<p>My daughter is accepted to Arts & Science. She wants to become an MD. We are debating whether she should go to Cornell or UVA. We heard that studying premed is very hard in Cornell. I wonder how hard it is. Also, there is no hospital nearby for research. How likely can a undergraduate student find the medical related research? Being able to do medical research is crucial for applying to med school. So is studying premed in Cornell even a good idea? Thank you in advance for your help.</p>
<p>^Parent NH. What you think you need may not be what Cornell thinks you need. With so many people asking for money, I’m sure they do the best they can. Harvard is probably closer to what you were looking for…I doubt many of their kids pay 100%. Cornell has a large student population with the most diversity of programs and desired outcomes. They require that LOTS of kids pay their own way. It’s your choice - your kid doesn’t have to go there.</p>
<p>Premed everywhere is HARD…you can’t just be at the median at all your classes, you have to excel. Cornell has the best of the best in terms of kids studying sciences and engineering. It’s the peer group that makes it competitive. Premed kids have to decide if they’re up for the challenge. If my kid were premed, I would suggest a school with good basic sciences where he/she could excel - Cornell may not be the best place for that. If my kid weren’t 100% about career, I would pick Cornell. It has the most choices available anywhere - many things kids don’t learn about in high school.</p>
<p>When does class registration start for incoming Freshmen? My son was accepted to COE early decision. We have received some correspondence since acceptance, and got a “package” yesterday talking about registering for housing and dining.</p>
<p>Can parents provide some insight into class registration/process.</p>
<p>Thanks in advance.</p>
<p>Class registration happens in the summer. Your kid will get a notification when freshmen are allowed to register. A lot of kids wake up early so they could have the first pick. D2 actually signed up for 6 classes, went to all of them for few weeks before she decided which ones to drop. This is my second kid at the school and I rarely heard them say they couldn’t get into a class.</p>
<p>As far as housing, your kid will need to sign up by the deadline, signing up early doesn’t get you better housing. It is all done by lottery. My kid(s) never ate 3 meals a day at the cafeteria. This semester she is doing the 10 meal plan with a lot of red bucks.</p>
<p>Make sure you provide evidence of insurance or they would automatically charge you for additional insurance.</p>
<p>I’m going to pop our thread back up. I think some calm informative answers need to be available for parents with questions and one of the threads that has been very busy in this forum isn’t filling that need. Please ask about anything that you like here. Keep it appropriate and respectful. No reason for anything else. </p>
<p>Personally, I am NOT looking forward to packing up my son’s dorm room. So much work! I am driving up alone to help him to make sure the car has room for everything. I am afraid to bring any available friends or family members only to find the refrigerator won’t fit! It doesn’t seem worth the high fees to store any of it. He has a final on the 17th, so no early end for us. My husband and younger son will both be at school that day (husband teaches physics and younger son is in high school). Hopefully, the freshman does as he should and packs up before I get there. Please??</p>
<p>Oh move out. It is like the end of a long wet camping trip. Forget visions of neatly stacked taped boxes waiting by the door. Bring a box of black lawn bags with a draw string and a big smile. You may be shocked by what you see tossed in the dumpster. They could restock BB&B and Staples! Wedge them back in the car with the pillow, they grunt and fall asleep for the next 12 hours. Everyone just wants to get out of Dodge. Just make them do the laundry at home w/i 48 hours. Next year they bring less crap!</p>
<p>You know, I am tempted to go to Amazon and ship him a box of garbage bags. That thought had already occurred to me. I just might want to do it myself to make sure that the breakables get packed separately (and no actual garbage gets mixed in). I tried to take home some items on our last visit, but he seemed unprepared to part with much of anything.</p>
<p>On class registration for freshman, how did your kids know what classes to register for. Were they in contact with an advisor from their college beforehand who suggested which classes would be appropriate?</p>
<p>There are a lot of pages on the Cornell website to help a student determine which classes would be appropriate/of interest (based on current level, AP credit, major, etc.). Beyond that, I found this email from last summer:</p>
<p>Dear new Cornellian,</p>
<pre><code>The advising deans in Arts and Sciences hope you are as excited to be arriving
</code></pre>
<p>on campus in August as we are to see you here in Ithaca. We do want to remind
you of a couple important things. The first is that the enrollment period for
setting up a first draft of your schedule of classes for the fall semester
will run from 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, July 11 until 4:30 p.m. on Friday, July
20. Be sure to work through the summer advising site at [Arts</a> and Sciences Orientation and Enrollment](<a href=“http://as.cornell.edu/information/orientation/index.cfm]Arts”>http://as.cornell.edu/information/orientation/index.cfm)
before you start enrolling in classes.</p>
<pre><code>The other item is just a clarification about enrolling in foreign language
</code></pre>
<p>classes. If you plan to continue studying a language that you have already
studied in high school, you absolutely must take the placement exam. For some
languages, placement tests are available on-line. But for other languages, you
may need to wait until you arrive on campus for Orientation to take a placement
test, so for now, you should just take your best guess at the appropriate level
of instruction. Then, after you get the results of the placement test, you can
change that enrollment if needed so that you end up in the right class.</p>
<pre><code>Have a great summer and we will see you in August.
</code></pre>
<p>does any returning student parent recall when FA is available to view at student center for returning student/2nd year? my DD sent all the required doc. and her student center portal FA view “inquiry access denied for 2013/2014 aid year”</p>
<p>^ We did not get our sophomore year FinAid until August; I believe it was ~ 8/11, after the 8/7 Bursar Bill due date. We were told by the Bursar’s Office that, if we did not get the FinAid award by the 8/7 Bursar Bill due date, to pay the same amount we paid for first semester freshmen year and they would reconcile after the FinAid was awarded. (That is what we did and there was no problem.) We were told to expect the same FinAid as freshmen year unless our financial situation had changed. Our financial situation changed a little, and our FinAid changed a little. We were treated very fairly.</p>
<p>@fourtops Last year we were able to view Pending FinAid from student center before they disburse the actual aid in August…</p>
<p>How did class scheduling go for all of the non-freshmen? My son got everything he wanted except for his CS class. He thinks that will open up in the fall, as kids tend to drop that one (he dropped it this term). Either way, he got 16 solid credits of classes that he knows he wants. He even put some thought into leaving time for meals (he didn’t do so well with that this year). He can sit in on the CS class and add it if he still wants it. A friend is the TA for that class, and he would like to take it at some point.</p>
<p>DD fall semester schedule looks great. she got in to all the classes she want including the PE that she couldn’t fit in her schedule this semester. Five classes/18 credits. Seems like she balance her class well with Hard(required) + Easy(fun) classes. Just hope that those Easy/fun classes is going to be easy and fun :)</p>
<p>How did your son like Cornell and the Architecture program? Is he going to attend?</p>
<p>Still interested in any additional feedback from current parents of Architecture students about the workload and stress levels…thanks!</p>
<p>–How did your son like Cornell and the Architecture program? Is he going to attend?</p>
<p>–Still interested in any additional feedback from current parents of Architecture students
–about the workload and stress levels…thanks!</p>
<p>Hi Interested_Mom - </p>
<p>We went to Syracuse, RPI, Cornell, and Princeton on this trip. We have also visited USC, Cal Poly SLO, and Berkeley earlier on. </p>
<p>He spent a lot of time in the studios at Syracuse, RPI, and Cornell, and met some nice, high performing, and very passionate kids at all of them. At Cornell, we even got to see a series of 1st year “crits” - the review process where the students get feedback on the current stage of their design projects.</p>
<p>My wife is an architect, and her impression was that Cornell’s 1st years were doing very advanced work.</p>
<p>In addition to input from mom, our son attended a summer program at Cal Poly SLO, so he has a solid understanding of the time commitment and late nights that go with his chosen major. However, as I understand it, all of that is fun and comes with a high level of camaraderie - if it’s your passion.</p>
<p>Our son has generous scholarship offers from USC, RPI, and Syracuse, but the studios, the shop, and the overall environment at Cornell are a big notch above. I believe Cornell firmly became his top choice based on his visit, but it’s not for sure yet. There’s a financial delta to go to Cornell, and it’s a visible blip on our financial radar, but we have ability to do it. He’ll make his choice over the coming weekend. </p>
<p>Your daughter?</p>
<p>Interested_Mom: My cousin’s D is a second year architecture student at Cornell. I think she really likes it. She did their summer program and then was accepted ED so she really didn’t look at any other programs (why bother when you got into #1!). I know there are the really late nights and all-nighters that I think come with any arch program. Sometimes her mom said she can’t speak to her because she is so busy, but I think that was expected. When we visited in the fall, we had a really good time and got to speak to many of the current students who all seemed to like what they were doing. She was able to spend a decent amount of time with us one day, but then was really busy the next so we didn’t really see her. Her mom did mention to me when we were going to look at Cornell that “Ithaca is a really small town” so I think there is some isolation factor.</p>
<p>The only negative comment I heard was that the professors seemed to talk to the students more during the summer program than once they were full time arch students, so I’m not sure if that is indicative of the college itself or just those individual perceptions. I know when my S attended Cal Poly summer program they stressed how friendly the professors were with the students unlike “east coast” schools.</p>
<p>My S is opting to go the 4+2 route instead of 5 year BArch so that he would have the time to explore other areas of interest as we found the BArch programs are fairly intense and the inflexible schedules. We had that in HS with the IB program so even though he knows he wants to pursue architecture I didn’t want him to be closed off to other options related to the field. We had done a complete 180 from the beginning of our college search, after talking to many professionals, students, and reading comments on CC, so I can only imagine where we will end up in another 4 years. Time will tell.</p>
<p>Ultimately I think you need to just find the best overall fit that you think your student will thrive in. For us, many of the programs were across the country and as a mom I was concerned about the late night stress, and being so far away, that I wouldn’t be able to get a good “read” on how he was feeling, so that also became part of our decision. My S has always created his own stress and wouldn’t want to worry us, so definitely a factor for us.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Hi, Can anyone give insight into the study abroad programs at Cornell. I understand the language requirement for non English speaking travel. If you go during the school year, does your Cornell tuition pay for the study abroad tuition? Does Cornell help with housing, etc?</p>
<p>What experiences has anyone had?</p>
<p>Thanks,</p>
<p>Thanks eetrojan and donotstress. Final decision was Cornell - and we are all excited - I think it is truly the best fit.</p>