<p>Hi all,</p>
<p>I am having a hard time choosing my school. I got into Materials Science M.S program in Northwestern and Cornell: for NU, the program is course based (one academic year), for Cornell, it's research based. The ranking of Materials Science Programs in 2009: NU #2, Cornell #11, NU seems to be better than Cornell. But Cornell is one of the Ivy.
Please give me some suggestions.</p>
<p>Thanks a lot!!!</p>
<p>Suggest you pm CC poster Sam Lee to look at your post, I think he studied materlals Science at Northwestern. He may not check the Graduate School subforum regularly.</p>
<p>FWIW it should not matter what is an Ivy, at the graduate level especially you should be concerned with the quality and reputation of your particular program, and how well what they do matches with your interests.</p>
<p>I don’t know where you’re getting the particular ranking you saw, but you may want to research that a little further. Because I had been under the impression that Cornell’s materials science program was really good, based on stuff like this:
[NRC</a> Rankings in Materials Science](<a href=“http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/area25.html]NRC”>NRC Rankings in Materials Science)</p>
<p>The Materials science department at Cornell probably draws additional resources from several other departments , including Physics, Applied & Engineering Physics,Nanoscience .Which are all great departments themselves. The program should be really good. But I don’t know this field.</p>
<p>Those NRC rankings are more than 10 years old, not saying that Cornell is not good just that those rankings aren’t up to date at all. </p>
<p>I’m going to Northwestern. They’re program big compared to the other places I looked at. They have a lot of faculty members that do basically anything one would be interested in and they also use Argonne National Lab frequently so they’re resources are really good. </p>
<p>I know nothing about Cornell but I’m sure it’s a good program too. </p>
<p>Just from what I’ve heard, Ithaca is kind of a depressing place to live but it probably depends on your tastes</p>
<p>Evanston is a nice place to be (just dress very very warmly), and it’s right next to Chicago. Ithaca is next to – nothing.</p>
<p>You are lucky to have been admitted to some of the best programs in Materials.
Northwestern is a little bit better in terms of the research. Both programs are excellent you can not be wrong with any of the two. You also need to choose between Chicago and Ithaca - big difference!..</p>
<p>You just need to look at the research in detail and pick the one that you like doing the most.</p>