Q: Is Cornell affiliated with SUNY?
A: Cornell is a private institution, receiving most of its funding through tuition, research grants, and alumni contributions. Three of its seven undergraduate colleges and the graduate-level College of Veterinary Medicine are called contract or statutory colleges. These divisions receive partial funding from the state of New York to support their research and service mission in niche fields. Residents of New York enrolled in the contract colleges pay reduced tuition. Furthermore, the governor of the state serves as an ex-officio member of the board of trustees. Despite some similarities, Cornell’s contract colleges are not public or state schools they are private institutions that Cornell operates by contract with the state government.
Every college defines its own academic programs, manages its own admissions, and confers its own degrees. The degrees are all from Cornell University. New York State and SUNY have no say in any of the workings of the Cornell contract colleges. The only difference between a contract and an endowed college at Cornell is where some money comes from. A state college, on the other hand, receives nearly all its money from the government and is operated by the government.
Q: Which colleges are contract? Are they Ivy League too?
A: The contract colleges are:
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences
College of Human Ecology
School of Industrial and Labor Relations
College of Veterinary Medicine (graduate)
Yes, all of Cornell’s colleges are part of the Ivy League.
Q: Is it true the suicide rate is high at Cornell?
A: Completely false. The Cornell suicide rate is below the national average for college-aged students. This rumor is probably propagated because of the many beautiful gorges on campus. It’s more dramatic to say that somebody jumped off a bridge than if they killed themself some other way. The highest suicide rate belongs to another top school, though not an Ivy.
Q: Do I have better chances at one college at Cornell over another?
A: Yes, you do. Your chances are best if you apply for the major for which you are best suited. If you have work experience in local engineering firms, have won science competitions, and have taken every AP math and science at your school, your chances are lessened for the Hotel School, but you may be qualified for Engineering. The colleges each look for very different things in their applicants. They are known to reject an applicant if he seems out of place, even if he is very qualified for another college.
here are some more things from a thread called “top ten most annoying myths about Cornell” originally posted by Wharf Rat a while back. Contributions were also made by various students on the forum. Here is what we came up with:
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<li>
Cornell is a suicide school (see above post)
</li>
<li>
Ithaca is boring
Kryptonite man says “~so not true. i’m only a prefrosh, but the 3 nights i spent at cornell during cornell days were wonderful. i stayed in collegetown and i was shown around the campus (ex. bell tower, fitness center, etc.). there were many activities going on (ex. i went to the cayuga’s waiters concert and that was amazing. they had after parties and i went to one of them in collegetown. and there are always people in collegetown weeknights and weekends. if partying isn’t your thing, there are always people in the dorms to talk to.”
</li>
</ol>
There is a magazine out from new york state about ithaca’s attractions - it’s around 35-40 pages of parks, museums, vineyards, restaurants, etc. Each attraction gets about a one inch section in the magazine so it’s not just this “1 attraction per page” thing. I suggest picking up a copy if you want to expand you horizons beyond just the Cornell campus.
<ol>
<li>The weather in Ithaca is way worse than _________. (fill in the blank Cambridge, MA; New Haven, CT; Hanover, NH; Providence, RI; etc )
Kryptonite man says: “~i’m gonna be studying atmospheric science, so i am definitely well familiar with the weather in the New England region … and i can say that the winter weather in Ithaca is nothing compared to weather in the Midwest and Montana regions. Those places can go -43 sometimes. Its cold there. Its cold in other places. People here just deal with it. there are worst places to be (like University of Kansas which typically has tornadoes that go through or near the campus every two years).”</li>
</ol>
Yearly snowfall and temperatures in Ithaca are about the same as almost all of the northeastern cities and all of the ivy league schools.
<ol>
<li>
Students at Cornell are unfriendly
Kryptonite man says “~hahahaah, i laugh at this. people stay up till like 4 in the morning whether partying, chatting away, or just doing something else. this place is definitely not hard to socialize. its what you make of it.”
</li>
<li>
Ithaca is just farmland. (see ‘ithaca is boring’ part)
</li>
<li>
Cornell is not as well known as the other ivies. Cornell is probably right behind HYP in terms of international prestige and recognition.
</li>
<li>
Half of Cornell isn’t even run by Cornell - it’s run by SUNY. This is another misconception people often have. For more information, see the thread labeled “Cornell and SUNY” or see ‘statutory college’ on the Wikipedia.org site.
</li>
<li>
The statutory schools water down the “real” Cornell degree. This is once again just an abrupt assumption with no merit. Each of the 4 contract colleges at Cornell is among the top-3 in the nation in their respective fields.
</li>
</ol>
(good idea mercury. don’t get optimistic about prefrosh giving up on asking their own personal questions in their own slightly-different way and hoping for a unique answer though.)
Freekfyre–
Short answer: it depends, but usually not “extremely.”
Long answer:
It’s hard to answer that concisely and fairly, because most Cornell students have only been in one of Cornell’s schools. (A business major might give you a different answer than an engineer or architect.) If they’ve been in two of Cornell’s schools, they’ve still probably only been to Cornell. (How do you compare strenuousness if you’ve only experienced it at one school?) If they’ve transferred in from another school, then from my experience they’ll mostly tell you that Cornell is harder.
For me personally, as an A/S student up for transfer to engineering (and thus taking the same curriculum as other engineers), I can tell you that classes at Cornell are significantly harder and require much more outside-of-class work than classes at my (private college-prep) high school. I do think it’s strenuous and sometimes I have to skip having fun in favor of getting work done, but I almost never have a weekend that I devote to studying alone.
People who go around to different colleges and write books about how they compare to each other tend to describe Cornell as more academically rigorous than some other schools, though not all (Swarthmore comes to mind). I believe them, since I have several friends from high school who think college is easier. I don’t know many people who breeze by without working hard, but I don’t know anyone who’s completely drowning in work either. If going to college is something you view as worth investing a significant amount of time and effort (and money) into, but not your entire life or soul, then Cornell will probably work with you.
As a Cornellian, Harvardian and Columbian, I can tell you that Cornell is like any other Ivy. You <em>can</em> work very, very hard but you do not <em>need</em> to. No one gets in who is not able to do the work. It’s a matter of going to most of your classes, keeping up with daily assignments/papers if you are in that type of course, and reading (most of) what is required, and some of what is suggested. B’s are relatively easy with moderate application of effort, A’s depend on hard work or an intuitive grasp of subject, with <em>both</em> rarely required. If you are consistently getting C’s, you are in the wrong area or you are p****** away your time on something else.
redcrimblue, why did you stop? You should have gone to UPenn, Dartmouth, Brown, Princeton and Yale too. Then you would have the one and true “ivy leaguer”.
This is my first post and I am interested in the business school at CALS.
Any idea how the work load is here?
Its not that I am adverse to work but I do have a website publication business that requires 10 - 20 hours/week. I am not adverse to foregoing this and I will need to stop taking new business soon if I’m going to be super busy in 12 mos.
All owned by Cornell. It is a contractual arrangement with respect to ILR, HumEC and the Ag school. They receive some funding from New York, and their research (particularly in Agriculture and Life Sciences) benefits much of New York directly, but everything about Cornell is private. All Ivies receive government funding. That does not make any of them “public.”
depends on your major. personally, i think engineers have the most work…i room with one. as a human biology, health, and society major, i think i have a pretty decent load. with average effort, b’s are pretty easy to get. those a’s require a lot more effort though. and as far as being similar to any other ivy league school, i think it’s actually the hardest. after all we do have the highest ivy drop out rate (i’m told). think about it this way, 86% of harvard students graduate with honors. that’s crazy!!! that’s not an honor’s degree. talk about grade inflation, humph… at HumEc, less than 15% graduate with honors.
