<p>you're right, every single one of Georgetown students is Catholic, pardon me.</p>
<p>oh wait, except for my entire family of WASPs who somehow snuck through there.</p>
<p>(p.s. this is just image.. do you really think people from oregon take the time to differentiate? the cornell stuff is probably totally wrong too... CHILL!)</p>
<p>I go to a Catholic school in SF, so Georgetown is viewed in high prestige. Cornell is viewed as a very good school too, but kind of a weaker Ivy.</p>
<p>You should get accepted to both before you fret over which you want to go to.</p>
<p>"Gtown for WASPs? Georgetown is Catholic! Do you understand that WASP stands for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant"</p>
<p>I think that was just an expression for Preppy, not literally Protestant...</p>
<p>^^precisely, thank you.</p>
<p>Both are top universities, and you can't go wrong either way. I also applied to both schools, and would personally pick Georgetown. I was recruited to play soccer at Cornell, offered a definite in and a likely letter, but turned it down because I hated the school when I went up to stay a weekend. The atmosphere was unbelievably anti-intellectual, and left me wondering how most of the people I met got into the school. Georgetown's urban, international aspects, lend a very sophisticated atmosphere to the campus. I personally think it is a much better school, and in fact in NYC's big financial companies, the number of Gtown grads that enter without grad school, dwarfs the number of Cornell grads that are able to get jobs without grad school.</p>
<p>i would say that, if possible, you really need to visit both schools before making your decision. at my school their are equally well recognized and respected, though everyone applying to cornell is jokingly reminded that they have the highest suicide rate of any college nation wide... but basically you need to get a feel for the school atmosphere and how you fit in. my cousin loved everything she'd hear about cornell but on the drive out to ithaca from the airport she nearly turned around after passing literally 40 silos. if you think the city is beautiful be warned that cornell is very much in the middle of nowhere</p>
<p>I disagree with some of the assertions made in this thread.</p>
<p>To wit:
posts #6 & #10: Cornell reports data to US News in aggregate, however this data is actually a conglomeration of 7 separate undergraduate colleges with different admissions standards and profiles. It has always been the case that Cornell's College of Arts & Sciences has significantly higher admissions stats than the aggregated Cornell has. I don't know what the numbers look like currently, but when I've seen them in the past the Arts & Sciences college was quite comparable to, or more selective than, Georgetown.</p>
<p>As for Cornell's Agriculture school, Hotel school, etc, who cares unless that's what you're applying to. Their entrance scores are lower, which drives down the reported aggregate. But in their own fields they are top schools nevertheless.</p>
<p>post 26:</p>
<p>I worked at one of Wall Street's leading investment banks for over 12 years and saw far more analysts (undergrad hires) from Cornell than from Georgetown. Georgetown was not well represented at my firm. Notre Dame was better represented there. And, to be honest, for its size Holy Cross was better represented than either of them.(Not straight from undergrad necessarily, though).</p>
<p>Biology: Cornell's resources in biology are awesome. In addition to the College of Arts & Sciences, they have an entire College of Agriculture which is nothing more than a "college of applied biology". The biology major is, in effect or actually, joint between these two colleges. The NYS Veterinary College is also located on the campus in Ithaca. Moreover, due to these substantial resources in biology a number of private biology research institutes have located in the area.</p>
<p>This is probably among the very strongest areas at Cornell.</p>
I realize that this thread is ancient (by CC standards) but I wanted to add something here, just in case anyone currently faced with this decision happens upon this. (Full disclosure: I was offered transfer admission to Cornell back in the 80s and turned it down for reasons that had nothing to do with the quality of the school).
Georgetown is a prestigious school, no doubt, but its prestige does not flow from its academic reputation. In academic circles, Georgetown is not considered a powerhouse, except in international relations and foreign service. In those areas, G’town is undoubtedly top notch. But in more “mainstream” academics, G’town is not held in especially high regard. The school’s prestige stems from its selectivity (which has more to do with its location than with its academic strength per se) and with its history. If G’town had the exact same faculty and facilities but were located in Kentucky, the quality of its student body (and the school’s resulting prestige) would be markedly lower.
Conversely, (and just to be clear, I’m focusing on Cornell Arts and Sciences – the Ivy division of the university), Cornell is indeed an academic powerhouse. It’s especially strong in the natural sciences, but can’t really be considered “weak” in any of the liberal arts. And The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a feature a few years back in which it mapped out “peer” institutions (i.e., schools were asked which other colleges/universities they considered their peers). Guess what? Georgetown had chosen Cornell as a peer but Cornell had NOT chosen G’town. In fact, Cornell was chosen as a peer by Stanford, Yale, Chicago, MIT, UPenn, and G’town was not (Princeton and Columbia didn’t participate and Harvard chose only Yale, Princeton, and Stanford as peers). And Cornell is a member of the AAU (Association of American Universities), an invitation-only group of top research universities, and G’town is not. And I’d say that Cornell’s location (upstate New York in the snow belt) makes it less appealing than the other Ivies. If Cornell were in a less isolated location, with the same faculty and facilities, it would certainly not be seen as a “lesser Ivy” (which designation still puts it head and shoulders above most other schools). In fact, my sense is that Cornell has suffered from its status as the most democratic of all the Ivies, the least concerned with snob appeal, the least bound by WASP tradition. It is first and foremost a place where people go to study and learn. For that reason, it has always been less popular among the prep-school set.
If you’re considering a career in politics, public policy, foreign service, etc., choose G’town over Cornell. But if you’re considering a career in academia (or any other field in which academic achievement is paramount), choose Cornell over G’town.