<p>Getting a dual-degree between Engineering and A&S is VERY possible at Cornell.</p>
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<p>hmm ... I know 25 years ago it was not very easy. I checked out Engineering and Math and to graduate in 4 years would require course overloads over the typical engineering load (typical being 5 courses at a time). That said I did not have any AP credit and checked this out early in my sophomore year ... I guess with a bunch of AP credits and planning the double major from the get-go it may be able to be done with a typical case load. Anything can be done but I would think the requirments of the two schools are going to take away virtually all the flexibility in your schedule (for example, needing to take multiple language classes to meet the CAS requirements will chew up your "free" electives in the engineering school (never mind the PolySci courses you need)).</p>
<p>As a Cornell engineering junior, I can honestly tell you that it would close to impossible to graduate with a government and a mechanical engineering degree in four years. First of all, if you are trying to enter Cornell from A&S and then apply for the dual-degree program, you would have to do well enough in all the engineering general courses. One thing you probably should know is that if you are doing gov&MechE double major at Cornell, you need to satisfy all the graduation requirements from BOTH A&S and COE. Secondly, I am not sure if apply to Cornell through A&S is the best idea for you since you sounded like engineering is your thing. Yes, A&S has lower SAT score than COE. However, COE's acceptance rate is around 30%, which is a lot higher than A&S'. If you have done a lot of engineering/science related stuff in high school, your chance of getting into COE at Cornell should be much higher than your chance of getting into A&S. If you are determined to apply to Cornell through A&S, you better make yourself well-rounded on your essays. By the way, I don't know why you would think your chance of getting into Columbia is slim. One of my closest friends and three other kids from my high school got into Columbia SEAS three years ago, but they were all rejected by Cornell's COE. If I remember correctly, Columbia SEAS has pretty high acceptance rate. I don't know much about Penn, even though my uncle graduated from Penn. However, I can tell you that Penn's mechanical engineering department is no way near Cornell's mechanical engineering. If you enjoy making robots or race cars, Cornell's mechanical engineering will provide you the opportunity to compete in the highest collegiate level. About Northwestern, I actually know a little about it. NU has an excellent MSE program and a great nanotechnology center. However, I don't think its mechanical engineering is as good as Cornell's. Most of the NU students I met do not have the "we are the best at this and that" mentality, but a lot of them do consider themselves better than students from universities beside HYP. Finally, I just want to let you know that a dual-degree isn't really a big deal. It might look pretty impressive on your diploma, but once you get into the real world people really don't care about how many bachelor degrees you have or how many majors you had. If your career goal is to become a mechanical engineer, then political science would not help you get a better job than someone with just a mechanical engineering degree. If you just want to learn as much about political science as possible, then you can take all your liberal arts requirement and electives from the polisci department. You don't really need to have a major to prove anything. Your transcript will speak for you. On the other hand, if you want to be a political consultant or go on to law school, then there's really no need for you to endure miserable course load of being an engineering student. I know it's very tempting to have many majors, but it is very difficult to satisfy all the requirements for two majors in a span of four years.</p>
<p>Thank you all for your help, but i wanna clear a few things up. My passion is poly sci/gov, but i enjoy mechanical/aerospace engineering a lot. I'm not positive about my immediate future, but it will probably be in politics. That being said, I still want a good education in both majors, say what you will about that decision. I applied to Cornell CAS because I was under the impression that Cornell Engineering was the hardest college at Cornell to get into??? Is this right? I'm getting kinda worried now... I know double-majoring might take a little more than four years, even with my AP credits. Do any of you guys know how much they will charge if you stay an extra semester or quarter into ur fifth year to complete requirements for a major?</p>
<p>Also, I applied to 5 year program between Fu/Columbia College, but I applied directly to Columbia College, which makes it a little harder for me.</p>
<p>I still wanna make sure Cornell CAS is easier to get into than college of engineering. I checked on Cornell engineering website, and in class of 2008 admissions, they accepted almost 16%....Anybody have class of 2008 admit rate for CAS?</p>
<p>If you really think government is your passion and want to go to a top notch law school in the future, then I guess A&S is right for you. However, I would strongly recommend you not to get too involve with engineering. Cornell engineering classes are known for making students GPA suffer. Law schools are infamous for being GPA and LSAT whores, a 3.5 overall GPA for MechE&Gov double major is not nearly as good as a 3.8 overall GPA for Gov major in eyes of law school admission officers.<br>
I believe you interpreted the wrong acceptance rate number from the engineering website. 16% is way to low for any engineering school's acceptance rate (maybe except Caltech). I think I know where you got that number from. You probably got that number by dividing the class size by the number of applicantion. You have to know that the class size is smaller than number of people who got accepted. I believe for class of 2006, COE has about 31 or 32% acceptance rate. The acceptance rate number should be lower for your class, but I don't think it can go lower than 27 or 28%. On the other hand, A&S' acceptance rate is always around the low 20s and mid 20s.<br>
Regardless to the acceptance rate and average SAT, there's really no way to tell which one is harder to get in. In the end it all depends on the kind of person you are. If you have done lots of engineering/science related stuff in high school, then your chance of getting into COE is probably better. On the other hand, if took lots AP literature/social science/language courses in high school and participated in student gov..etc, then it's probably easier for you to get into A&S.
About the financial concern, if you take courses over the summer, I believe it's about 720 dollars per credit.</p>
<p>I just found these number for the Cornell facts:</p>
<p>Class of 2008</p>
<p>Acceptance rate:</p>
<p>College of Arts&Sciences = 25.4%
College of Engineering = 37.2%
College of Agriculture and Life Sciences = 28.7%
College of Human Ecology = 35.1%
School of Industrial and Labor Relations = 32.1%
College of Architecture, Arts and Planning = 22.3%
School of Hotel Adminstration = 25.8%</p>
<p>Major with the lowest acceptance rate: Applied Economics and Management = 18%</p>
<p>College of Engineering has the highest acceptance rate, and it also has the highest overall SAT score (I believe it's up to 1430-1440 now)<br>
College of Arts and Sciences has the second lowest acceptance rate, and it has the second highest SAT score (somewhere around 1400-1410)
In general, College of Engineering has much higher acceptance rate than College of Arts and Sciences, because there are less people applying. The applicant pool for COE is usually more self selected than A&S'. Thus, COE has higher SAT average than A&S (exactly same thing for Columbia).
Overall, numbers really don't mean much. Cornell really looks at applicants' personal statement and ECs, so you really can't tell which college is easier to get in based on numbers. For the class of 2008, I believe Cornell had more students enrolling than expected, so the acceptance rate should go down for teh class of 2009.</p>
<p>thx ecc. It's just hard for me to disregard one of my two majors, even though at this point it looks like im leaning more toward politics/public service. And yeah, im not sure bout law school yet, but I was thinking bout the difficulty of cornell engineering classes, and what effect they might have. Well, every school I applied to I declared engineering, except cornell, so we'll have to see how this plays out...</p>
<p>and one more question....if class size divided by applicants doesn't give you acceptance rate into the college, then how do they calculate it? I was under the impression that that was how u calculated it...</p>
<p>To calculate the acceptance rate you have to divide the number of students accepted by the number of applicants. Yield rate on the other hand is a number that tells you how many students who are accepted decide to enroll (class size/# of accepted applicants). Since the yield rate is never 1, you will never have an acceptance rate that's class size divided by number of appications.</p>
<p>oh yeah...forgot about that....dammit.....maybe i should have applied as eng. to cornell.....but then again, it's easier for me to write about politics, and I did a little...do you know how generous cornell is with financial aid?</p>
<p>Class size is made up of the enrolled population and not the accepted population so you can't divide class size by no. of applicants to get acceptance rates.</p>
<p>LoserKev, you're not stupid, and you're not a loser.
I almost fell for that once.
Colleges tend to emphasize more on acceptance than enrollment. Most students always bust them, that's why.</p>
<p>Finaid, my package is pretty nice. Cornell is not known for giving out great package to everyone. They usually give out great package to people who really need finaid. If you are from a middle class family, you will probably have more loans than grants.</p>