<p>I imagine the curricula/ list of required courses, distribution requirements, at these two colleges are substantially different. An examination of this alone should be sufficient to make a decision. What do you want to learn?? Or, conversely, do you want to avoid something?? ( If one has distribution requirements that the other doesn’t; e.g. I assume ILR has no foreign language requirement).</p>
<p>ILR is a small college within a large university, with undergrad student body of over 13,000, located in a small upstate city. Cornell has (mostly bad, but still) division I sports, and an active fraternity scene.
Swarthmore is a small liberal arts college, under 1,500 students or so, located in a suburb of a big city. With less of those other things. </p>
<p>The number of courses readily available for study at Cornell are obviously much larger than at Swarthmore. [At Swarthmore one can extend the offerings via consortium arrangements , but this is time consuming to use extensively in practice, we were told]. But, for what they do have Swarthmore undoubtedly has a lot smaller classes. [In general; however I don’t really know about ILR.]</p>
<p>These are substantially different environments, and you ought to have a preference.</p>
<p>ILR tuition is significantly subsidized for NYS students, and if you are one of them, and like so many of us, would not qualify for need-based aid but really need the help anyway, this may be a factor.</p>
<p>I personally don’t share the notion that Swarthmore has a much nicer campus. It has no gorges, of course, and, though the buildings and grounds looked nice, I perceived little diversity in architecture and style. It’s nicer than the ILR school building though.</p>