<p>Do any of you have a student (especially a graduate student) at Cornell? My daughter is considering Cornell as an option for grad school, but is a little hesitant about living in Ithaca for 5 years--in spite of being very impressed with Cornell's programs and the faculty she will likely be working with. She worries that this will be an isolated 5 years with not much to do. She is also considering UCLA, and she fell in love with the bustling environment of LA, although she concedes a Cornell degree may give her a some better options in the long run. Any opinions will be much appreciated.</p>
<p>Well, my H went to grad school in Ithaca -- master's from IC, PhD from Cornell -- and stayed for a total of 30 years. Indeed, I suspect the population growth of Ithaca is simply because so many people can't bear to leave after they have finished school!</p>
<p>Ithaca offers quite a lot; I say this as a visitor to the town during H's and my 3 years of courtship. There are theater, music, and other events in and around the town. One of the things I think H has found upsetting is the cost of such entertainment in the DC area, where a ticket to a university orchestra concert can easily be $25, whereas there are a lot of freebie/inexpensive college/university events in Ithaca.</p>
<p>If we could afford to buy another house, we'd definitely look to buy one in Ithaca. It's a very nice place to live, despite the cold, snowy winters!</p>
<p>Not a kid, but a young cousin (well, he's 30 now) who got his PhD at Cornell two years ago. He had to be pried out of Ithaca with a crowbar (and very lucrative compensation at a job he loves). But he is someone who would rather go biking or rock climbing than go dancing or to the symphony.</p>
<p>I have a friend who went to Cornell for law school. She has spent the past 20 years fixing up an old farm near Ithaca and buying land around it. She spends every minute she can there. It's a four-hour-plus drive from where she works. She could have gotten as nice a farm much closer -- she wanted to be there. She's also an outdoorsy person, though, not a clubber.</p>
<p>I have to concur with Owlice-- while Ithaca is obviously nothing like LA, there is a lot going on there in the way of music, theater, restaurants, and outdoor activities. I went to Cornell as a undergrad and was very sad when it was time to leave. H and I actually bought a house there several years ago where we try to spend much of the summer. It is still a great place to live.</p>
<p>My husband went to Cornell as an undergrad and loved Ithaca. It's a great college town with plenty of inexpensive things to do--restaurants, concerts, movies. If she doesn't mind cold winters it's a great place. He went to Columbia for graduate school. While there's no place like NYC it wasn't nearly as affordable so many opportunities were out of reach. Can your daughter visit and talk with some current grad students to get their views?</p>
<p>I lived in Ithaca when I was in 10th grade and again while my H was a postdoc at Cornell for 6 years. Both kids were born there. As the bumper stickers say: Ithaca is Gorges! The only downside for us was the months of gray, cloudy, overcast skies. Very depressing and I think that's the only reason I wouldn't want to live there again.</p>
<p>I came from Chicago to do graduate work at Cornell. I loved living in Ithaca. It has many of what you would think of as city amenities with none of the city hassles. There is good food, lots of movies. Many of the other people in my program, who were from New York, were very unhappy however.
Does she like the outdoors at all? The hiking nearby is superb and downhill skiing at Greek Peak not that far away -- as well as swimming in waterfalls in the summer, etc.</p>
<p>What kind of grad program is she entering? Is it one where she'll have dozens of classmates and a college-orientation-style introduction to them? I found law school to be quite sociable; once you get to know your classmates, you're having potlucks and parties and so on, and it matters less that you aren't in the city.</p>
<p>If she's looking at the kind of PhD program that takes two or three students a year and you only know the people in your lab, I'd be more worried about the location.</p>
<p>She's not much of an outdoor person--but will probably enjoy swimming in the waterfalls, that sounds like fun! She is very interested in music and is a classically trained violinist (although this interest took a back seat during the undergrad engineering years). Are there good symphonies and other classical music performances in the area? Do students travel to New York occasionally to enjoy all it has to offer?</p>
<p>Hanna: She will be entering an engineering program and will have many other entering classmates. There were about 15 at her visit weekend, and I think there were two such weekends.</p>
<p>I think the fact that it was sunny and gorgeous in LA during her visit, versus rainy and cold in Ithaca may be part of the reason for the hesitation! Cornell is giving her a better assistantship though, whereas LA will be a more expensive place to live with less money.</p>
<p>For the performing arts, Ithaca also is home to Ithaca College, which has a fine and large offering in music, musical theater, and acting. The campus is a few miles from Cornell, but it's another resource to see performing arts from serious undergrads pursuing those fields. We're not talking Julliard here, but it's a music BFA kind of place. The musical theater program there is among the tops in the country, so probably lots of free student shows if Cornell students choose to go over to the "other" campus in town.</p>
<p>My cousin went to Cornell for a PhD in a field related to biogenetics and then on to post-docs at UMichigan at Ann Arbor, much career satisfaction. </p>
<p>The town of Ithaca is particularly charming, artsy, quaint, cute (I must be making the locals sick by now, sorry). Area residents include many who settled there to pursue alternative lives in the l960's and l970's, and never left each other. It's not your typical upstate New York farming town, not at all. I'm sure it's full of many social surprises once you get up close to it. Just no malls and box stores. </p>
<p>The weather? You can't get much different than UCLA for weather. Summers and fall are delightful in upstate NY, actually pretty perfect. Makes up for winter.</p>
<p>I think there's a bus from Ithaca to Penn Station in the heart of NYC, and it might take 3 or 4 hours one-way by commercial Trailways (or Greyhound?) bus. That makes an overnight possible on any weekend. Plus MANY students at Cornell and Ithaca College originate from the NYC area, so there is likely much ridesharing. My guess is it's an event to achieve a few times per term, not every single weekend. NYC is the city that most influences upstate NY, so she'd likely hear about things from there and find others aware of events. There's an influence, a relationship, in other words to pursue, with effort for special occasions.</p>
<p>My H is closer to NYC now that we're married and he's moved to the DC area than he was when he lived in Ithaca.</p>
<p>He went to IC and Cornell for degrees in music composition, BTW.</p>
<p>There is a bus that goes from Cornell to NYC regularly, so yes, some students do go into NYC. </p>
<p>There are so-so to great classical music performances in Ithaca; the area hosts visiting artists and there are regional groups in the area, some better than others, but then, that's true everywhere. She's unlikely to get to hear the Concertgebouw live in Ithaca, but then, she'd be unlikely to hear it live in most places in the US! There is a vibrant, and sometimes quirky, classical music scene in Ithaca. (Opera Cowpokes, anyone? :) ) </p>
<p>Concerts are generally much less expensive in Ithaca than in LA, DC, NYC, Chicago. Of course, LA has an excellent orchestra and a great chorus associated with it, in addition to a fairly new and very good concert hall; she will not find that in Ithaca.</p>
<p>But she will find a lovely, active, very liveable city.</p>
<p>H was able to go to more live music in Ithaca than he is able to here because it's so expensive here (for not-very-good performances, even); it's a wonder the man married me!</p>
<p>paying, there are box stores in Ithaca now: Best Buy and Home Depot and Walmart have found their way in. They are not downtown, however.</p>
<p>Ah, I missed them. I was too delirious eating all that great vegetarian food over at Mollie Katzen's place (author of Moosewood Cookbook). I should have known the boxes would tap into the Ithaca market...somehow! Smart to make them wait outside of town. Sounds like good local political organization, grassroots style.</p>
<p>Ahhhhh, Moosewood!!!!!! Yum!</p>
<p>Yes, I was going to break the bad news about the box stores. Great grocery stores, though -- TOPS and Wegman's as well as small co-ops.
When I was there, I ushered for the classical music series at Bailey Hall -- saw Kiri TeKanawa, Rostropovich, and many others, all for free. E.B. White was once the head usher for Bailey Hall -- a great tradition!</p>
<p>I graduated from Cornell and then got a master's degree there. My husband spent five years at Cornell getting a PhD. We have a daughter who is an undergraduate there now.</p>
<p>I would recommend Cornell as a good place for a graduate student. There are things to do, but not too many of them, and they generally don't cost a lot. Therefore, graduate students don't get too distracted from their work or too frustrated about not having enough money to pursue the interesting forms of entertainment around them. I would think that living in a big city like LA on a graduate student's stipend would be torture. </p>
<p>Cornell students should definitely check out what's happening at Ithaca College, and vice versa. Too many students never do this, and they miss out on a lot.</p>