IMO, all of those things can make a diffrent @lilskies but you are splitting hairs between two very well respected programs.
Cornell does have a very strong alumni network.
Might be better to worry about this after you have acceptances in hand.
Does Cornell being closer to NYC and having several connections there not make a difference (as stated in prior posts)?
Cornell isnât Princeton or Penn, or Yale or Columbia or NYU, all of which are within a reasonably driving distance from Wall Street. Ithaca is a four hour drive from NYC, that is quite a distance. Whether recruiting at Cornell or Michigan, you are looking at recruiters taking a day out of their schedule to visit campus. And Michigan has a considerable network in NYC.
âDoes the Ivy League not make a difference?â
Not really. Many elite universities are not members of the Ivy League, including Chicago, Duke, Georgetown, Michigan, MIT, Northwestern, Stanford, UVa etcâŠall of which are IBanking target campuses.
âDo the smaller class sizes (and thus less competition) not make a difference?â
Apparently not. Ross is twice larger than Dyson, but it places twice as many grads in Wall Street firms.
âDoes Cornell also not have an extensive list of alumni, similar to Michiganâs?â
Cornellâs alumni network is considerableâŠcertainly on par with Michiganâs.
âDoes the lower acceptance rate (and thus more selectivity) not make a difference?â
Lower acceptance rate does not mean smarter students. Employers do not care about selectivity, they care about intellectual horsepower. There is no discernible difference between Ross and Dyson students.
I agree with othersâŠfirst secure acceptances to both programs, then worry about choosing one. You cannot go wrong either way, but given the nature of your questions, I think your mind will be more at easy going to an Ivy League.
@Alexandre: I agree that WSO is not reliable, but this WSO âstudyâ was reprinted on the Poets& Quants website as a featured story.
@CALSmom: Arenât both Ross & Dyson publicly funded schools ? Cornell University has 3 colleges which receive SUNY funding and the agriculture schoolâof which Dyson is a partâis one of the publicly funded land grant schools at Cornell. Also, New York state residents pay a reduced tuition at Dyson.
@Publisher Cornell is a privately chartered Ivy League school, but it is unique in that half of their colleges are endowed and the other half are contracted with NY state.
Dyson falls under CALS (and the SC Johnson College of Business) which is a contracted school offering NY residents discounted tuition rate of $36K. For non NY residents the students pay full tuition price of about $54K.
The resources of both the contracted and endowed schools are shared under the Cornell University umbrella. Students can take courses (even minor in them) at other colleges or even change majors from an endowed school to a contracted school and vice versa.
âDespite the differences in funding for the undergraduate colleges and schools, all Cornell students enjoy the same quality of academic and campus life and are free to choose elective courses in the other colleges and schools.â
https://meetezra.admissions.cornell.edu/meet-ezra
I guess my point in saying Cornell University as a private Ivy (regardless of where the funding comes from) is better than an elite public university is the quality and access to resources and the overall vibe of the school is different than a very large school (Cornellâs 15,000 UG vs UM 30,000 UG). The FA is very good at Cornell (at least in our familyâs case).
In my undergrad experience, it was difficult for me to deal with my schoolâs FA, career and housing offices. It also was hard to get some core courses I needed, so I had to take summer classes in my hometown in order to graduate in 4 years.
When Dyson was just âAEMâ (in my day), it was just another major in the ag school.
But then somewhere along the line business became hot, and AEM became a big deal.
The ag school selects by major, and AEM admissions became more selective than any other Ag school major. Then later, it became more selective than any other program in the whole university !!
To help insulate it from SUNY funding (and maybe other attached âstringsâ), AEM received its own endowment and became âDysonâ. At that point one can definitely say its funding became different than that of the other contract colleges/programs.
Since that time it has been put within the umbrella of the graduate Johnson school of business, which is an endowed school that does not receive state funding. What that means for Dyson, both for now and for the future, I donât really know.
But even besides that, I think there is a general belief that schools and programs run by Cornell, though partially funded by the state, are run better than the schools and programs run directly by SUNY. The extra level of insulation between politicians and control can be beneficial.
When you are on campus it doesnât matter much. As a student at an endowed college I took several courses taught in the ag school. And there is no difference in housing, etc. However subtle differences do exist. For one thing, IIRC the endowed faculty gets paid on a different salary/benefits scale than the contract colleges faculty. But given its âtweenerâ state now I donât know how this affects Dyson.
I think the only thing to consider when Dyson is how confident you are at being that 1% of accepted students. Youâre going to need a real hook e.g. legacy/URM/first-gen/feeder school with stellar stats and applying ED.
Everything else comes after the fact given that few other business undergrad problems have such selectivity.