<p>Well, as with any assessment of schools, you’ve chosen a certain perspective through which to view it. I think, within the context of your assertion that a better school is one that provides more top quality academic choices, then one is hard pressed to find any school better suited than Cornell. </p>
<p>Your position does, however, negate the value of small, specialized liberal arts colleges, some of which are every bit as rigorous as any university and better in many ways. Yours is a “bigger is better” paradigm, which is neither right nor wrong.</p>
<p>Nooblet, my adequately named new friend - perhaps in the future a slice of humble pie would be in order before declaring another person “Wrong.” without knowing the facts.</p>
<p>@AppleJack
I did not say that cornell ILR is a public school. I said it is “partially public, partially” private. If you read the wikipedia page of cornell ILR, it is classified as statutory- a school that receives significant public funding from government.</p>
<p>Thank you callers, we have a winner! I’m not going to voice an opinion about whether Cornell is the best Ivy. I merely point out that it’s not as good as Duke, a non-Ivy. ;-)</p>
<p>Well, yes, we’re certainly better at basketball, but there are a few other matters that I can call to your attention:</p>
<ol>
<li> Duke’s overall undergraduate ranking: 9 (Cornell 15)</li>
<li> Duke’s medical school ranking: 6 (Cornell 16)</li>
<li> Duke’s law school ranking: 11 (Cornell 13)</li>
<li> Duke’s business school ranking: 14 (Cornell 18)</li>
<li> Duke’s world universities ranking: 14 (Cornell 16)</li>
</ol>
<p>As Marissa Tomei would say: “OH MY GOD, WHAT A F—ING NIGHTMARE!!!”</p>
<p>Most importantly, I’ve been to Ithaca in January. My personal ranking of Cornell’s 6+ months of winter weather: 0</p>
<p>Seriously, dude, NO ONE on this thread is saying that Cornell isn’t a world class, elite university – including me. But your posts on the subject come across as smug – and that is not worthy of someone with a Cornell education. Hardly what Uncle Ezra had in mind. Something to think about.</p>
<p>This whole “which school is best” thing has become SOOO annoying. Truth is, schools are nothing more than a tool that we use to achieve our goals. Yes, Cornell has many programs, but does that make it a better school? No, because the average student isn’t interested in studying EVERY program. If I come to study business, I don’t give a damn about whether or not a forestry program is available.</p>
<p>The “best” school is the one that helps you achieve your goals easiest. Rankings are based on a school’s AVERAGE ability to do that. No one should care about that. </p>
<p>Example: I get into Cornell and Emory (example), and I want to be a doctor. I find out that Cornell is notorious for grade deflation, and that I could probably get a better GPA at Emory, despite it being ranked lower. In reality, in this situation - EMORY is a better choice for me.</p>
<p>^We can do this all day if you like. My world university rankings come from USNWR and the QS rankings. According to the ARWU rankings, UC Berkeley comes in at number 2 – I assume that you therefore have no problem with a public university (God forbid) being ranked significantly higher than an Ivy like Cornell? The point of my earlier post was simply this – there is no one “best” university, Ivy League or otherwise, by any objective measure. To assert otherwise is just plain silly.</p>
<p>^ In my opinion you take the OP’s initial post much to literally. Was it biased in favor of Cornell? Of course. That was the point – to make a “feel good” post that accommodates the school pride (in the positive sense of the word) of Cornellians. The way I take it the OP was working to balance out the equation of the “worthiness” of Ivy League schools, where Cornell sometimes (but not always) gets compared in an undeserved fashion on these boards. The OP was making the case that Cornell is a world-class university, and that Cornellians need not make the mistake of thinking otherwise.</p>
<p>Darkice said it best. If the OP meant to say cornell is secretly the best ivy for certain fields, I would absolutely agree. I wouldn’t argue that cornell is best for forestry. However, for most popular fields (business/ econ, biology, law, ect) cornell is not the best.</p>
<p>This is an excellent point that deserves a lot of credit. Also consider: finances. Anyone spending 200k on an undergrad education is either very rich, or being highly irrational. </p>
<p>
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<p>Between Duke and Cornell, I would simply go with whichever gave me a nicer fin aid package. Although, its basketball program would be a slight plus. I am utterly shocked at the dramatic downfall of Cornell’s MBA. It used to be a solid top 10-12 school not too long ago. It is becoming more of a second tier MBA as time progresses. I am hoping this won’t be the case with other programs at Cornell.</p>
<p>This thread has devolved into the boring old ranking bickering (and, of course, Duke showed up right on cue). All the OP was stating is that there is no other school that offers as much access to knowledge across so many disciplines at such a consistently high and rigorous level. </p>
<p>That’s it. That’s all. By the OP’s metric of more options is better, he believes Cornell to be at the top. That’s why I chose it - most other schools boxed me in too much and limited my learning potential. Other people can use other metrics to determine other values, which they do all the time. </p>
<p>@nooblet - All universities / colleges receive some sort of government money, especially in the form of grants. I’m well aware of what statutory / contract colleges are, especially at Cornell. It’s hard for outsiders to delineate the fine print due to Cornell’s public / private role in certain schools, but rest assured that Cornell is officially designated and run as a 100% private university across all schools - regardless of which receive state funding.</p>
<p>I don’t mean to bash Cornell, but to say no school is on its level is presumptuous. Cornell is unique, but that doesn’t necessarily make it better.</p>
<p>
That’s great and yes those fields are needed, but just because Cornell offers them doesn’t mean that Cornell is a better all-around school, especially when the vast majority of top college applicants are looking to enter the “European” arts and sciences. </p>
<p>
This is probably your most valid point, but Princeton has great engineering too, and the others are not all that far behind.</p>
<p>Edit: Just looked it up. Cornell is 10th on USNEWS for engineering, Princeton is 17th, Columbia 18th, Harvard 19th, and Penn 23rd. That’s not a big difference for one area of study.</p>
<p>
Again, breadth is nice, but a significant number (maybe even the majority?) of business oriented students at top schools are looking to enter finance or similar fields. Wharton, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and Dartmouth are all much better at getting students jobs in this area.</p>
<p>
I’m 99.5% sure you just made this up off the top of your head, and 99% sure it’s not even true.</p>
<p>Larger schools are at disadvantage come recruiting season. More number of students are competing for same slots of jobs. I agree that an individual has less competition, and thus higher chances of landing a good offer, coming out of Dartmouth than Cornell. The thing is that each company wants to hire certain numbers of students from each top school. I read somewhere that Williams College has the best Wall Street placement, even better than Harvard by percentage. If Wall Street (IBD) or top consulting is your goal, avoid large schools if possible.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This shouldn’t matter, even if this is correct. A company recruiting at your campus doesn’t mean that it will give you an offer; you will be lucky to even land an interview from Goldman in this economy.</p>
<p>What makes your Arts & Sciences program better than Cornell’s? Other than the ranking, like what specifically are you learning at your school that Cornell students can’t learn at Cornell?</p>
<p>I can only speak for ILR, but that school experiences heavy specialized recruiting. Others should post where their colleges have been recruited to for comparison.</p>
<p>Lazykid, you’re just too much. Why don’t you acknowledge the excellence and continuous improvement of Cornell in undergrad business education. Consistently top 5 ranked by Bloomberg Business Week, which is probably the most reputable source of business information. Top 10 ranked by US News. Recent recipient of a $25 million gift, which will further improve the program.</p>
<p>My daughter, a senior at Cornell, 2 of her very good friends interned at Goldman last summer and will be working there upon graduation (one hotellie and one engineer). My daugher will be doing the same at a different firm. For LazyKid’s benefit, she turned down offers from GS and MS. When my daughter was doing her rounds last year, Cornell was consistently well represented, more so than MIT, Stanford. Almost every IB recruited at Cornell last year, and I am sure they did this year also. She saw same group of kids at most those interviews.</p>
<p>Big schools, like Cornell, has a big advantage when it comes to recruiting, especially when the economy is not good. Companies would rather go to a large, well respected schools to recruit because they would get more bang for their bucks. Firms may cut back on making a trip to Williams, Colgate or CMU, but would still make a trip Cornell.</p>
<p>I have hired from Cornell, and in genral Cornell students are down to earth (practical) and extremely hard working, compared to students from other schools, a lot less pretentious. I think in general employers have very good opinions of Cornell students.</p>
<p>“Larger schools are at disadvantage come recruiting season. More number of students are competing for same slots of jobs.”</p>
<p>That’s not how I see it, from my experiences in finance and recruiting/hiring.
Students are not competing for jobs merely vs. others at one particular college or university, they are competing for jobs against everyone else in the country, or at least everyone else, taken together as one huge pool, at all the places we interviewed. The goal is to get the best people we can into the company. If we thought there would be more good candidates at one school than at another, we would just send an appropriate number of interview teams to do the initial on-campus screenings. </p>
<p>Firms choose where to recruit in part based on “bang for the buck”; it is expensive to divert employees from their normal line responsibilities, so wherever they are sent there has to be reasonable likelihood that they will be presented with a suitable number of seemingly qualified candidates worthy of screening, and there will be a “yield” of some promising future employees. Schools that have a lot of such students are more likely to be visited than schools that don’t probably have many at all.</p>