<p>Today, to my great and heart-pounding surprise, I received a letter from Cornell explaining,essentially, that I was accepted to the College of Arts and Sciences. Good News. Anyways, I have forever been a fan of the U of C and the interesting approach they take towards learning: a kind of renassiance. I intend to major in mathematics and was wondering how the two school stack up. I haven't been admitted to U of C, this is a hypothetical scenario in case i get accepted. I was wondering how the two institutions compare in mathematical studies, I plan on studying pure mathematics, anything more specific than that is beyond my current plane of understanding of mathematics.
Thank you for the input!</p>
<p>Cornell is a great school and graduate research rankings may not be a perfect yardstick, but the last NRC ratings ranked Chicago 5th nationally in Math and Cornell 15th.</p>
<p>[NRC</a> Rankings in Each of 41 Areas](<a href=“http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41.html#area31]NRC”>http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41.html#area31)</p>
<p>It wasn’t clear to me, but is this NRC report from 1995? What’s its date?</p>
<p>Cornell is a fantastic school and I congratulate you on your admission.</p>
<p>I know nothing about Cornell’s pure math department, but if you’re even mildly curious about engineering, keep in mind that Cornell has one of the best programs in the world.</p>
<p>Math is one of Chicago’s most popular majors, according to the admissions website:
[University</a> of Chicago College Admissions | Facts and Figures](<a href=“http://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/facts/]University”>http://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/facts/)</p>
<p>If you have more specific questions about Chicago, I’d be happy to answer them to help you draw out your own Cornell/Chicago map.</p>
<p>In the meantime, congratulations again!!</p>
<p>Parent of a first-year math major here. There are a few Chicago threads relating to math. S1 also applied to Cornell, but felt Chicago was stronger for what he wants.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/551878-math-uchicago.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-chicago/551878-math-uchicago.html</a>
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/630081-strong-undergrad-math-departments.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/630081-strong-undergrad-math-departments.html</a></p>
<p>You’re right; the NRC rankings are dated. A new one is due imminently. Good luck with your college choices!</p>
<p>A quick word on the quality of the Mathematics instruction at Chicago. Some moons ago I was enrolled in an introductory calculus course to be taught by a LE Dickson postdoc instructor called Peter Jones. On the first day of class, another young postdoc walked in and said the class was indeed math whatever but that he was regrettably not Peter Jones. He then proceeded to teach very well indeed for three quarters of Calculus and a further two of Analysis. In a way, though, it was a shame because of what might have been-Mr. Jones last I looked was the Chairman of the Math department at a wanna be institution in New Haven, and it would have been really neat for a middle-aged salesman to look back (pearls before swine etc.) and say he taught me.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the second postdoc was Robert J. Zimmer.</p>
<p>Both schools will offer unlimited high quality opportunitities in math. Trying to differentiate subtle differences in quality at the undergrad level is splitting hairs. Your prospective major should not be a significant determinant here.</p>
<p>Think about the core vs. more flexible grad requirements (especially important if interested in double majoring), rural Ithaca vs. urban South Side Chicago, a more intellectual vibe that dominates life at Chicago vs. a more balanced college experience at Cornell.</p>
<p>A cousin of mine was an undergraduate physics major at Chicago and got his math PhD at Cornell (maybe three years ago). Based on what he told me, my impression is that Cornell is a half-step down from Chicago in math prestige, but still considered a very good math department. Certainly, for undergraduates, unless you have essentially already completed standard college math, it would be hard, maybe impossible, to tell the difference between the departments. Both colleges have plenty of students interested in math.</p>
<p>My cousin felt very ambivalent about Chicago. He liked the education, but was a small-town boy who felt intimidated by Chicago’s urban setting, and his experience was a testament to why the University has been trying to improve the quality of undergraduate life. He adored Cornell – just loved everything about it, from the program to the town to the abundant opportunities to do things he liked like rock climbing, mountain biking, punk shows.</p>
<p>JHS,
your post could really help me if I am accepted by both UC and Cornell, thanks</p>
<p>Here’s my two cents, fwiw…</p>
<p>My father taught at Cornell and I grew up in Ithaca and then went to college at UChicago. To put it briefly, the schools represent two vastly different approaches to higher education.</p>
<p>Cornell is dominated by its large undergrad system. The gap between the varsity athletes/facilities and the student body at large is similar to those on a Div I campus. The school is physically huge and sprawls over acres and acres of beautiful rural countryside. Within the undergrad system itself, you have different schools and hierarchies co-existing withing the university. If it sounds huge, that’s because it is. Everything about Cornell is large; the football stadium is large, the Greek system is huge, the lecture classes can number in the hundreds and there are more than 13,000 undergrads on campus.</p>
<p>UChicago is the opposite in this regard. It has a relatively small college (about 30% the size of Cornell) surrounded by a much larger graduate division. There are no separate schools within the college. There is only the undergraduate College. The classes are small, the athletic facilities are relatively modest and the campus is a fraction of the geographic size of Cornell. Cornell has a real marching band for its football team while U of C, at least when I was there, had an 8’ long paper mache kazoo that volunteers would carry about the field. And yes, anyone could bring their own kazoo and join in.</p>
<p>In many regards, one could argue that Cornell is a Div I school on academic steroids. It has very strong programs, a highly selective admissions process and top notch faculty. Its social life, and school structure and culture, however, couldn’t be more different from UChicago’s.</p>
<p>Choose carefully and good luck!</p>
<p>1300 (approx. UChicago class size) / 3100 (approx. Cornell class size) = 42% > 30%.</p>
<p>According to wikipedia, the main Cornell campus is about 3 sq. km. I’m not certain the area in which the Chicago campus falls is much smaller. The difference is that at Cornell everything in that area is “campus”, and it’s very physically distinguishable from the rest of Ithaca, whereas at the University of Chicago there’s a lot of Hyde Park (and a bit of Chicago itself) interwoven with the University of Chicago buildings. If you think of the Chicago campus as everything between Washington Park and Blackstone, and 54th and 61st, the campus really isn’t so much less vast than Cornell. But, yes, it feels very different. And Cornell is much more monumental – the buildings are huge and far apart, and the whole university perches at the top of a huge hill.</p>
<p>Hi JHS,</p>
<p>Because of the all the different schools that make up the undergraduate program at Cornell, its hard to get an accurate count of college students there. Some sites, like Wikipedia, show that Cornell has “more than 13,000”. The Businessweek site at [Cornell</a> University: Undergraduate Profile ? BusinessWeek](<a href=“Bloomberg Businessweek - Bloomberg”>Bloomberg Businessweek - Bloomberg) states that there are more than 20,000 undergrads enrolled at Cornell for 2008/2009. </p>
<p>In any case, suffice to say that the school is significantly larger than UChicago in terms of student population. Additionally, if you count all the land that is owned by Cornell through its ag school, then the actual geography of the school expands enormously. Like you say, it really is a ginormous, monumental campus.</p>
<p>According to the Cornell website, there are about 13,500 undergrads on campus:</p>
<p>[Cornell</a> University - Facts about Cornell - Statistics](<a href=“University Factbook - Institutional Research & Planning”>University Factbook - Institutional Research & Planning)</p>
<p>Chicago now, through recent expansion, has about 5000 undergrads. So Chicago is about 36-37% the size of Cornell. </p>
<p>I used to live not far from Ithaca, and visited numerous times. I agree wholeheartedly with tk89 - everything about Cornell just screams BIG. The frat scene is big, there are tons of D1 sports, all sorts of different schools (ag school, hotel school, lib arts college, ILR, etc.), big classes, etc. It’s a great school, but just totally different from Chicago. Some of my friends there felt a little anonymous and sort of just “in the crowd” at Cornell, whereas Chicago is just necessarily more of an intimate environment. Obviously, at Chicago, you won’t ever get thousands of people at a basketball game or an ice hockey game.</p>
<p>They are just two very, very different schools. As posters above have said, choose carefully.</p>
<p>JHS and Cue7,</p>
<p>I realize that the numbers for Cornell undergrads that I was referring to were aggregate figures for all students, not just undergrads. My apologies!</p>
<p>Apropos nothing in particular, when I was growing up in Ithaca, individual students seemed really big, too, so I’ll forever think of Cornell students being 8ft tall and having beards.</p>
<p>I have fond memories from childhood of ambushing Cornell students with snowballs as they walked home alone, for miles, in the dark, in the cold. That is, until that one night one really fast dude chased us down and stuffed snow down our shirts. Bas*ard.</p>
<p>My cornell interviewer did pure math at cornell, and said it was actually not that demanding…could be she was just a genius though :P</p>
<p>us. what other reason do you need for chicago?</p>
<p>Update: Accepted to University of Chicago!!! I’m pretty happy, i was so nervous upon entering my account login. Now i have such a tough decision. By the way, just how generous is the financial aid at University of Chicago??</p>
<p>I think you’ll have a better picture when you compare Cornell and Chicago side by side with their offers for you.</p>
<p>congrats. If I were you I would try to do overnights at both schools, grill kids there about what the experience living and learning as a student in each setting is really like.</p>
<p>And go where you think you seem most likely to thrive, in all respects.</p>
<p>finances permitting, of course.</p>
<p>Ok…so I have a question.
I got Accepted to Cornell ILR and also to University of Chicago. I love both schools and I will go visit them both in April thanks to Multicultural Recruitment Department.
However, all My financial aid documents were late for both schools…late as in I faxed them yesterday. FAFSA and CSS Profile on time though. So I’m scared, but I’m praying they will have more than enough for me 
Major Wise U of C International Relations, Cornell Industrial and Labor Relations
Thanks all posts help!!</p>