this one:</p>

<p><a href="http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Ekeung/me/class/mp/ex/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://tigger.uic.edu/~keung/me/class/mp/ex/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Also, I think the A+ tends to make the mean grade for a class higher than the median.</p>

<p>I did both undergrad and grad at Cornell in engineering.</p>

<p>I've found the mean to be LOWER than medians on tests. There are many low outliers on hard science prelims (someone scored a 3% on the second orgo prelim last year, 11% on the first two genetics prelims, etc.).</p>

<p>Wierd. I always remembered it as the other way around in my math/science/engineering classes. Maybe my memory is getting foggy, but it definately can go either way.</p>

<p>I have the same predicament, except Case for me is almost a full ride, and I only live 4 hours away. I've just decided to go to cornell, well here goes.
:D</p>

<p>What made you decide to go to cornell over case?</p>

<p>I guess its useless to argue about means/medians at cornell considering most top tier engineering schools have gpa's centered around 3.0. My question is: how hard is it to get into the top engineering grad (PHD) schools as well as stipends with a 3.0 at cornell? And for you graduating cornelians, how easy was it for you to land a good (salary and stabily wise) after grad school or even undergrad?</p>

<p>Top-tier grad schools want you to have >3.5 and usually >3.7</p>

<p>even Cornell? What was your gpa and did you get in to the top tier schools?</p>