<p>I am torn between these two great schools. I have visited both and will visit both again during Dimension and Cornell Days. I hope to get some advice from others as well. </p>
<p>I love how Cornell has so many majors and you can literally take any classes you like. The university itself is like a city, and it is VERY well-known internationally. But I'm kind of worried about the location. It's very far from the major cities in my perspective (since I live near the city) so it kind of feel "confined."</p>
<p>I love Dartmouth's lintimate Hanover feeling and its emphasis on undergraduate education. However, compared with Cornell it is less well-known internationally. Since I may work internationally, I feel like that Cornell may be better in that aspect... but I really like the little town warmth and its proximity to Boston, MA.</p>
<p>Cornell runs a bus service to NYC a few times a day, so you could still have the access to the big city that you desire. It is a four and a half hour drive, but that is only a few hours more than the Dartmouth to Boston commute.</p>
<p>i see... i guess i can go to NYC with not much problem. How about prestige/campus life in general? Do you think Cornell is better than Dartmouth?</p>
<p>my friend got into dart and i got into cornell. for pre-med (what he's planning to do) dartmouth's prestige in the states is DEFINITELY higher than cornell's. other than that I believe overall dartmouth's undergrad is more prestigious, but cornell is more well reputed and known given its graduate research and the sheer size of its population.</p>
<p>dartmouth - partying, close-knit, drinking, laid-back, lots of worldwide trips, and active in camping/hiking/outdoor sports (Especially skiing/snowboarding/winter sports)</p>
<p>cornell - staying inside during winter time (which is like 6 months), studying, greek life (28% of population), FOOOOOOD, more... spread out</p>
<p>both has cold winters. COLD. COLD. COLD. WINTERS.</p>
<p>Orange, what is your major? If it is anything science or engineering related, I would definitely go to Cornell. If it's arts or English, harder to say cus I'm not an English major but probably Dartmouth. If you are premed, I'd go to Cornell because it's the top third feeder school into med school. There's more undergrad research opportunities here.</p>
<p>I think I would go into science and engineering. I may also want to go to law school after I graduate. Is it very hard to transfter from CAS to engineering/ILR if I change my major? How are the workloads at Cornell and Dartmouth? Is Cornell truly "the hardest Ivy to get out of?" If say, I end up having a 3.5 GPA at Cornell, what kind of graduate school can I get into?</p>
<p>orange i would go to cornell because dartmouth isn't known for science. transferring within cornell is relatively easy. you need to fill out this simple application and have a minimum gpa. if you already know that you want to transfer, it's wise to sign up for a few of the courses in the college to which you want to transfer during your first year. in terms of gpa, it's all relative. you don't really have to worry about it because schools know that cornell is hard so you wouldn't necessarily have to get a 4.0 to go to the best schools.</p>
<p>Well, it said in that packet i got, that Cornell has a 88% acceptance rate to at least one med school for people with a 3.4+ gpa and a 90% acceptance rate to law school.</p>
<p>I posted the same question on the Dartmouth forum and got this answer... I'm sure the opinion of the poster is probably somewhat biases, but this kind of made me scared:</p>
<p>"Umm... here's some background. I come from a pretty well-off family. When I applied to college, I didn't even fill out the FAFSA form because I knew there was no way I'd get financial aid.</p>
<p>Having said that, when the conversation came up about applying to Cornell, my parents laughed and said that they didn't want to waste the $60 on application fees. I don't get the point of Cornell - it has by far the least prestige of any of the Ivy league schools. Additionally, I hear it's also the toughest. They don't grade inflate, meaning you have to work even harder: you need to get better grades at a worse institution than most of your peers. It's kind of a mirror image of Harvard, really. Harvard's the most famous, potentially easiest of the Ivies. Cornell is just a really raw deal.</p>
<p>Besides, what you're ultimately going to is a state school anyway. Except you're paying Ivy league college dues to be there. If you're thinking about graduate school of any kind (law, med, business, academics), then in my mind, there's only one statistic that should interest you about a college: placement. How much easier does the school you're going to for undergrad make it to get into a top grad school? Well, there's a study done on this:</p>
<p>The Wall Street Journal ranks Dartmouth at #7 and Cornell at #25, making it both the bottom of the Ivy league and behind such non-Ivies as UChicago, Pomona, Georgetown, and Northwestern. Ivy League? In name only."</p>
<p>My response to the guy on the Darthmouth board:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>How can a school have so little prestige and yet be so competitive, as described by the poster? If it had no prestige, competitive applicants wouldn't come and then it'd be pretty easy to get a good gpa since classes are graded on curves. So that point is moot. </p></li>
<li><p>You pay the ivy league dues because it's an ivy league school. Enough said.</p></li>
<li><p>The wall street journal ranking only considered the students at their "top 5" medical, law and grad schools, much too small a sample to be very useful. Cornell has a 90% acceptance rate to law school, and 88% to at least one med school for students with a 3.4+ gpa; sounds like a good deal to me.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Also, Cornell can be much more pre-professional if you want it to be. Cornell grad's that do well often don't even need to apply for grad school, because they get good jobs right out of college. Dartmouth is a great school too, but it's much more like a liberal arts college.</p>
<p>That guy who posted that stuff bashing Cornell was just being stupid and arrogant. Cornell is extremely prestigious, it's an ivy, and that guy even contradicted himself throughout his post.</p>
<p>He said, "Besides, what you're ultimately going to is a state school anyway. Except you're paying Ivy league college dues to be there." Yet he also says "Additionally, I hear it's also the toughest."......</p>
<p>Really, take what the guy said with a grain of salt. I assumed he is at/going to dartmouth and is just in a school spirited/bashing mode.</p>
<p>Wooow I don't even know how to respond to that! Just wow...</p>
<p>First of all Cornell has a great reputation. Internationally I heard people don't even know what Brown and Dartmouth is but know perfectly well what Cornell is. Also Cornell has almost a quarter of a million living alumni which is a GIANT alumni base of all Ivy League educated people who probably work amazing jobs. You could benefit so much from that kind of network! </p>
<p>Cornell doesn't have rampant deflation...the average class grades are pretty...well normal. </p>
<p>Cornell also has a GREAT reputation for grad and law schools. Cite the posts above...</p>
<p>Cornell is an absolutely amazing school and to say that graduate schools won't know that it is a great school with brilliant people who work hard is just...idiotic. How could it be a great school but people don't know that it is? If his dad knew it is great then I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that grad school recruiters will too...oy veh!</p>
<p>We don't have to bash Dartmouth to tell u how great Cornell is and that should mean something. All we are doing is giving u stats and facts. Man that kid is annoying lol.</p>
<p>In reply, I left this post on the Dartmouth board:</p>
<p>I transferred from Dartmouth into Cornell. For me, Cornell has everything Darmouth had but much more of it; do a search of my previous posts for more details. This is <em>one</em> person's experience, of course, but let me say this to "Half<em>Baked": Never has there been a more appropriate screen name for someone on CC. Whenever I see a post like this, there are ulterior motives behind it. That entire post is total absurdity. I can give you fifty rankings where Cornell is ahead of Dartmouth, then where does it leave the OP? Just as much in the dark as where he/she started. Perhaps Half</em>Baked was rejected by Cornell. Such posts are, nearly always, cleverly fabricated to assuage the poster's bruised ego.</p>