<p>Hi all. My daughter is considering Dartmouth or Cornell CAS (she's been accepted into both) next year. She (as of now) wants to Major in music and psychology. Both schools have strong programs in both. However, which school is better in terms of preparing for Law, Business, or Medical school? She will likely plan to go to one of these but she doesn't know which one yet. </p>
<p>From everything we hear, all these grad. schools care about are GPA and test scores. Period. That would lead me to believe Dartmouth is the better choice since I hear the grading is very intense (and sometimes even deflated) at Cornell. However, Cornell is a big research university and will likely have more resources available to students to help them prepare. I know Cornell CAS and Dartmouth have similar stats in terms of students being admitted to premed school. Not sure about the other two. </p>
<p>Dartmouth has better placement if you look at the number of students matriculating into top graduate programs. This might be due to the student body makeup of the schools, but I think Dartmouth has advantages such as incredible advising, grants, resources, etc. It spends the most of any Ivy on its undergrads, and its endowment is four times larger per student which helps a lot. Dartmouth’s undergrad focus is pretty unbeatable and its placement into jobs and graduate schools is amongst the best in the country.</p>
<p>“This might be due to the student body makeup of the schools” +1
“…its endowment is four times larger per student …” but how much $$ does it get from a state government? What is the endowment equivalent of the $$ Cornell gets from New York State?</p>
<p>you might also want to post this in the “college search” forum. generally this type of question goes there, unless of course you just want parents’ perspectives on this only</p>
<p>What does your daughter want in a college? Dartmouth is more of a LAC, and students tend to be more homogeneous. Cornell is much bigger with 13,000 UG students. </p>
<p>As far as placement to medical, law or business, both schools are very strong. Most of my daughter’s friends from Cornell got into their top pick graduate schools, especially law schools. You said your daughter is interested in all of those professions (I think it is strange personally), Cornell has 7 different schools for her to find herself. It is a big school. It has a lot to offer, but it’s not for everyone.</p>
<p>I have one sibling who went to Cornell, another to Dartmouth. Both of them had great college experience from those schools and both have done very well in life. </p>
<p>In your daughter’s case, it really comes down to fit. As we do not have any information about what she wants, it is hard for people to give you a recommendation. I don’t think she would necessary have a better “life after college” by going to one college vs another. I believe students from both schools work very hard for their grades.</p>
<p>Cant help you with pre-professional. But the music department at Cornell, both performance and historical musicology is in a whole different class than Darthmouth.</p>