<p>I’m a current Cornell student, and while I can’t speak much about Duke/Dartmouth, I can hopefully shed light on a few of the issues you bring up.</p>
<p>Disclaimer: I go to Cornell and I love it here, so maybe if you asked someone that hates it you’ll get another answer. For further reference I’m a freshman in Arts and Sciences majoring in Economics.</p>
<p>Answer for 1, 4, and 5: Cornell gets a lot of flack for being a “depressing suicide school” – primarily due to a string of 6 suicides that occurred within a year back in 2010 (not all of them were Cornell students and/or undergrads) and this has stuck with its reputation. Lots of schools experience random occurrences of strings of suicides that happen on and off. UPenn is experiencing this right now with something like 3 suicides within a few months. MIT, in fact, remains at the top of most suicides per 100,000 student years if you look at the past half century in records (source: <a href=“http://web.mit.edu/~sdavies/www/mit-suicides/”>http://web.mit.edu/~sdavies/www/mit-suicides/</a>)</p>
<p>From my experience here, the people that seem to be the most cutthroat and the ones that are being the most challenged are the engineers. I don’t think this is particularly unique to Cornell, but the thing is that most Ivies don’t have engineering programs (especially ones that are in the top 10 in the country) and that results in a lot VERY competitive students going to study engineering at Cornell. Depending on what you want to study (for example, if you’re looking into the sciences or liberal arts) I would be very surprised if the level of challenge was significantly different from places like Duke or Dartmouth. Feel free to check out <a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com”>www.gradeinflation.com</a> for some average GPA figures at these schools. All 3 of these schools have average GPAs somewhere around the 3.40 area.</p>
<p>So what is the vibe like at Cornell? There’s always a big event going on around campus and there are obviously a lot of parties going on. It’s a given for any college that you go to that you need to get involved in something because that’s how you get the most of a community feeling. I would say that in general, Cornell students have a very strong community, especially because Ithaca is a very small-town and there is a strong community identity going on with that.</p>
<p>I don’t see any reason for why Cornell students would be less happy than any Duke or Dartmouth student. All 3 schools are prestigious research institutions and as a result of that, they will be more challenging than your average state school or community college. At the end of the day, college is comprised of school, socializing, and sleep and that goes for nearly every college student.</p>
<p>The one thing I would say is that Duke definitely has more of a “buzz” going on around campus especially during sports season because they have relatively great sports programs compared with Cornell and Dartmouth. That being said, the hockey games at Cornell are very popular once the season starts and there is definitely a lot more spirit that is brought to the campus during hockey season.</p>
<p>This brings me to question 3: Sports are definitely big at Duke as I have said earlier. That being said, greek life at Cornell isn’t THAT big. About a third of the student body is involved in greek life and that means the vast majority of Cornell students are not in greek life and there are plenty of other social events that are not related to frats. However, if you do want to be involved in greek life, this 1/3 gives enough of a prevalence of greek life for you to enjoy it. I’m skeptical, however, as to how long greek life will last at CU because of many initiatives administration has made to change greek life. We’ll see what happens in the future. </p>
<p>When people aren’t studying or sleeping, there are obviously parties that are happening every weekend. The music scene is pretty big here as well. A Capella groups, choirs, orchestras, bands etc. Ithaca has a lot of great local artists as well. Lots of people also love to go downtown, go out to eat, explore the gorges, etc. The farmers market in ithaca is absolutely fantastic. The mall up north is pretty good and can definitely satisfy any of your shopping needs. All-in-all, it’s pretty standard college stuff. Again, i can’t stress enough, GET INVOLVED. Whatever club you choose, you WILL make friends through it and find things to do in your spare time (if you’re not doing whatever that club requires you to do).</p>
<p>Finally, question 2: Cornell definitely gets the leg up engineering, computer science, math, etc. If that’s what you’re looking into studying, you cannot go wrong with Cornell. I can’t speak much as to the details of why these programs are good, but some research online will provide an answer. I did recently read an article that ranked Cornell #3 in schools to go to if you want to become a software developer. </p>
<p>I know that Duke is pretty big in the life sciences and anything polisci/government related studies. Dartmouth is huge in the liberal arts and social sciences (econ, polisci, history, psych, etc). </p>
<p>Hope this helps and feel free to ask me anything else!</p>