<p>Alright, this may seem premature, as I have not even applied to Cornell yet (I'm a junior in high school), but I just want to have more information about how competitive Cornell is in boosting their undergrad students into good grad schools. If I do get into and go to Cornell, I would most likely double major in math/physics, plan to take the honors track, and do a reasonable amount of research. </p>
<p>My question is, if I do well enough in this (high GPA and a good volume of research), along with good GRE's, would I most likely be able to go to nearly any grad school? I know that Cornell has sent Physics majors to places like Harvard and MIT, but is this frequent/likely coming out of Cornell? How would they view a Math degree from Cornell if I wanted to go into grad school for Mathematics?</p>
<p>Again, I know this is premature, but I just want to know if Cornell's caliber in these respects is in practice great enough to allow for virtually limitless opportunities in grad school.</p>
<p>1) Grad schools respect Cornell. A lot of their faculty attended Cornell.</p>
<p>2) Grad schools depend more on your references than anything else in the admissions decision. They have plenty of 3.8 + GPAs and 800 GREs. So it mostly comes down to your research and your references.</p>
<p>3) Does Cornell give you a good opportunity to develop research and references if you want to go into a PhD route? Yes. Yes. Yes. Because Cornell is an undergraduate focused research institution that means you will have a lot of opportunities to interact with faculty. I have had chemistry friends from Cornell go on to Harvard and Berkeley. Math friends go on to Chicago and Princeton. Physics friends go on to Harvard and MIT and Berkeley (and Cornell.) Cornell is an absolute Physics power house.</p>
<p>4) At the end of the day no grad school will take you if they don’t think you’re pretty smart. Especially for a PhD in something like physics or math. So you better be pretty smart.</p>
<p>If you’re dead serious about getting a PhD in one of these fields, pick a school that you think will offer you the best environment to study, to do research, and have a little bit of fun on the side.</p>