I was recently admitted to these three schools (among others) and I will be visiting them soon, but I was wondering if anyone could offer his/her opinion on which I should attend. I definitely plan to major in physics and I really want to study abroad in Spain or latin America. My parents are leaning towards Williams but I'm wary of the small size of the college and students' saying the work load is overwhelming. On the other hand, Williams students seem to receive a great education and have exceptional chances for graduate school admissions. Cornell and Dartmouth are generally better known, but it seems that Williams is just as prestigious to the people who matter (academics, graduate school admissions people, etc.). I've heard Dartmouth is the most undergraduate-focused Ivy and that its study abroad programs are great, but I've also heard bad things about the frat scene and drinking culture there. Many people say that's avoidable and that everyone is really happy there, which is good. Cornell is really big and seen as less prestigious (?), but the sciences are supposed to be really good there. Research opportunities are very important to me as well, and I'm not sure which college would offer the most/the best. What do you think?
Dartmouth ranks as one of the schools with the best overall quality of life. Coupled with the strongest study abroad program in the Ivy League, an exceptional and loyal alumni base, stellar prestigious grad program placement rates, an immense undergraduate focus, and more school spirit/community feel than you will find virtually anywhere else, Dartmouth really is the better choice.
Cornell is much bigger: 14,000 undergraduate students vs 4,200 at Dartmouth and 2100 at Williams. It is also less prestigious, very cutthroat academically, and widely considered one of the hardest Ivy League schools to attend.
Williams has very strong grad school placement rates and strong undergraduate focus - Dartmouth, however, is on par in both those areas, so neither school has a discernible difference. Those two factors are Williams largest selling points, but Dartmouth has them covered.
In addition, Dartmouth has the small school feel while being twice as large as Williams. Therefore, everyone can find their own social group and niche. This includes students who are not inclined to drink or join the Greek scene. Since you are research oriented, Dartmouth is large enough to conduct strong research and small enough to still be extremely undergraduate focused. It’s the embodiment of the best aspects of a research university and a LAC. Dartmouth’s D-Plan also allows you to conduct outside research, study abroad, or do an internship during the school year which gives you an edge over the competition. Neither Williams nor Cornell is designed around such a system.
You have three excellent options for to choose from. Only Williams and Dartmouth, however, are really worth your attention. You cannot go wrong with either choice, but the evidence does seem to be in Dartmouth’s favor.
Three very excellent choices, visiting will be key on this since they have a lot of overlapping similarities.
Cornell is definitely big, and the town is shared with Ithaca College so definitely has a lot of college type activities off of campus.
Dartmouth is small, but twice the size of Williams, and if you think Dartmouth is isolated, Williams is even more in its own pocket of the world.
On the East Coast, all three have great brand recognition, but outside of the Northeast, Cornell and Dartmouth are going to be better recognized when it is mentioned to general people.
Visit all three, but Dartmouth is the middle ground of these. It gives you the Ivy League education, resources, and job/intern opportunities of Cornell with the small-town rural community feel of Williams
Only on CC would Cornell be seen as “less prestigious.” Good lord.
Well I mean, he’s been accepted to all three. If we were comparing Manitoba community college, Cornell, and Dartmouth, then it would be wrong the say Cornell is less prestigious.
As a parent of a recent Physics grad from Dartmouth, just wanted to add a few things. My son looked at all three schools that you mention, ultimately applied ED to Dartmouth and he was very happy with his choice. He thought Cornell was too big and Williams too small, at least for him. He really wanted a LAC environment, wanted to major in Physics but be able to explore engineering. Cornell required an application to one school or another (A&S or Engineering) and though you certainly take courses throughout the university, changing majors can be a challenge. Williams of course, doesn’t have engineering.
His professors gave him a lot of encouragement and 1:1 time, he was involved in research from his second year (could have been sooner if he had wanted to), and was closely mentored in his thesis project. He is now in a PhD physics program and feels that he was very well prepared for it. He is still in touch with several Dart profs.
As far as social life, etc., he was not in a fraternity, was not a drinker particularly. Some of his friends were in frats. Students seem to go to parties if they are interested regardless of whether they go Greek. He had plenty to do, was involved in the Outing Club and some organizations focusing on world issues. He loved Hanover and was sad to leave, though happy where he is now.
Oh and study abroad options were great (they probably are at all three), and D plan offered flexibility and options.
Congrats on your fine choices and good luck with your decision!!
Cornell is not too large. It is a good size, In fact.
Its campus looks imposing when you first tour it, but it is functionally mastered, for immediate purposes, within a week .I demonstrated that to my D2, when she was looking, in dramatic fashion by printing out a large campus map and then tearing off all the parts that she need not have anything to do with, for the near term at least. There are whole areas that you never need go into, if you do not attend that college or that housing unit. Those just provide new vistas to explore down the road. Vistas that are absent from smaller schools.
By contrast, D1 attended one of the larger LACs and was bored with the campus after a couple of years. My conclusion was the combination of a small school in a small town is not a happy marriage, IMO. I would be wary of it, unless perhaps if I could tell I fit in very well with the prevailing campus culture. If one fits well, LACs can be great. It’s less important to have tons of ready-made things to do than to have tons of great (to you) people to do them with. IMO.
Cornell requires an application and matriculation to a specific one of its colleges, true. But if that one college is its Arts & Sciences college, well that 's all Williams has. Williams students can’t apply to their Engineering college, or their agriculture college, because they don’t have one.
But Cornell CAS students can take classes at any of the colleges there. The university’s course catalog is endless. Dartmouth only has liberal arts with some engineering, right? I don’t know what goes on there frankly, in terms of applications. But most of the specialized colleges of Cornell, that people have to apply to there, do not have analogs at Dartmouth either. But Cornell CAS students can take courses at all of those specialized colleges, if they want to. Dartmouth and Williams students can’t.
A lot of Cornell students do wind up taking courses at multiple colleges there. I took courses at three of them. As a physics major in CAS I elected to take some engineering courses along the way, Subsequently I obtained a Master of Engineering degree.
As for other, changing majors within CAS at Cornell is probably no different, or more difficult, than changing majors at any other liberal arts & sciences college. Within the range of majors that the college offers, which are typical of arts & sciences colleges generally. Procedures for changing majors within each of the other colleges probably varies by college.
There are some procedures for double-majoring between majors at different colleges there , but they are likely seldom used, because one must fulfill the different requirements of both colleges. In some cases one can minor in an area taught by a different college.
Switching colleges there requires an internal transfer application process because of the diverse nature of the colleges. There is no a priori guarantee that a random student in the College of Hotel Administration is necessarily up to being able to successfully complete the program at the College of Engineering, or the College of Architecture. For example. There has to be a vetting system to make sure that the transfer makes sense. As long as it does, and the student is qualified, in my experience transfer is not a big deal.
Dartmouth may not need such a formal process since its student body is more homogeneous. Still, if any English major can just switch to Thayer without anybody looking or caring, shame on them. But I doubt that’s actually the case.
@monydad an answer to the Dartmouth engineering piece - Dartmouth undergrads have engineering available to them as part of the undergraduate curriculum. There is no applying to “leave” the liberal arts section and “join” the engineering section, it’s just changing your major. Engineering students would take engineering courses as well as fulfilling their liberal arts curriculum.
So I think the main difference between the two are if you know you want to be an Engineer, Cornell will let you join the Engineering School and focus on engineering and mostly engineering. But if you aren’t certain, or end up wanting to change majors midway through, Dartmouth’s flexibility and integrated concept makes it simple to change majors but also not have to restart from scratch because you’ve already taken pre-reqs in your new major.
Not sure why it’s “Shame on them” to be able to have that flexibility. Undergrads to take courses from Thayer professors and in the Thayer buildings and can utilize the Thayer resources, but they get their degree from Dartmouth, so it’s not an exact parallel of Cornell’s Undergraduate School of Engineering.
Thayer is a graduate engineering school that Dartmouth undergrads can take advantage of for an Engineering major.
Thanks everyone for your insight as to Dartmouth vs. Cornell. Does anyone have any thoughts on Williams?
First of all Congratulations. S was a recent Physics-Astronomy grad. Chose Dartmouth over Williams too, thought Dartmouth had more options for extracurricular activities. He did not join a frat, although many of his friends did. He enjoyed the small (tiny!) classes and interactions with Profs. You will be fine at any of these 3 schools. Visit and decide!
For undergrad, I lean heavily in favor of LAC’s 7 days a week, and twice on Sunday… but if you are focused on physics, Cornell has a stature and resources that are nearly unparalleled anywhere.
1 Like
Williams has truly awesome Math, Physics, and Astrophysics departments. Math profs consistently win national teaching awards (and of course math is closely intertwined with Physics), and the research opportunities in Physica/Astrophysics at Williams, in terms of high-level work without any grad students to compete with for resources, are unparalleled. You simply can not do any better as an undergrad. Check out, for example, Williams’ list of Apker award winners:
http://www.aps.org/programs/honors/awards/apker.cfm
Christopher Chudzicki, Nathan Hodas, Charles Doret, Nathan Gerke, all since 1999 … any only two students per year win these, from every college and university in the country.
This gives you an idea of the types of opportunities you will have as a Williams Physics grad:
http://physics.williams.edu/people/graduates/
The work load, while rigorous, is certainly not overwhelming, especially when compared to Cornell, which is notoriously a fairly stressful place. Dartmouth and Williams re probably similar in this regard (as they are in many regards, the main difference being no frat culture at Williams, a slightly less conservative environment overall, half the size, and no grad students).
“The work load, while rigorous, is certainly not overwhelming, especially when compared to Cornell, which is notoriously a fairly stressful place”
My D2 transferred to Cornell from a #20-30 ranked LAC and said that the workload was essentially the same
People have been slinging allegations of how much tougher Cornell is since way back when I attended, and they’re still doing it today. Irrespective of actual merit, and changes in grading over the years. Students attending but a single college have no basis for comparison.
They were making the same claims in the mid to late 90s too.
In 1997 a reporter found the formula UC Berkeley’s law school was using to weight the GPAs of applicants from different colleges. (“Grading the Grades: All A’s Are Not Created Equal”, L.A. Times 7/16/97). Berkeley was adding points to GPAs of applicants from schools that scored 79 and above based on an index formed via a GPA vs LSAT analysis they performed. Applicants received an extra .02 GPA boost for every 1 point over 78.5. The indices they developed for these three schools were: Cornell 86.5, Dartmouth, 87, Williams 89. Which means, firstly, that they found that grading at the three schools was not all that different; but secondly that of these three institutions, Cornell grading was, by their analysis, actually the easiest of the three. And Williams’ grading was the most severe.
Of course that was a long time ago. Things have changed since that time, at all schools. These describe how they have changed at Cornell:
http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/grade_inflation_at_cornell/
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/cornell-university/487570-grade-inflation-or-deflation-p1.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20100214201042/http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Grades/MedianGradeSP08.pdf
Cornell does have a large engineering school , which has a somewhat lower curve, lower threshold for dean’s list, etc. Cornell has a relatively large proportion of students pursuing science-related fields in general. The sciences everyplace are hard, and tend to have less wiggle room in grading. If I had to guess, that’s where the disproportionate whining comes from. Which is not to say the work isn’t challenging in other fields too. At all three of these schools.
Specifically, physics will be hard at all of these schools. It has to be. Because physics is hard. If it isn’t you aren’t being prepared properly.
FWIW, I was the dumbest person ever to graduate with a physics major at Cornell, and even I as a senior was taking courses co-listed with the graduate school.
I’m sure I could have taken more advanced courses if i was up to it.
Back then the “good” students were somehow identified, siphoned off, given great research experience, and went to top PhD programs. I don’t know what the process was, but it happened. Whereas I, being the dumbest person ever to graduate with a physics major, didn’t. Which was fine with me, it would have been a waste of time for all involved. But that was a long time ago, and undergrad research has become a much bigger deal these days. I’ve no idea what they do now, you should ask them. But it must happen.
Between Physics and Astronomy in CAS, Applied and Engineering Physics in COE, and other areas in COE, (eg Material Science) the amount of advanced level courses available there, including graduate level courses, for a physics major is staggering.
Cornell has a much larger student body though, true. And it’s very diverse, in terms of student types and interests. Only 30% of the students attend CAS. And lower level class sizes there are not small.
If a smaller environment is the overriding preference, I personally would choose Dartmouth. Unless I knew for sure, eg based on multiple visits and an overnight, that I fit in really well with the prevailing campus culture at Williams.
If the Physics thing isn’t happening, I can see a science-math oriented guy sliding over into engineering science. Engineering in some capacity is actually a pretty common destination for physics grads. Or computer science, which they both offer but at which Dartmouth is actually somewhat reputable IIRC. And the fact that it has three times the enrollment might make it slightly less boring.
As I mentioned, my reservations about small school in small town derive from my D1s experience in same. Though not at Williams.
@Oberyn cornell is absolutley not one of the more cut throat, challenging ivy leagues. I mean in perspective they are obviously all very challenging but as far as ivies go I would put cornell at the bottom of the list by a longshot
@mat324 I’m looking into cornell but I’m really concerned about it being too cut throat or challenging. Did you go there or know someone who does?
I personally would pick Dartmouth
I would choose Dartmouth. You get the best of both Cornell and Williams, a small community with focus on quality undergrad education while at a strong research institution. Also Dartmouth is definitely less cutthroat than Cornell and the quality of life is better there for most students. Also Dartmouth is slightly more prestigious than Cornell for undergrad if u care about this kind of thing. So unless you are going to be a hardcore engineer in which case Cornell would make sense then go to Dartmouth. Even if u wanna study engineering but you want to go into business or med schools Dartmouth is a much better choice. Not as much grade deflation as Cornell, not as cutthroat, fewer people --less competition and also Dartmouth is more of a target for business recruiting than Cornell ( although Cornell does very well too).
My middle child a daughter was a 15. As you probably know at Dartmouth you go by you year of graduation. She had to choose between Dartmouth, Amherst, Bowdoin,Williams. Only you know you and if you want a college that emphasizes undergraduates over graduates. She wanted a school that was undergraduate focused. She finally felt that Williams was too isolated and small. Hanover is small and isolated, but not as much as Williamstown. I can say from numerous visits that the vast vast vast majority of students enjoyed there time at Dartmouth. There is no perfect school and there are unhappy people everywhere, but most loved Dartmouth. However she felt she could have been happy at Williams.