<p>Brooklynborndad suggested a thread for Cornell vs other places on a hypothetical list. Since a hypothetical list would not be a finalized set-in-stone thing, other posters should feel free to invite their own alternates for comparison. </p>
<p>Criteria: religious studies program (rules out most of NY publics)
+/- 300 mile radius from, say, Niagara Falls
potential for merit scholarships is a plus
student is male, and actually enjoyed reading and discussing Keats, Swift, etc.
not a urm, athlete, or uber-achiever</p>
<p>In no particular order, I'll start with Duquesne University. What say?</p>
<p>300 miles from Niagara Falls gives you a whole bunch of significant research universities to compare to Cornell without dipping into the Duquesne level or counting SUNYs:</p>
<p>University of Toronto
University of Michigan
Carnegie-Mellon University
Pitt
Penn State - University Park
Case Western Reserve
University of Rochester
Syracuse University (maybe)
Bucknell University</p>
<p>Then you have LACs – Hamilton, Colgate, Vassar, Oberlin, Kenyon, Dickinson, Williams (may be a little beyond the 300-mile line)</p>
<p>sylvan…how could you compare Cornell to other schools if one of the criteria in the comparisomn is not an “uber-achiever”?</p>
<p>JHS…I respectfully disagree with a minimum of 6 schools on your list. Some of the schools mentioned are in no way comparable to Cornell. Have you spent any time on the campus, research facilities, labs, or classrooms in the above schools? You are making an assumption based upon what?</p>
<p>sylvan…It depends on what an “uber achiever means” if you are talking about the upper levels of GPA, board scores and EC’s than yes Cornell would be considered a school of uber achievers if you want to use that term.</p>
<p>Sylvan – it depends on your definition of “uber-achiever.”</p>
<p>It also depends on what program you’re in within Cornell. Cornell students themselves say that there are clear differences in the difficulty of various programs within their university. Engineering, for example, is extremely challenging, both in terms of difficulty and workload. Some other majors are substantially less intense. </p>
<p>I am not sure where the religious studies program would fit on the difficulty scale.</p>
<p>JHS: I think that the only other schools on your list that most Cornell students would consider to be peer schools are Carnegie Mellon and Michigan. But the OP is talking about an unusual major, so the standard academic food chain may not apply.</p>
<p>There is potential for being merit at cornell although it is probably harder to obtain than the other schools you listed. It seems as if you want a “cornell” like degree but arent willing to put in the effort at an actual Ivy School. (Please correct me if I am mistaken)</p>
<p>Cornell is known more for its science program than its religious studies to be honest</p>
No, no, this thread is an offshoot of another one asking a hypothetical what-would-you-do question, basically: would you pay for Cornell if your kid got in and you were getting no financial aid and it would be very difficult to do so, financially. There is no merit aid at Cornell, and said student wouldn’t qualify if there were. The student could handle the effort of a rigorous curriculum, however. </p>
<p>The point about not being an uber-achiever is that when considering schools which DO give merit, he would not look like the superstar students often found on CC. The ones who cured an obscure cancer while leading deaf children through the amazon to the beat of an award-winning drum composition and never got anything less than a perfect score on anything they ever did.</p>
<p>"Sorry. Ok, but why not discuss others on the list as well? "</p>
<p>I thought those two were the most realistic choices at this point, and the ones you really wanted to know about. BTW, it seems I guessed correctly.</p>
<p>"So this is now a discussion of Cornell vs. Geneseo?</p>
<p>Ok, discuss. "</p>
<p>In what respects?</p>
<p>FWIW we visited geneseo a few weeks ago, I was less than impressed with the physical plant and the town. The place reminded me of an overgrown high school; one of the buildings actually had been an elementary school, and looked it. For most of its life Geneseo was not a “flagship” SUNY, and the physical plant reflects this IMO. I think there would be a lot more to do in Ithaca, due to more students and a better town. And the scales of the academic institutions are in no way similar.</p>
<p>But I don’t know if that’s what you had in mind. On what criteria did you want these compared?</p>
<p>We’re posing hypotheticals. Suppose you would be hard-pressed to afford Cornell (really difficult, but not to the utterly impossible point), and your choices came down to Cornell or Geneseo.</p>
<p>What do you mean “really difficult, but not to the utterly impossible point?” Are you talking about the parents taking on loans? Co-signing for the student to do it? If it is debt, is it 20K or 80K? Or something else?</p>