<p>I am trying to decide between Cornell and HMC. I originally applied for engineering but I am not sure I will stick with it. I have visited Mudd (I am from CA) and I really like the campus and the students. I have not been able to visit Cornell. Does anyone have any advice to help me decide? I would especially appreciate any information on the culture of Cornell.</p>
<p>[thread=648868]Life At Cornell: Traditions and General Social and Academic Life[/thread]</p>
<p>CayugaRed’s comments in the thread link above are hard to beat, along with many other excellent posts like Applejack’s.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd is small and excellent. If, however, you are looking for a school with a tremendous array of top-notch alternatives – along with a top-10 engineering college – then Cornell is hard to beat.</p>
<p>cornell just because it has alternatives if you decide againest engineering. it is also an ivy league with great oppurtunites</p>
<p>if you will stay in a field related to engineering (physics, bio, chem, math, cs) i would highly recommend mudd. else, if you are unsure about going into a STEMs field do not go to mudd.</p>
<p>IMO, if there’s a good alternative, one would not make a huge gamble by matriculating at a school they’ve never even visited; they could show up the first day and realize they hated it, for some reason that was not apparent on paper.</p>
<p>As for Mudd vs. Cornell this has been done a number of times now, do a search at each school’s subforum for the other school’s name and you will find the relevant threads.</p>
<p>But no point reading them now, you never even bothered to visit cornell so you are not going there, period. If you were seriously interested in entertaining going there you would have visited. You made your decision when you chose not to visit.</p>
<p>Good luck at Mudd.</p>
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<p>While I concur that in the best of all worlds it would be optimal to physically visit one’s collegiate choice, it is nevertheless not a viable option for all matriculates. For example, perhaps the majority of internationals from geographic locations like India, China, Korea, England, et cetera, did not visit prior to their freshman orientation. Why? For a number of good reasons: scheduling constraints due to demands of high school and extra curriculars, time, travel costs they cannot afford, distance, and so forth. These same variables could, in some cases, hold for someone like the OP whose family lives in California, which is 2,400 miles away. Furthermore, many examples can be found of students who physically walked a college campus before going there, who ultimately ended up being dissappointed by the place. Today there are collegiate websites filled with a tremendous wealth of data, there are many books discussing colleges in detail, there are friends and family who report on the schools, there are hi-def audio/visual virtual tours of the campuses, there are elaborate threads discussing and debating the schools, et cetera.</p>
<p>Still, I very much agree with Monydad that physically visiting the schools of one’s interest should be at the very top of the list of things to do for a prospective student, where feasible.</p>
<p>definitely agree with colm here…just because you dont visit the school doesnt mean its no longer a choice…i never visited cornell and applied ed, and got in. i hadnt ever been there, but that was basicallly the best choice i made and im definitely excited to go. just because you dont have a chance to visit doesnt mean you cant choose to go there, it just means you might or might not like it. theres always transfering after first year.</p>
<p>It is true sometimes people can’t visit due to reasons one can’t control, but more often than not it’s lack of interest. One thing to keep in mind is if you can’t afford to visit, it may not be the best fit. Sometimes FA would cover some traveling expense, but probably won’t be as often as one would like. </p>
<p>I hope OP is a senior in high school, and has not double deposited at those schools. I know there are quite a few kids who would love to get off the WL. You should hope Cornell doesn’t find out and decide to rescind the acceptance.</p>
<p>Visiting colleges takes up both money and time. Parents and students have to take off work, school, and family commitments and then pay to trek to various campuses. That’s assuming the parents are willing to help their kid visit colleges, which, unfortunately, is a problem in a lot of families. There is no way you can assume that just because OP couldn’t visit a school he applied to that he isn’t interested. In fact, you should assume that because of the very fact that he applied, he is interested in the school. You also can’t say that not being able to visit is indication that the school isn’t a good fit. Maybe the OP only liked one school in the northeast. It wouldn’t be prudent to pay for a plane ticket and hotel expenses (and taking off school in the middle of the year, along with any work or other commitments) for him and most likely his parents to go to a single school. </p>
<p>I’d argue that the concept of the college visit is overrated. I visited Cornell twice and my family got a completely different impression each time. Your post-visit attitude is affected by things like the tour guide, what was happening on campus on that specific day, and even factors like the weather. IMO, the internet is a far better college search tool as it gives a wide variety of opinions, perspectives, and facts about the schools regardless of the intangibles of the college visit.</p>
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<p>Perhaps, but if you’re within a day’s drive of the college in question, you should probably visit campus before you decide to matriculate. It’s the best way to get a prevailing sense of student culture and the campus experience.</p>
<p>If you’re coming from California and haven’t had the chance to visit Cornell, I don’t think we should hold that fact against the student.</p>