Help choosing from UC Berkeley, Cornell, and Washington University in St. Louis

Colleges and Universities A-Z Cornell University
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Hi everyone. I’m facing quite a bit of dilemma here (albeit a good one) that’s been getting me really stressed out. I’ve been fortunate enough to have been accepted by UCB, Cornell, and WUSTL and can’t really decide which one to commit to. I’m currently a cognitive science major at Berkeley, a Psychology major at Cornell, and a Psychology, Neuroscience and Philosophy major at WUSTL – all of this subject to change, I really am not set on a major, just had to put one down for the app process.

I’ve read up MANY, MANY of these comparison threads between these 3 schools and many of them focus on the premed programs at each of them. Though I’m undecided, I’m very unlikely to go into premed and I do have interests in english, computer science, and psychology/cognitive science.

I’m currently leaning toward Cornell but I’m still so torn about my decision because of all the bad press surrounding it. I’ve just returned from a visit from Cornell, and honestly, I’m a little ambivalent about the whole experience. Don’t get me wrong, from what I saw, I thought Cornell was absolutely fine, cheery even. But the whole time I had all of the bad things I’ve heard about it in the back of my head like the cutthroat competition, the severe weather, the insane difficulty of classes – all these things I couldn’t really “experience” in my visit.

I’m visiting WUSTL later this week and won’t have a good hold on the school until I do, but of what I know it’s supposedly got great student satisfaction. I’m a little apprehensive because everyone praises WUSTL so much that I’m not entirely sure whether or not to believe it - do they really love it or are they just jumping on the band wagon? It’s like the extreme contrast of Cornell, where everyone is bashing it. I also do not want to go into pre-med or business but that seems to be all that WUSTL is praised for.

For the time being, I’ve ruled out Berkeley, but if someone can make a compelling argument for me to reconsider it, I will. I’m from the Bay Area and have lived here my entire life, so going to school so close to home sounds really unappealing to me. No matter where I go, I’d ideally like a change of scenery in terms of weather and culture. I visited Cal, and found it to be quite alright, I don’t think I would mind going there for 4 years (or longer…) but it just feels too “comfortable.” The mix of "diversity"in which Asians have become the majority doesn’t help either. I myself am an Asian American and I’ve been surrounded by this scene of heavy Asian influence all my life. I’ve heard from a friend’s sister that many Asian Americans go through an identity crisis entering Cal and would really like to discover myself some place else.

For all these schools, money really isn’t an issue but I do feel a little guilty spending more of my parents’ money on an private school education when one can be obtained for much cheaper at Cal. Though the academics of all the schools are comparable, I guess what I’m looking at is the undergrad experience as a whole.

Also I know that it’s not good to caught up in prestige but I can’t help but do so… I think one of the reasons I’m so stuck on Cornell is that it does carry that Ivy status (but at the same time I know it gets a lot of hate for being the “worst” Ivy). At the same time, coming from a school in California which has received 20-30 offers of admissions to Cal per class of 500 for the last two years to Berkeley (and 60-70+ in years prior), Berkeley really doesn’t seem that prestigious. In fact when I visited and talked to many of the students there, it sounded like Cal was an Ivy-reject school for them. WUSTL, though it ranks higher than these other two on the US News and Report charts (though I realize I have to take it with a grain of salt), doesn’t carry the same prestige that Cornell or UCB would in my mind and for this reason I’m a little apprehensive about choosing it because I feel it may limit my future career plans.

– I was also wait listed at Medill- Northwestern’s school of journalism. In the chance that I do get off that wait list, should I consider it over these other three schools? I’m in the college of Arts & Sciences/Letters & Sciences for each of the above schools.

I’m interested in hearing all your opinions and thanks in advance!

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I don’t know where people are hearing such negative things about Cornell. I love Cornell so much and Ithaca is my hometown so I take it all very personally!

Cornell isn’t cutthroat at all – I haven’t experienced any competition whatsoever (I’m in arts and sciences). In fact, people are really supportive of each other’s accomplishments. When people post on social media, even anonymously, about an achievement or getting into grad school, everyone always jumps to congratulate them.

The weather is FINE. The only thing that’s awful is everyone complaining about it. I have survived 19 Ithaca winters and have not died yet. You will be cold. Wear a coat. You’ll be fine.

I would not say classes are insanely difficult. Obviously some are harder or involve more work than others, but just figure out how much work you can handle without comparing yourself to other people. Some people are able to handle 20 credits, others find themselves challenged enough with 12. I would say start off with around 15 your first semester and see how it feels. As long as you have good time management skills and are willing to work hard, you’ll succeed and the outcome will be so rewarding.

If you’re undecided, the college of arts and sciences here is absolutely wonderful (I’m still undecided after a year here). You can explore dozens of interests – even some you didn’t know you had. You say you like English, Computer Science, psychology, and cognitive science? Take a class in each your first semester. Arts and sciences gives you so much flexibility that you won’t find in most other places. And you won’t just be wasting your time by trying out other classes, because each one will fulfill some sort of distribution requirement and plus you’ll become super well-rounded.

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Thanks! That’s good to hear and definitely VERY reassuring.

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I’ve compared top 20 universities’ student academic strength in the past years using the Common Data Set SAT scores published by these universities. Cornell was with the strongest best 800 students(scores) last year. With the Fall2013-Spring2014 enrolled freshman class data all came out, I calculated the top 820 scores of them:

Cornell is, again, the strongest.

CR, M, Total
739, 779, 1518, Cornell
754, 758, 1512, Harvard
744, 764, 1508, Penn
737, 760, 1497, Northwest
749, 746, 1495, U.Chicago
741, 751, 1492, Vanderbilt
730, 755, 1485, WUSTL
732, 747, 1479, Stanford
736, 733, 1470, Yale
723, 743, 1466, U Notre dame
716, 741, 1457, Duke
722, 730, 1453, Princeton
715, 725, 1439, Columbia
680, 750, 1430, MIT
704, 718, 1422, Brown
678, 701, 1380, J.Hopkins
683, 683, 1366, Dartmouth
647, 680, 1326, Emory

Cornell student quality is not only the best in the Ivy League but also the best of the nation.

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OP, it sounds like you have a good grasp of the situation. At some point nothing is perfect and you just have to take your best shot and hope for the best.

As far as "cutthroat, “insane difficulty”: From what I’ve read on the Berkeley forum,
nobody is tiptoeing through the tulips there either. And “cutthroat” is just wrong anyway, from anything I experiienced in antiquity or, more recenty, heard about from D2,.

There’s a guy Bernie, an Emory grad, who did an analysis of contents of chemistry courses somewhere on CC. IIRC he found Wash U’s courses were more difficult, conceptually at least, than Cornell’s. But that was non-comprehensive.

I haven’t attended all these places, but for the life of me i cant see why work-wise they would really be all that much different. If you have similar caliber students coming in, and they are similarly motivated towards future destinations, and the classes, particularly in sciences and larger lectures, are curved, why would there be much difference?

When I was college-hunting with my D1, I visited a lot of good colleges. The students seemed stressed, similarly, at them all. That was a wake-up call to me. I thought my school was somehow unique.

One thing I’ve come to appreciate more, since being on this forum, is a lot of warm-weather types are deeply apprehensive about cold weather, much moreso than we in the Northeast are, Here we might say “it’s cold out, where’s my winter coat?”. There, they might say " OMG, IT’s SO COLD WHATEVER SHALL WE DO". Describing the identical weather situation. So I dont want to impose my standards on that for you. The weather is what it is. Look it up. You decide if you want to deal with it or not. But if you come, deal with it you will. You will survive though. In St Louis, if you stay in the summer you’ll have to deal with that.

The thing with Berkeley is, the money. And you’ll be close to home, so you’ll come home more. As a parent, both those things are very appealing. If there’s a way to dog-ear part of the saved money to use towards your future grad school, or your future house downpayment, maybe you can create a synthetic “win-win” situation with your parents that would make Berkeley a more palatable choice for you.

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BTW there’s at least one other "Cornell vs. Wash U’ thread floating around here now, maybe more, you might do a search.

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@2Daswell, maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re saying, but from what I see in the CDS data there are a number of schools with higher average SAT scores than Cornell, including three shown below.

Cornell is a fantastic school and I’m not suggesting that SAT scores are the be-all-end-all measure of student quality, just saying that Cornell does not have the highest average SAT scores.

I’ll give 75th percentile reading and math as that’s what I believe you give for Cornell above.

Cornell 740+780 = 1520

https://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000554.pdf - page 8

Harvard - 800+800 = 1600

http://oir.harvard.edu/files/huoir/files/harvard_cds_2013-14.pdf - page 8

Yale - 800+790 = 1590

http://oir.yale.edu/sites/default/files/CDS2013_2014.pdf - page 9

Princeton - 800+ 00 = 1600

http://registrar.princeton.edu/university_enrollment_sta/common_cds2013.pdf - page 8

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@bluewater2015, @2Daswell appears to have simply cropped the top 820 scores after sorting from hi to low and took the average.

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@KunjiBoy Thank you. I appreciate the explanation.

It’s an apples to oranges comparison if it’s comparing the top 820 from each school, because these schools have a wide range of sizes . . . each Cornell class is around 3500 people so 820 is the top 23% at Cornell, therefore the numbers posted are roughly the same as the 75th percentile numbers for Cornell from CDS.

At Yale to take another school on the list, 820 is 60% of the incoming class of around 1350 . . . so if I understand correctly, the numbers in post 3 are comparing the top 23% at Cornell to the top 60% at Yale.

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In terms of “insane difficulty” it really depends on a given class or what major. I forgot where it was but I saw a listing of all the median grades for the Cornell classes and they were mainly B+ or A- with very few things below a B.
But really your decision shouldn’t hinge on these kind of rumors or stereotypes, but how well you feel you fit with the school and, of course, the price point. Unless your Washu visit blows you off your feet (which it very well might,) take a look back at UCB and decide if its really worth shelling out the money for Cornell.

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@bluwater25, The result was from the Common Data Set (here you have them altogether

Source:
CDS for Fall2013-Spring2014(Notre Dame & Cornell only count R+M. CalTech and Rice are too small to compare.)

Sort by size:
SZ, R, M, W
261-, 720-800, 770-800, 720-790, Caltech
951-, 660-750, 700-780, 660-760, Rice
1093, 680-770, 750-800, 690-780, MIT
1117, 680-780, 680-780, 680-780, Dartmouth
1285, 700-800, 710-800, 710-790, Princeton
1337, 690-780, 700-790, 690-780, Columbia
1359, 710-800, 710-790, 720-800, Yale
1363, 620-710, 650-750, 640-730, Emory
1382, 650-740, 670-770, 660-750, J.Hopkins
1445, 720-800, 720-790, 700-780, U.Chicago
1542, 660-760, 670-780, 670-770, Brown
1638, 700-760, 720-790, 700-770, WUSL
1657, 700-780, 710-790, 680-770, Vanderbilt
1658, 670-760, 690-790, 680-780, Duke
1677, 680-780, 700-790, 690-780, Stanford
1702, 700-800, 710-800, 710-800, Harvard
1971, 690-760, 700-790, 690-770, Northwest
2057, 660-750, 680-770, 000-000, U Notre Dame
2421, 670-760, 690-780, 690-780, Penn
3223, 640-740, 680-780, 650-750, Cornell

The way I calculated them is to use each school’s 25 percentile - 75 percentile SAT data and the freshman class size to figure out the percentile of the 820th highest score. This means if each school accepts 820 students, Cornell is the strongest school of all.

This is not to calculate average scores but to see who has best top students. (i.e.Duke accepted ~1600 students , Conell ~3200. If I compare the top 1600 scores, Cornell is still higher.)

CR, M, Total
739, 779, 1518, Cornell
754, 758, 1512, Harvard
744, 764, 1508, Penn
737, 760, 1497, Northwest
749, 746, 1495, U.Chicago
741, 751, 1492, Vanderbilt
730, 755, 1485, WUSL
732, 747, 1479, Stanford
736, 733, 1470, Yale
723, 743, 1466, U Notre dame
716, 741, 1457, Duke
722, 730, 1453, Princeton
715, 725, 1439, Columbia
680, 750, 1430, MIT
704, 718, 1422, Brown
678, 701, 1380, J.Hopkins
683, 683, 1366, Dartmouth
647, 680, 1326, Emory

An easier way to read CDS is to look at two schools of about the same size and see how the scores represent. For example, Stanford and Duke are about the same size and Stanford is with higher scores of all areas.

Or one other way: Cornell is with way more students than Emory but the scores are still higher in all areas. Same for Cornell and J. Hopkins.

12

Cornell, easy