Is there anything truly sucky/awful about going to Cornell? I might be going there next year for biochem or engineering but I need to be fully prepared before I go.
Things like coursework, flexibility, atmosphere, campus vibe, greek life, food, cows, Ithaca, pls shoot.
Thanks!
Money. You’ll quickly hate how everything, from gym classes to laundry, at Cornell has a price tag attached.
The weather can be a bit rough too. This year wasn’t too bad but I heard all about the long winters of previous years.
The coursework isn’t as bad as people say it is. I’d say the workload is only slightly more than that of an all AP-class schedule. It’s the extracurriculars (depending on what you do) that really kills your time.
Ithaca is extremely boring and extremely expensive.
The housing lottery will destroy your soul and you’ll either end up shelling out $1300 a month for a single apartment in Collegetown, or be crammed in a building that should have been condemned in the '50s for $800 a month.
As the above poster said, everything has a price tag. “Oh, you pay $64,000 a year to be here? Well we need that $1.25 for laundry.”
If you live in Collegetown you get to see the weekend parade of loud, boorish, idiots barking outside your window at 2am because all the bars in Ithaca close early.
Did I mention there is only one real bar here? (One other is an overpriced pizza place, and the other is part of an overpriced burger restaurant).
You can’t buy alcohol after 1am, or liquor after 9pm because you can only buy liquor in a liquor store in NY for some reason.
There is only one bloody American restaurant in all of Collegetown, but somehow they found room for 7+ Asian restaurants!?!?!
Oh yeah, you’ll also be living in ****ing Ithaca.
On the plus side there’s this one super awesome Japanese place called “Cafe Pacific” run by the absolute sweetest lady in the world and for some reason they’re open til’ like 1am and I swear to god they have the best curry rice in the world.
Can’t speak much about the night life, but I agree with @Wittmann about the housing lottery. It’s quite stressful, especially if you get a bad time slot.
How bad exactly is the housing lottery? And how does it work? I was under the impression that room assignments were fairly random but students still get a chance to choose their roommates.
For freshman year, you indicate your housing choices online, I believe sometime in late spring. All freshman are housed in North Campus.
There is no lottery until the end of freshman year, when you are figuring out housing for sophomore year. You pick a roommate or group of friends you want to room with or near, and each person is assigned a lottery number. The number determines when you can go online to pick your room(s). The person in the group with the “best” ( i.e. earliest) time slot determines when the group will be able to choose their room(s). The West Campus dorms were renovated fairly recently, so those rooms tend to be gone by the time students with later lottery times are choosing their rooms. Kids with the “worst” times often are assigned to the dorms in Collegetown - Cascadilla and Sheldon Court.
Note that the lottery doesn’t apply to students who will be living in sororities or fraternities their sophomore years. Also, I don’t think you have to go through a lottery if you want to live in one of the program houses (e.g Ecology House, Risley, etc).
Not necessarily a drawback, but definitely something to note: Cornell is HUGE because there are 3,000+ kids in each graduating class. This means that you need to be proactive and advocate for yourself if you want one-on-one conversations with professors, personalized attention from TAs, or individual access to resources.
However, since Cornell does have so many students this means a lot of diverse perspectives, events/activities, and oportunities!
A lot of the bars are closing and there haven’t been new ones replacing them. Also, the 1am rule sucks as well.
Legal age to buy alcohol is 21.
What a sad thread. Great place, but not for everyone. Yes overpriced bad housing is the worst part that would bother anyone.
Other than that, personal preference. Like a big city and warm weather, this is not the place for you. My son likes the cold and smaller town. Made nice friends, likes the school quite a bit.
DS had choices and he chose Cornell. Likes it a lot. He found academics to be tougher - not hard - but not easy either. If you are your high school’s superstar - you will still need to adapt.Kids there seem to be great. DS is outdoorsy type and Ithaca is very nice for that. He also likes cold - so that’s a plus. Heard that it is not a party school but they do have ton of stuff going on. As a parent, like that they bring a lot of good speakers and artists to the university - if a student wants to attend, expands your view and understanding. It is a small town but because Cornell has a strong presence within international students, it does not feel monolithic - something important to my kid. Campus is beautiful - really pretty! But it is hilly and you will walk - a LOT! If you cannot handle lots of uphill walking, cold, small town feel and wants big party scene - then you are better off looking somewhere else! There are a lot of good colleges out there!
Cornell may not be known as a party school, but there are plenty of parties for kids who want a robust social life. My D feels Cornell gives her a great balance between work and play. She has found academics to be very rigorous but intellectually fulfilling, and she has had fun going to parties when she’s in the mood. She has several different friend groups (one from her major, one from freshman year and one from her sorority, with overlaps between groups), and has attended several concerts each year – bands performing at Cornell and in downtown Ithaca.
Overall, despite the challenges at Cornell (and no university is perfect), my D has been completely happy with her decision to attend Cornell.
Why would you limit your restaurant choices to Collegetown? There are so many great restaurants in Ithaca. You can share a taxi or get a ride from friends. My younger daughter didn’t have a car, but she still got around quite a bit. Before someone says, “Not everyone has extra money for taxi, etc.” Even if you are not on work study, there are plenty of jobs on campus for most students who want to work.
As far as off campus housing, my deal with my kids (I had 2 who went to Cornell) was I would pay up to cost of Cornell housing. Each year they have found nice apartment (not in a house) to live in. A good way to do it is to sublet from people who are on study abroad. You only have to pay for the months you are there, not for the summer.
I have heard people complain about Cornell charge for every little thing. On the other hand, if my kid is living off campus and she has to pay to do laundry in her building, why should I subsidize other students who are living on campus? There are kids who like to go to the gym and others don’t, why should you pay for something you don’t want to use? I would prefer to keep the over all cost down and pay a la carte for extra stuff.
Cornell is too large for some students. There are also many students who enroll because they didn’t get into the “more prestigious” schools on their list. They go because it is an Ivy, but in their mind it’s a bottom Ivy. That can lead to some disappointed kids on campus who didn’t really want to be there.
Why Cornell doesn’t simply build more housing (They can build Cornell Tech, so it seems just lack of leadership)
Or, at least, they should be accepting LESS students.
I also feel amazed by the very few parking spots they have on Campus… Is this even legal? Maybe the school is so old they don’t need to obey building codes?!..
I can’t believe they force students to walk in deep snow weather for that long… How many students break their neck every year? … Is it feasible to take any class before 10AM?
Isn’t that the case for every school that’s below, let’s say, #5? On the other hand, Cornell is the #1 choice for many students.
How many colleges planned to have enough parking space for every student living on campus? I don’t know any. I went to a nearby LAC, we used to have to climb The Hill to get to classes everyday, or you had to walk down the hill then up the hill to eat 3 times a day. We used to call it the suicide hill because it was so steep. But no one got killed by walking up and down that hill, just like no one at Cornell broke their neck by walking in the snow.
My kids and most of their friends wanted to live off campus after freshman year. My kids thought sharing a small room with people and having to wear flip flops in order to take a shower just wasn’t normal. My older daughter is at her 5 yr reunion up at Cornell right now. They all thought it would be great fun to stay at their freshman dorm. My daughter lasted one night before she got a room at the Statler.
I know this is supposed to be what sucks at Cornell, but maybe it is better to look at what’s great at Cornell. This is one of my favorite youtube of Cornell.
http://www.cornell.edu/video/this-is-by-alex-silver-and-jon-tai
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
One can always start a separate thread for that.
It is about looking at a glass half full or half empty. I could understand if a prospective applicant wants to explore all aspects of a college, but if one is already going Cornell then what’s the point of dwelling on all the negatives? I just don’t think it is a very good way of starting one’s college career.
@oldfort While I appreciate what you are saying, we do not moderate threads simply because they focus on the negative. Now if the OP came to me and said that s/he wanted to modify to thread title to discuss good/bad, that’s a different conversation.