I have been admitted to Cornell (CALS) and MIT, intending to major in environmental engineering. I am a NY resident so Cornell would probably be cheaper, but MIT is better engineering overall. What are your thoughts? Would I be turning down huge opportunities in the engineering world not going to MIT?
I’m a Cornell alumnus, and a former engineer. Normally, with almost any other choices, I would be here reflecting on the differences and pros/cons of the schools at issue.
But to me- and maybe that’s just me- MIT is special.
Will it matter in the long run? Who can say.
You will have a lot of the same opportunities coming from Cornell.
My first engineering job I worked closely with a fellow new hire who was from MIT. Same job, essentially.
Later on when I worked on Wall Street we had people from both schools. Though MIT was more highly represented.
In the long run what you can do is more important than where you went to school.
There are various other differences of course. Not-charming city school vs. pastoral college campus.
Academically Cornell is not summer camp but MIT will be tougher.
You would not be crazy to choose Cornell.
But if you can swing it- both financially and academically- I would tend to recommend MIT.
Thank you so much for your response and advice! Just wondering, you said you attended Cornell, but would recommend MIT… did you not fully enjoy your Cornell experience? Was there anything in particular you didn’t like or would have liked changed?
MIT is truly an engineering powerhouse. However, you should carefully evaluate the breadth and depth of its environmental science program relative to Cornell CALS. For your specific interests, CALS may be superior.
re #2:
All schools have their better and less better points. Cornell is no exception. Neither is MIT.
My tendency to recommend MIT over Cornell in this case is not due to any shortcoming I experienced at Cornell.
In my mind, Cornell has among the leading engineering programs in the country, variously rated #6-#10 over time, depending on the year. But MIT is THE best, the gold standard, #1. To get into and out of Cornell engineering is nothing to sneeze at. To get into, and out of, MIT is unambiguously the mark of excellence, and brilliance. It is on its own level. (ok maybe Stanford and Cal Tech can perch there too).
As a graduate of Cornell, people who dont already know you, but know that you graduated from there(eg reading your resume, your bio at a conference, etc) will presume you are really smart. As a graduate of MIT, people who don’t know you will presume you are brilliant. If you are, in fact, that brilliant, there is nothing wrong with being “branded” accordingly. It can be helpful for getting future opportunities.
If you want to investigate Cornell strengths & weaknesses further, on another recent CC thread I provided links to some old CC threads where these were discussed. None of those played any part in this recommendation though.
You’d have to check whether the same sort of threads exist for MIT, I wouldn’t know. But off the top of my head:
- MIT is more urban and not at all pastoral setting,
-Ugly buildings IMO,
-less diverse program of studies, and entrance standards, result in less diverse types of fellow students and activities, in all likelihood
-much more demanding/ higher level studies means potentially brutal to get through;
-social relationship with Wellesley and other schools that seems weird to me (but perhaps that’s more an issue for Wellesley students). - is near Boston, for better and for worse, depending on the evaluator. My D2 preferred a campus based experience to an urban one (but it wasn’t MIT)
- I’ve read someplace that their program pushes depth/ research at the expense of breadth; the case cited was one can graduate with a biology degree without so much as taking a single botany course.
Don’t know how much is true though, I didn’t go there.
Now to directly answer your question in #2:
I would have enjoyed Cornell more if I was academically more capable to handle the demanding major I chose. I didn’t like that I could not succeed more academically. If I could change something, I would waive a wand and give younger me better study habits and more intelligence. It would have been worse if I had been at MIT though.