<p>I sent in a deposit to Cornell, but Dartmouth just let me off their waitlist. I am liking what I have learned about CU, and I enjoyed my visit there. Dartmouth I have not visited, I don't know that much about it but I want to consider it. This thread is for advice on what you think I should choose, with reasoning behind your choice.</p>
<p>Thanks for any help you can provide. It's urgent that I make a choice(Probably by June 7th)</p>
<p>At CU I am in their Applied Economics and Management major, while at Dartmouth I would do economics. Business classes seem cool, but I may get an MBA so I'd be ok with taking more econ. via dartmouth. I've only taken low level microeconomics so far, so I'm not really sure how much I love studying econ., it seems intersting. Business has always fascinated me in general.</p>
<p>Cornell
+Solid business program, sends a higher % of students to top MBA programs than any other UG buisness program.
+14k or so UG students, plenty of social and other options, vast course selection.
+Better international recongnition.
+Gorges.
+$4,000 cheaper</p>
<p>Dartmouth
+Solid econ. foundation would probably be a positive, rather than business UG.
+Slightly better national recognition and selectivity.
+Flexible D-Plan
+Slightly more grade inflation
+Closer contact with profs
+Everyone seems nice, positve, energetic.
-Smaller than I'd like in a town and college</p>
<p>You really should visit Dartmouth before making the decision. I think once you have visited Dartmouth, you will know where you fit in best an where you will be happiest.</p>
<p>Yeah I was thinking of that as more of a last resort, seeing as it would be expensive/time consuming(buying a plane ticket for a few days from now) and I'm currently leaning toward Cornell. I'd like to try to figure this out without going there if possible. The other issue is I'm still waiting for Penn's decision, while unlikely to come in positive at this point, I would immedietly choose Wharton over the others. William's is also still pending and if that comes in it would possibly make me fly back to the NE again if that's what I'll be doing.</p>
<p>Oh and other -about dartmouth, it seems more driven by frat/jock activities and types of people. That stuff is fine and the people I'm sure are great, but historically that has not been my thing so much. I don't drink or drug and from what I hear that is a larger portion of the main activities that go on at D. than at C.</p>
<p>i reccomend that u dont decide to spend the next 4 yrs of ur life somewhere that u havent visited. every school has a unique feeling/atmosphere when ur on campus thats basically impossible to relay in words. so i suggest u dont chose dartmouth unless ur able to go see it. plus from what u've said, it sounds like cornell is a better fit.</p>
<p>I think you should definitely feel satisfied if you stick with Cornell. I know it differs from person to person, but in my experience, Cornell is better in many ways. I visited both schools in the fall. I saw Darmouth first, and I loved it. But then I saw Cornell, and loved it exponentially more. I totally fell in love with the place. I was kind of in your boat too. I got into Cornell and was waitlisted at Dartmouth. But, I didnt even think about the waitlist. I chose Cornell without hesitation. Again.. my story is probably pretty meaningless since we're majoring in different things and are probably two totally different people but I thought I would share my experience.. if you have any specific questions about Dartmouth I can try to answer.</p>
<p>ok well dartmouth.. was a really cute little town. it felt very green and pretty. but Im not sure how much i would have appreciated it after having lived there for a long time. im pretty sure it would get old. theres literally like no where to go besides the campus. the people were super nice and everyone i met advertised the school like crazy. i stayed with my friend in the substance-free dorms.. so u can def find people who dont do drugs or drink if you want that, although my impression is that a lot of social events are centered around drnking. but i think that also true at cornell. i did get a slight feeling of arrogance exuding from the admissions office and from the school in general.. but it was slight, and i dont kno how big of a deal it would be when ur a student. </p>
<p>when i got to cornell for some reason i didnt expect to like it as much, but i was definitely blown away. i thought the capus was way prettier. the architecture was gorgeous, and more european and ancient-looking than dartmouth's colonial buildings (dont kno how much u care about that but its a pretty big deal to me). i was surprised at how lively the whole place felt. i was expecting it to be really small and feel isolated, but it seemed like there was a lot going on everywhere. its like the perfect college town because you have so many people of the same age from all over the country and the world all living together in a little city, whereas dartmouth just doesnt have that little city feeling. it just feels like a campus and nothing more. so ya.. i hope that helps. let me know if i missed something important.</p>
<p>as a Dartmouth student, I can assure you that you won't have a problem with not drinking - I don't, most of my friends don't (or at least not to excess, nor particularly often), and I've never felt out of the loop or anything.</p>
<p>I didn't apply to Cornell, but one of the things that made me choose Dartmouth over other schools I was considering was the size and friendliness of the community. Cornell is HUGE. Dartmouth is only about 4000 undergrad (and what few grad students there are we dont really have much contact with), so everyone is very close. The President of the college shakes every freshman's hand during orientation, every student knows the alma mater by heart, and in my 80 person lecture class fall term, the professor knew every student's name within a week. That was a big deal for me.</p>
<p>Anyway, this thread just seemed very pro-cornell, and I wanted to give Dartmouth a little support :) Its an amazing school.</p>
<p>I vote Dartmouth... a fun atmosphere, and I'm sure Dartmouth is equally or better at sending kids into top grad programs...of course it doesn't beat Cornell by a landslide but still</p>
<p>It seems to me that you owe it to yourself for a decision that will cost tens of thousands of dollars on which the entire rest of your life will be based to put in the minimal extra time and cost and go check out Dartmouth. These two were my top two choices, aside from an unrealistic app at Princeton, but unfortunately was W/L at both. While I would have been happy at either, they have a distinctly different feel to them. If you're concerned that Dartmouth and Hanover are too small, I wouldn't spend time continuing to ponder Williams, which is less than half the size of Dartmouth. I would definitely agree with the other posts that I wouldn't accept Dartmouth w/o going to see it first. That's like marrying someone you've never met. It may still persist in some cultures, but seems steeped with problems to me.</p>
<p>Yeah I have posted that I have established I will not be going to D-mouth without visiting, this post is helping me decide if I should go fly out there, and if people think it would be a better choice to go there than CU.</p>
<p>thethoughtprocess - While you are correct that its feeder ranking falls behind In feeder rankings its usually behind HYPS Dartmouth .I was talking about the AEM(business essentially) major. You are talking about overall. Business is like 200 students a year, rather than the 3.5k total at Cornell/year. Businessweek editor of that new college ranking of UG business programs said that they found that Cornell business students, to paraphrase:
Had above average starting salaries, were very happy, and had a higher percentage of grads go into top MBA programs than any other program.</p>
<p>Garr!- thanks for the help, I do need people who believe D-mouth would be better to give reasons why its overall better for me than cu maybe. Actually though, if you look at my op youll see that I prefer the larger size. Though I can see why youd appreciate some aspects of it being small, I think the pro/cons are weighted towards CU size overall.</p>
<p>So far I'm unconvinced that for me, a visit is neccesary to turn it down. It's close though. One thing that concerned me was that princeton review put professor intersting and accesibility raking at like 70s for CU, and 90s for Dart. Is this valid at all? What method do they use to get this exactly.</p>
<p>Because Dartmouth has a smaller student body, it has much smaller classes. Intro government classes are either 50 or 100, and intro bio and psychology classes are usually around 200. 200 is probably the biggest class you will find at Dartmouth. Because of this, the profs will always teach the class and you will rarely have to interact with TAs. As a government major, my profs have always been the ones to teach my classes, hold extra discussion classes, and grade my papers. Also, profs are required to hold office hours in which anyone can come in to ask questions. Profs usually hold a couple of office hours a week. Maybe this is why Dartmouth profs get a higher rating.</p>
<p>well, I know nothing about Cornell profs, but at Dartmouth they certainly deserve their high ranking. Part of the reason Cornell may have a lower ranking is that here, NO classes are taught by TAs (although they do hold review sessions before things are due, grade homeworks, etc.). I'm not sure what the situation is at Cornell. </p>
<p>Here, our professors really do make the effort to know their students. I took a senior seminar this year (as a freshman) because the teacher knew me well enough to know that it was a subject I was passionate about and that I could handle the workload. They are overall extremely accessible and I've found even classes I kind of thought might be boring (but took for distribs) were pretty interesting because of the teacher. Then again, there is a Student Assembly sponsored course review website which everyone uses, so I've only taken classes with teachers I'd read were good.</p>