<p>So I'm having a hard time deciding between the two. I'm doing arts and sciences and planning for a medical career. I've lived in big cities all my life, and the idea of an isolated little town does not appeal to me whatsoever. It's not even the partying, but the quietness of little towns disturbs me. Any Cornellians out there willing to defend Ithaca?</p>
<p>More important question, though, is which school opens more doors for pre-med students?</p>
<p>can i have your spot if you dont go? x.x</p>
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<p>A million times, yes. The food is awesome. The people are friendly. The gorges are beautiful. There are a millions of things to do. It’s an idyllic location to spend four years studying, learning, and growing.</p>
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<p>Cornell has produced more students to go on to become doctors or PhDs in the life sciences than any other undergraduate institution.</p>
<p>~WhartonWannabe: If I do finalize on NYU, then yes, be my guest. :)</p>
<p>~CayugaRed: But isn’t it too quiet? Do you have to drive to get food or go off campus? Are there any means of public transportation? Also, how do you make friends? I’ve heard some pretty tragic stories of how hard it is to make friends in college. Are there any outside / on-campus internships? Do the teachers actually teach?</p>
<p>NYU! It’s more easier to make friends in the city and public transportation would serve you well too.</p>
<p>Cornell, hands down.
More prestige, and less debt.
NYU is terrible with financial aid and has no unified campus.
I got into Stern but denied from Cornell CAS ***fff</p>
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20,000 college students are not quiet.</p>
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No. </p>
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Yes, the bus service.</p>
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???</p>
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By Cornell’s rules, they’re requred to. </p>
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yes, plenty. Many students take advange of these as well.</p>
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because the MTA has a sterling history of public service.</p>
<p>I know people who are really social, but they end up with barely any/no friends in college since they have no time to join clubs.</p>
<p>20,000 college students on a huge pastureland compared to 15-floor buildings side by side is very very very quiet… I’ve always imagined Ithaca as a quiet Long Island town with a couple stores sprinkled here and there. So what exactly does life at Cornell look like?</p>
<p>By any school’s rules, teachers are supposed to teach. But whether they actually teach efficiently is a different story. (Sorry. I probably should have made the question a bit clearer before.)</p>
<p>Looseleaf, you should do an overnight, if they have those.</p>
<p>I myself grew up next to NYC, was wary of what to expect from Ithaca. It taught me what the charm of a smaller city could be. I wound up loving it there. Though also, do not overestimate the amount of free time you are going to have, as an effective pre-med at either school.</p>
<p>re: #5, actually many people find it very hard to meet people in NYC. Many young working adults feel very isolated there and lonely. The reason is human nature, people don’t normally talk to strangers. If you rarely encounter the same people twice, everyone remains basically a stranger, so you do not connect to them. By contrast, when you are forced to repeatedly interact with the same people, familiarity develops that can more easily lead to friendship. At NYU, where dorms are not necessarily near each other or the school, and people live all over, I woud imagine it is not that easy to form relationships. This is also a challenge at Cornell, which is also a big school. There are various ways to make it functionally smaller and create more intimate sub-units- fraternities, clubs, etc- that many people find socially useful. </p>
<p>The most important thing for socal life is not the sheer number of restaurants, movie houses a place has, it’s whether you have a good group of friends to share experiences with. If you have, either place is good enough. If you haven’t, neither place is good enough.</p>
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<p>Uh… Upstate New York is NOT Long Island. Ithaca is a bustling college-town. Life at Cornell looks like life on any other college campus – students going to class, grabbing coffee and reading a book, going out to eat, studying in the libraries, hanging out with friends, going to different art events, hitting the bars/parties on the weekend, shopping at Urban Outfitters or Target. </p>
<p>There will be a lot more opportunities to make friends at Cornell than at NYU because everybody else you interact with on campus will be a student. You have no idea if the guy in Washington Square Park is a student or a drugie reading Tom Waits’ poetry to himself.</p>
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<p>this alone makes me steer you towards nyu.
sure the campus is pretty active with students and stuff…but if you’re from the city you wont find the same “escape” in ithaca.</p>
<p>But I still wouldn’t call Ithaca isolated or little. It’s not like we’re talking about Williamstown, MA or Middlebury, VT here. You want isolated and small? Go to Potsdam, NY.</p>
<p>There are 100,000 people in the metro area.</p>
<p>if one is used to getting lost in urban centers…</p>
<p>and driving for miles around town in a car (cruising)…one will find that hard to replicate in ithaca. </p>
<p>being that the OP is wanting to be pre-med…i would just advise that being somewhere you’re not comfortable can be another factor to depression(something a pre-med doesnt need).</p>
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<p>That just doesn’t make any sense. There are tons of roads in and around Ithaca to drive around on. Some great quick trips are to Watkins Glen, Aurora, and Seneca Falls.</p>
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<p>This is true. But no college student needs depression, not just pre-meds.</p>
<p>Hrm… I think I’m more steered towards Cornell than NYU. But I just can’t seem to waive this fear of the big change in scenery since I originally lived in a city that makes even NYC seem like a suburb. When I stayed overnight at friends’ houses, I found the quietness and country scenery unnerving.</p>
<p>But monydad, that’s actually a really good suggestion. I’ll look into the overnight program.</p>
<p>I have to say, when I see threads like this I continue to be amazed at the strides NYU has taken over the years. When I was applying to colleges NYU’s acceptance rate was close to 75%, and if we’d had the internet nobody then would have posted this question.</p>
<p>Looseleaf:</p>
<p>I had to make the same exact decision two years ago, NYU vs. Cornell.</p>
<p>Going to Cornell was the best decision I ever made. One of my best friends chose NYU over Cornell and he’s kicking himself after I told him about my experiences here.</p>
<p>PM me if you need any more help. I was up for days trying to make a decision and this forum pushed me in the right way. Just want to give back.</p>
<p>monydad- I read your comment twice, and my interpretation: was that a bashing for NYU?</p>
<p>Not at all, certainly wasn’t intended to be. That is just my reaction, based on the difference between today vs. when I made these evaluations. The guys in my HS who went to NYU were near the bottom of the class, back then, that’s how it was. Them’s the facts.</p>
<p>I have the same reaction whenever I see these Penn people boast about how selective they are. I believe them, but it sort of defies my own sense of reality, since in my day this was not the case. columbia has also become hyper-selective, and that was not so much the case back then. Probably most of its alums could not get in today.</p>
<p>The other school that has escalated as mercurially as NYU is Washington University. when I was applying wash U accepted 81% of applicants.</p>
<p>I was just reacting. Whether anyone now should care about what it was then, or my reaction, is another story.</p>
<p>what would make Ithaca, which is admittedly not huge, less unnerving? for what it’s worth, when I keep my window open, I have constant road noise. it’s not like you can only hear the buzzing of the bees and chirping of the birds. that would bother me too.</p>
<p>also, as for public transportation, TCAT is a bus service that goes all over Tompkins county, and regularly. I did not grow up using public transportation, but I use TCAT often. you’re not stuck using vehicles either, because the streets of Cornell connect right in with the streets of Ithaca, so you can walk down the Commons (or further) if you want. in my opinion Ithaca College is more isolated, although they have TCAT bus service as well.</p>