CORNELL ENGINEERING

I’ve heard that cornell has different pools depending on the department the student applies to, meaning that I(engi student) am not competing w/ students applying for other departments
(i’ve also heard that columbia does this and upenn does not)
is this true for cornell?

Cornell has 7 colleges that have admissions which are in dependent of each other, so yes you would only be competing with other students applying to the College of Engineering .