<p>Cornell runs a bus to and from NYC every day. I chose Dartmouth over Cornell. I wish I hadn’t. My sister chose Cornell. Loves it! Pre-med there has great results. She has a friend who got into Harvard Med School from the Human Ecology division, which sounded crazy to me. Lots of great contacts are formed, and though it is a large Ivy, within each division there is “intimacy” of peers, professors, TA’s, etc. So it is the best of both worlds. And the food is so amazing there. They have their own dairy farm, ice cream, orchards. You will love it!</p>
<p>“Arrival time in NYC is approximately 4.5 hours after departure from Ithaca.” [url=<a href=“http://transportation.fs.cornell.edu/coach/schedule/default.cfm]Campus-to-Campus[/url”>http://transportation.fs.cornell.edu/coach/schedule/default.cfm]Campus-to-Campus[/url</a>] </p>
<p>I’d give the edge to Dartmouth on that one. :)</p>
<p>Ha, yeah. Boston is about 2.5 hours via Dartmouth Coach, which runs something like seven times per day.</p>
<p>It’s been brought up here that at Dartmouth you can choose any major whereas at Cornell you have to ask approval to switch colleges. Well, technically that’s true, but if you’re in Arts and Sciences at Cornell (which is the equivalent of Dartmouth’s undergrad program), you have access to any major in Arts you want (basically all of the ones Dartmouth offers, and more). If you’re not in Arts, you will need to ask “approval” - you just tell them you want to switch colleges, give them a short explanation as to why you want to switch, and they tell you that you can. But this approval process, which is easy, shouldn’t be seen as a negative; it gives you access to many more majors than Dartmouth would.</p>
<p>Can’t speak for Dartmouth as a premed school, but I can tell you that Cornell does quite well getting applicants into med school. Cornell sends more people to med school each year than any other university in the US (that was true as of my freshman year there, at least). I had lots of premed friends at Cornell, including myself, and we all got into med schools. More than that, most of us got into top med schools. That shouldn’t be your deciding factor, but it should be a good indication that you shouldn’t buy into the hype of Cornell being a grade-deflating pressure-cooker. </p>
<p>That said, you should go wherever you feel most at home. Going to one over the other will not give you any advantage in med school admissions.</p>
<p>P.S. Regarding the discussion on the previous page over which campus is prettier: I love Cornell, but my vote actually goes to Dartmouth on this one.</p>
<p>The statistics regarding Cornell (and likely any college, for that matter) and medical school acceptances are misleading. Most schools have pre-med advisors who strongly advise AGAINST applying to medical school when they think your chances of getting an acceptance letter are close to nil. And the introductory science courses at Cornell, particularly Chemistry, are notorious “weed-out” classes with grading done on a bell curve. (I know, because I used to be the Head TA for that course.) That means that when a substantial percentage of students get C’s, D’s and F’s in their freshmen year, the school is already “warning” that it might be time to consider another long-term goal. That substantially decreases the likelihood that a “poor-performing” Cornellian will even contemplate medical school, thereby increasing their “yield”.</p>
<p>Yea, but almost 30% of students get some sort of A (A-, A, or A+) in those “weed-out” classes. Plenty get in the B range. If you put in the time and effort, it’s not hard to be at the top of the curve and get good grades.</p>
<p>So I just came back from visiting Cornell/Cornell days. it might not have been the ideal weekend to visit since it was cold and rainy but the campus was very very beautiful. the food in the dining halls was also very good so the rankings are not wrong on those two factors. the campus also has a very vibrant life to it. there’s always something to do and college town is a very popular spot for students who want to go off campus. with that said, personally i felt that the campus was a bit disjointed and it might be a bit too big (for me personally). in addition, even though cornell has an amazing engineering program, i am not sure if i want to be an engineer but i would have to wait a year before doing internal transfer. overall, although i could tell it was an amazing school, i’m not sure if it’s the school for me.</p>