I started college in fall 2014 at Cornell. After doing some career research and shadowing over the summer, I decided to switch my major from physics to mechanical engineering before the year started. I went in knowing very little about Cornell engineering besides rankings. My first semester was alright; I was a bit disenchanted by the school’s focus on careers outside of science and engineering (finance, management, etc seem to be popular career choices among grads) as I intend to pursue a career in research.
Finances didn’t come through for the second semester, so I filed for a leave of absence. I’m taking classes at SUNY Buffalo, which from my understanding has no reputation outside of New York. It’s proving to be an awesome fit for my academic goals, and it’s very inexpensive. I’m losing my desire to return to Cornell. However, there’s a noticeable discrepancy in the difficulty of classes.
Optimally I’d like to complete a PhD, probably at another public school somewhere in the US or Canada. I know this is a tricky question to answer, but does it really matter where I complete my undergrad?
Cornell grads have a lot of options people don’t get at a lot of schools so I don’t think you should be too concerned about other students having a wide variety of choices there. Certainly as many or more students go into grad studies as Buffalo students. You can even check that out, and check out where actual students are getting accepted.
I know from my dd going to a CS PhD program that being at Brown was helpful in several ways. First and foremost , because of the abundance of research activity involving undergraduates, she was able to get the very critical research experiences that are needed for your application and to inform your SOP. Along with that activity are the types of Letters of Recommendation needed which address your research activity and your potential for graduate work. Grad programs in CS weigh top departments a bit more when they look at gpa. I would not be surprised if ME does the same.
Cornell is certainly a top dept and I should think you will have a better chance there to take your resume the farthest and to get into the best PhD programs. And really it seems that only PhD’s from the top uni’s have the best chances for tenure track positions. But that doesn’t mean that Buffalo isn’t a reasonable choice and that if you are a stellar student there and take advantage of all the opportunities you can get for research that you won’t be a le to do well for yourself. Especially if Cornell isn’t even feasible to get through one year financially, it may not be possible for you any longer. And as for programs being ‘known’, you can be assured that universities and grad committees ‘know’ a lot more than the man on the street. It would be quite absurd if an admissions department didn’t know SUNY Buffalo and everyone would be fired if that was found out. I don’t understand how it is a awesome fit for your academic goals if you want a PhD because having easier classes doesn’t really do you any favors. But maybe it is what you need right now.
Buffalo is an AAU research institution - they are certainly known in engineering circles, even if the school is a few rungs below Cornell and its peers. UB is not some Random Directional State U.
I don’t know your class rank at Cornell and don’t want to diminish the value in pushing yourself there, but you may have research opportunities at UB that you wouldn’t necessarily have at a highly competitive school. You can also work with your professors on honors projects, independent study, etc. to make your experience as challenging as you want. Something to think about - good luck in whatever you decide.
If you can’t afford to attend an institution it doesn’t really matter if something might hypothetically be better about it.
So if that’s the case there might be some other places that might challenge you more than Buffalo but be more affordable than Cornell. Off the top of my head, Rochester and RPI are two institutions that give big merit aid to selected high-scoring freshmen, I don’t know if they’d do the same for transfers, but it’s not impossible. Cooper Union has low tuition. Within SUNY its possible Stony Brook might be tougher than Buffalo. I don’t know that, but you might look into it if you care. And a number of schools claim to give need-based financial aid to transfers they admit. You can look up on CC which schools commit to meeting full need.
Basically agreeing with BrownParent, from what I understand, to achieve entry to a PhD program you have to have great grades where you are, and get research experience, and profs to write great letters for you.
If that would happen for you at Cornell you might get into a better PhD program than if it happens at Buffalo. Because academics undoubtedly know Buffalo is easier, and maybe the Profs writing your letters may not be as well known. But if it would happen at Buffalo but not Cornell you’d perhaps be better off for this purpose at Buffalo . And if it wouldn’t happen at either, you’d probably be better off at Cornell, for recruiting purposes.
But I’m just guessing. The best people to ask are perhaps your Cornell Mech E advisor and former engineering professors, and some of your professors at U Buffalo. Suggest candidly explain the situation (can’t afford Cornell,want Phd, now what) and ask them for their advice about how you may best realize your objectives going forward.
Also agree with BrownParent about other students and their choices. One thing Cornell’s student body is not is homogeneous, and there are opportunities open to them that not all engineers have. Yet Cornell is among the highest producers of students who go on to PhDs in science & engineering. There are plenty of people there who are interested in, and achieve, a Phd in those fields. Despite the fact that others who are also there aren’t interested, and don’t.
Thank you everyone for your responses. You’ve given me some new things to think about.
I think it’s relevant to mention that I got on a research team within a month of starting at UB, and all I had to do was send an email. The experience has been phenomenal. It seems like research is far less available to undergrads at Cornell.
My biggest issue is feeling like I’m wasting my academic potential at a school where more or less the entire top fourth of my high school was accepted. I’m also a 1st gen college student so being accepted to Cornell was a pretty big deal.
I’m also not very interested in teaching at the collegiate level; I want a doctoral degree for the research benefits and pure desire to learn as much as I can, and optimally would like to work in the public sector (US Dept. of Energy is my dream job).
It’s been my experience that graduate schools largely don’t care where you did your undergraduate studies so long as you took ample advantages of the opportunities you were afforded at said school. It has been my observation that perhaps the biggest admissions advantage of going to a well-known school is that a prospective graduate program is more likely to overlook a slightly lower GPA if your undergraduate program is one that is known to be rather rigorous or of particular high quality to the admissions committee. Otherwise, I don’t see there being much of a disadvantage in this regard in switching to UB, especially if you can find some research to do while you study there.
For what it’s worth, Buffalo may not be as well known to the general public, but I have never even been to the state of New York and I know it is a quality engineering program. In fact, I went to graduate school with several UB alumni.
Not directly on point, but interesting,. re: hiring at the next level:
“This study looks at the distribution of faculty members at the top 10 ranked mechanical
engineering programs and where they received their doctorate. More than 60% of faculty
members at the 10 top-ranked institutions have received their doctorate from these institutions
themselves, and that 45% of all faculty and 72% of those who received their doctorate at one of
the top 10 research institution in the United States received their doctorate at one of the top four
ranked schools. If one includes other Ivy League schools and major international universities,
this number increases to nearly 80%.”
file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Noah/My%20Documents/Downloads/ASEE2012-Saigal-Final.pdf
So the question would be what is UB representation in those graduate programs.
Some schools/ departments give bios of the PHD students associated with each their labs , and their Phd students currently looking for jobs, you could see if any of that info is available for the top 10 grad mech e programs, and look at the undergrad schools of their grad students. Or maybe there’s some other resource to get that info, I don’t know. Heck there’s only ten “top ten” schools, you could call ten mech e departments and ask them if they currently have grad students there from UB, and how many.
Or you could work the other way and ask UB the same question.
You have to decide if you can achieve your potential there. It has little to do with acceptance rate of other students unless you feel the classes are going to be too slow. If you are so much better than everyone else it will be easy to make yourself a superstar and all the profs will want to work with you. It is the upper division classes you can expect to have more peers and the others will have been weeded out. A good transcripts with continued research should get you where you want to go and even though I think your are off base about research opportunities and the focus not being on engineering careers, perhaps a bit too naive a a first year–what really matters is where you are happy and performing well, and the affordability
FWIW, schools that offer engineering in at least some fashion and claim to meet full financial need include:
Brown, Cornell, Cal Tech, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, Harvey Mudd, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Northwestern, Princeton, Rice, Smith, Stanford, Swarthmore, Trinity College (CT), Tufts, UNC, Notre Dame, Penn, USC, UVA, Vanderbilt, Wash U (MO), Yale.
As I understand it, “Full financial need” is as they each individually define and compute it. There may be variation in award amounts, Some institutions’ computation formulas may work more favorably for your particular set of economic inputs than Cornell’s evidently has done recently.
I’ve decided to remain at SUNY Buffalo. I have come to realize that Cornell was not a good fit for me academically or socially, with the added horribleness of the area it’s in. I only went there because of its prestige, and that is the only pro it has in my eyes. They also don’t have any active research in my line of interest - I looked, believe me.
I am on my own for paying for college. Neither of my parents are college graduates and did not set aside money for the purpose. If I graduate from here, the one semester I spent at Cornell will account for about 75% of my debt. I really can’t do that 7 more times.
I appreciate all of the responses!
Yes the area is so “horrible” that some people we know who lived in Buffalo chose to get married, for the scenic and bucolic vistas, in… Ithaca.
Different strokes for different folks. I guess.
But that aside, good luck, hope it works out great for you.
@monydad Can’t disagree that it’s beautiful to look at, but the city itself if very high-cost and very isolated (I ended up spending most of my weekend nights on the Campus to Campus bus to stay with friends at NYU). Buffalo is a dirt cheap place to live with thriving urban life and easy access to Toronto. To each their own!
Thank you for all of your responses on this thread; you raised some excellent points and got me thinking about what’s really important.
“I ended up spending most of my weekend nights on the Campus to Campus bus to stay with friends at NYU”
Too bad it evidently didn’t happen for you. but If you’d formed comparable relationships at Cornell there would have been no motivation for those bus trips, just sayin. I couldn’t get my D2 out of there, at all. And you might have noticed, when you got off the bus, that NYC is humongously more “high-cost” than Ithaca is. That’s actually one of the reasons my D2 cited when she transferred out of college in NYC to Ithaca.
But Buffalo may well be cheaper. I’ve no basis to quibble about that. I personally like Ithaca quite a bit, but if you prefer Buffalo so be it. You’re entitled. But, while it may have its set of advantages, I’m not so sure the vast majority of people would prefer going to school in Buffalo vs. Ithaca. Life in a college town, Ithaca specifically, has its own charm that maybe you did not get to fully experience. Unfortunately.
Sometimes things don’t work out for someone, even though they do for identical-seeming other people at the very same place, at the very same time. This happened to both my daughters, in fact. And when that happens it is totally appropriate to change ones environment, after consideration.
But not working out for you personally is not the same as “everything stinks there”. I, for one, don’t agree that “everything stinks there”. I do believe it “stunk”, relatively, for you though. Every place has its pluses and minuses, which people may variously weigh.
I formed great friendships at Cornell, joined several clubs, and was hired for a startup team. The people were not the issue with the area. I grew up in an urban area and found the environment of Ithaca isolated and depressing, and the Greek party scene made weekends at Cornell very repetitive.
It just goes to show that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I am glad your daughter loves Ithaca.
If D2 relied on the Greek party scene for fun she might not have loved it there either. She hates that stuff. I personally would also find that monotonous. But she came in as a sophomore and had zero to do with greek life whatsoever. Her social life revolved around friends she met through her various activities and her house mates. House parties, going out together in small groups, or just “hanging out” in someone’s apartment. Zero greek activities for her. It is not necessary to love, or partake in, the Greek party scene to love Cornell. It’s admittedly more difficult to avoid it as a freshman, however.
It’s not merely a matter of coming from an urban area,though. D2 came there from NYC for goodness sakes, and found plenty to do in Ithaca.
But I take from this that not everyone finds the “magic formula”.