<p>Cornell is the only college so far that I've heard is EXTREMELY difficult. (Haven't heard people mention that at the other Ivy's or other schools I'm looking into.) Rumor has it that the course load overwhelms one's life more than normal...how true do you guys think that is? </p>
<p>Personally, I'm hard worker and highly enjoy stimulating academics, but I would like my college experience to be a balance between academia and getting to actually soak in the other elements of going to college. How much of a balance do you think exists at Cornell?</p>
<p>There’s some days and nights where I get rocked; I pull an all nighter every other week. The funny thing is, and I’ve talked with other students about this, I have actually grown to like it. I feel like I can handle anything. I get a serious feeling of accomplishment out of the amount of done.</p>
<p>There’s other weekends (like this weekend) where I don’t have much work and try to get out and party every day. It’s really up to you as to how you want to balance your workload. Everyone gets that odd semester where they have a really light schedule of 12 credits, so they just party, take up some PE classes like sailing, tango, gun range, etc. </p>
<p>This is as much of a college experience as you can possibly get. I’ve had so much fun here over the past couple of years and I can’t believe I’m about to graduate.</p>
<p>And I think it’s important to note that I, too, was extremely hesitant of accepting admission simply because I heard the horror stories. Looking back I feel ■■■■■■■■ for even thinking of denying admission. It’s all in your head.</p>
<p>Workload? Depends on how well you want to do. The coursework is definitely rigorous, but that prevents very few people from having a good work life balance.</p>
<p>Oh, wow…Sorry, I’ve just heard a lot of people saying Cornell was a lot more intense and rigorous than the other Ivy’s and other colleges in general. </p>
<p>I would probably be a Film major, by the way.</p>
<p>Not hard unless you decide to take 26 credits a semester. Curving down is not a problem, and is in fact a joke, since courses are curved up to a B or higher. Compare this to other schools which C averages are the norm and you have a pretty coddling grading system.</p>
<p>What schools have a “C” average as the norm?</p>
<p>Anyways yeah there’s no doubt that it has become “easier” to get “better” grades (my advisor said that when he first started teaching at Cornell the median GPA for Cornell was well below 3.0). Since then he has watched as the median grades slowly creep up from the mid-to low C range up to virtually all B’s and A’s (I don’t even think there are any courses with a median grade of “C” or even “C+” these days).</p>
<p>Don’t forget though, on an absolute scale grades mean nothing. When it comes down to it, you are competing with other Cornellians and people at other top schools to get jobs/get into grad school. So is it really any easier? No, not really. In fact, I would argue that it is harder because nowadays its way more competitive and most successful students not only get high GPA’s but are involved in a plethora of EC’s such as sports, clubs, research, saving the world, etc. Back in the day you weren’t expected to do so much in order to get into the next thing after college.</p>
<p>So even if you are that 26 credit/semester engineer/premed who has a 4.3, you’re still gonna lose to that 3.7 guy who took a reasonable courseload and has research/internships and other extracurricular aspects that are so necessary these days.</p>
<p>Biology from my knowledge is soft science. Physics is hard science. However, what I think isn’t always right (my AP Bio teacher said bio is soft because it does not involve math.)</p>
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