<p>Any opinions? I'm looking at everything from academics to environment to even athletics. I'm having a tough time deciding. Major is Electrical/Computer Engineering. Any help would be greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>Did you get off of the waitlist of both? You will here from me what many others here will say. Cornell Engineering is the better. That said, I am a physics major who is also looking into engineering. I had certainly heard of Northwestern, gotten their application, reviewed the school, and finally decided not to apply. Why? Because as far as science and engineering go, in my opinion, there are few schools with
A. Great Progarm in my major</p>
<p>B. Great other programs. (ie. easily preferred Cornell over UIUC, even though their engineering is on par.)</p>
<p>C. Great focus on undergraduates. Cornell is an undergraduate university (by the numbers).</p>
<p>Cornell had all three when others didn't. (At least the ones I got accepted to :)) </p>
<p>I really got the impression that research was very available to the undergraduates. Plus, the professors were out of this world nice and amazing. I saw a few in action and met with one in person. Teaching quality was incredible, and the professor I met with was busy, sure, but enjoyed spending an HOUR with just me trying to get me to get excited about physics (and ultimately Cornell).</p>
<p>To be honest, I am not too familiar with NU beyond what I have shared. All I know is that when I look at where engineering and physics professors graduated from, Cornell is a popular name. Northwestern's name doesn't come up as much in those fields.</p>
<p>Journalism, etc are another matter...</p>
<p>I don't have online access to 2006 ranking but I found 2004/2005/2006 ranking by googling one discipline at a time and I found that the two schools are fairly even though Cornell probably has slightly better reputation overall:</p>
<p>Aerospace (2005):
Cornell: 9th
Northwestern: NR (no aerospace major)</p>
<p>Biomedical (2004):
Cornell: 38th
Northwestern: 12th</p>
<p>Chemical (2005):
Cornell: 18th
Northwestern: 13th</p>
<p>Computer Engg
Cornell: 8th (2005)
Northwestern: 17th (2006) </p>
<p>Environmental (2005):
Cornell: 10th
Northwestern: 11th</p>
<p>Electrical: (2006)
Cornell: 9th
Northwestern: 20th</p>
<p>Industrial (2005)
Cornell: >33th (not found on the list)
Northwestern: 7th</p>
<p>Material Science (2006)
Cornell: >10th
Northwestern: 2nd</p>
<p>Mechanical (2006):
Cornell: 10th
Northwestern: 10th</p>
<p>So in EE/CompE, Cornell is clearly better. But Northwestern is better in quite a few disciplines despite what people say based on heresay.</p>
<p>First of all, Cornell's graduate industrial ranking for the 2006 USNews is 9th, not >33. Also, the graduate material science department is 7th. When you look at an engineering school's ranking, please refer to graduate level ranking. Undergraduate engineering ranking is just BS. Unless you go to a school like Cooper Union, undergraduate engineering ranking is irrelevant. An engineering school gets its reputation from the graduate division, not from the undergraduate division. By the way, have you heard of NRC's ranking? That is a better ranking on individual department's reputation and quality than USNews' overall rating.</p>
<p>Sorry my bad. For industrial, I was looking at the 2004 one
<a href="http://www.cs.jhu.edu/%7Enguyen/usnews/engsp08.php.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~nguyen/usnews/engsp08.php.htm</a>
and I couldn't find Cornell. Maybe it was new and Cornell wasn't in the survey or whatever.</p>
<p>So for industrial, Cornell is 9th and Northwestern is 4th in 2006.
For mat sci, I was meant to type >3rd. I couldn't find anything on 2004/2005, so I only managed to know what the top3 was for 2006.</p>
<p>I've seen NRC's rating but it was like 10 years old. Don't know if they have anything current.</p>
<p>Does anyone know about the resources at Cornell vs. Northwestern? I've visited Northwestern before and wasn't terribly impressed with what they had to offer. The library was beautiful, but I could only find one computer terminal center, and the university center (norris) is pretty bare too. The athletic center was the most impressive thing at Northwestern, but all in all it seemed like they relied heavily on Chicago. Not something I like. Cornell seems to be more dependent on itself. Is this assumption valid?</p>
<p>well, Cornell has to be more "dependent on itslef"...it's in the middle of nowhere</p>
<p>Cornell University Library is one of the twelve largest academic research libraries in the United States. Within its 20 unit libraries, holdings number more than 7 million volumes and 7 million microforms. CUL subscribes to nearly 65,000 journals and serial publications, and provides access to more than 100,000 networked databases and other electronic resources. More than 115,000 volumes are added to the Librarys collections each year.</p>
<p>There are 20 different libraries at Cornell (<a href="http://www.library.cornell.edu/library/libweb.html?section=library&URL=library/libweb.html)%5B/url%5D">http://www.library.cornell.edu/library/libweb.html?section=library&URL=library/libweb.html)</a>, with Uris, Olin, and Mann being the three largest. Uris is open 24 hours a day from Sunday to Friday. There are also two other 24 hours computer labs on campus. Once you are here, you will realize how important the quality of the library system is to your education; I never thought about it before ariving on campus. The amount of resources here is unbelievable. If you can't do your research at Cornell, you probably can't do it anywhere.</p>
<p>Does anyone have anything to say about job availability at Cornell vs. Northwestern? I've been assuming that Northwestern's proximity to Chicago helps with job recruitment. Is their situation much better than Cornell's? Is there a signficant problem to begin with? Once again, my major will most likely be EE.</p>
<p>delsvr, I don't know if Chicago will help you in finding jobs. But you don't have to worry about not being able to find a job as a Cornell ECE major. Top engineering or financial firms send tons of recruiters to Cornell every year just trying to get those ECE majors. If you have a company in your mind, you will find them recruiting at Cornell. There's no doubt about the quality of Cornell ECE in the industry. If you want to, you can do Co-op for Intel during your junior year.</p>