<p>Excessive drinking..mmm.</p>
<p>I don't understand why the excessive drinkikng is such a stereotype for cornell. There are many students who like to drink, but there are also many who don't. On top of that, there are many students who drink a lot at most colleges. Thirdly, I don't see that many students who drink to severe excess. Occassionally you will see someone who is sick or belligerent, but it's not like everyone comes home like that. Lastly, drinking in the quantities seen at cornell is not something to be associated exclusively with "lower institutions." Princeton for example (please don't give me s**t; I lived there for 18 years and certainly found ways to attend their parties, even in HS, and of course I go with my friends at PU now when I'm home) has just as much drinking at cornell. I've never seen someone attempt to chug a pitcher of beer while shirtless at cornell you know, though I did on a friday (the quiet weekend night) at princeton. Therefore, I really don't think the excessive drinking complaint is fair. Cornell probably has more students, by number, who don't drink than most schools.</p>
<p>The bureaucracy is annoying, necessary, and not impossible to deal with. Having so many students, it would be difficult for cornell to manage things if every student had his own guidelines. Petitioning for exceptions to rules is almost always possible. The red tape you sometimes encounter while trying to do something outside the norm is a pain, but without it the campus would be chaos and everyone would be whining "well you let him do this, why not me?"</p>
<p>Malicious competition: by a few students. All of the bio-students, engineering-students, and premed students (the particularly competitive fields) I know are very nice, very helpful, and wise enough to realize that their grades will not improve by hurting one or two other students' grades. Cornell has a couple fields that are very competitive, and outside of them the cutthroat or even competitive feeling is absolutely absent. In them there is competitiveness, but most students will not begrudge others help.</p>
<p>Calling cornell an alcoholic filled, cutthroat, school of unhappy students who can't get anything done because of a bureaucracy is absurd.</p>
<p>Almost everyone here will tell you that they are happy at cornell, fine with at least a significant group of the people here, and also fine with the social scene (side note: I often go out to party, but instead my friday evening consisted of dinner in a dining hall followed by an Ivy League hockey game followerd by free ice skating w/ refreshments followed by watching a movie in my dorm--total time: 6:00PM to 2:30AM--an example of the perfectly available, extended time-period, weekend, non-alcoholic social life readily available here).</p>
<p>-roots on Sparticus-</p>
<p>everyone i know who go to cornell tell me that the quality of education there sucks and have ALL advised me to go to a smaller school. this is the reaction i expect to get from someone from a ginormous public school, not an ivy league. btw, cornell isnt even that big, still less than 15000 to my understanding</p>
<p>strange, cause the people i met at Cornell said that the education there was decent.</p>
<p>I went to Cornell for two year before leaving (couldn't get good grades). I am doing a lot better at my new school and will graduate with a MechE degree. I was never impressed with the basic engineering education at Cornell. A friend of mine who double majored and did well at Cornell said he hated the education because the quality was the same as many non-elite schools but the professors tested you at a higher level. I had a very hard time learning engineering concepts at Cornell because the professors only discussed basic topics in lecture and the TA's weren't much help. For the amount Cornell charges for tuition I expected the best of the best when it came to teaching and instruction...something a lot of profs are poor at.<br>
And the courses moved at such a fast pace that I had no time to master the various concepts. My POV is from a guy who just couldn't handle the rigor of the work and the poor teaching. My friend's POV is of a guy who did very well but felt that Cornell's education wasn't significantly better than a lower ranked school and he is quite upset that he spent 4 years there (but he did love the college experience...just not the education).
But Cornell does have a vast amount of resources for research and I think the graduate program is better than the undergraduate program.</p>
<p>In summary, how you respond to Cornell depends on you. I never liked academia and Cornell can really fuel that hatred.</p>