<p>I don't go to either Cornell or Penn, but I definitely prefer Penn. </p>
<p>In terms of Penn's ranking in the ivy league, I don't see it changing anytime soon. HYP's place at the top is pretty set in stone. I personally see Penn (and Columbia) as being a tad above the remaining Ivies.</p>
<p>I have been browsing over the CC threads for the last few years mainly because I wanted to see what the general climate is like out there in the college-admissions land. One to help my two kids' college choices and another just to satisfy my curiosity. I have to say that one thing that both amuses me and at the same time disturbs me a great deal is the tendency of HS kids paying so much attention and arguing over minute "ranking" differences over great schools like this thread.
Both my wife and I are Wharton MBA and Penn medical grad. My older son turned down Stanford engineering to go to Penn bioengineering and econ., because he wanted to experience the east coast culture rather than staying back in Cali. ( And I agreed whole-heartedly with that because a college experience is more than just academia but a total growth experience.) As for my younger son, he found Cornell a better fit and chose Cornell AEM over Wharton.
So I have to say I have an unbiased view of both schools.
With that preface, I would like to offer a few observations and opinions:
1. While there is no questions that HYP has a long standing in perceived superiority in reputation in the U.S. establishment or old-money society, Cornell and Penn both have very respectable position in the eyes of the real working world. They both have the reputation of producing hard working, no-nonsense, knowledgeable and driven employees. So they both have extremely good employment prospects.
2. Although in the recent years, certain Wharton grads have put on this entitlement attitude that is becoming a problem for some recruiters. I think this is precisely a result of these ranking games that give naive young people this unearned feeling of "superiority and competence". Which, BTW, are the same criticism against some HYPS grads. Whereas, Cornell grads, perhaps due to the "so called lack of respect" are more willing to put in the solid work required and thus start gaining real respect from employers. On the whole though, I think Wharton still has an edge in finance related jobs, and Cornell more management type traditional jobs, and consulting about equal.
3. As for the engineering fields, Cornell has a bigger school and hence a wider range of research projects. The ranking is more of a result of the size of the school which ultimately affect the determining factors such as size of faculty, grants received and amount of papers published, etc. As for UG didactic education experience, I think they are comparable. Cornell will undoubtedly offer a wider range of research opportunity if that is one's inclination.
4. Due to the difference in environments, engineering grads from both schools also tend to pursue different career paths. Penn with more consulting and IB whereas Cornell more traditional engineering. Although the IB and consulting path might yield more salary and prestige, the engineers are ultimately what drive our economy and maintain technological position in the world. You can't really say one is more important than the other. It is more ridiculous to rank schools based on these factors.
5.As for the other fields in liberal arts, both have top ranked programs. It really depends on how one take advantage of the opportunities available. For instance, one can get a much better education in a lowly ranked university than one that squanders all the opportunities available in the top ranked school.
6. In my family, there are graduates of all the Ivy's saved Dartmouth, including a past Department Chair at Princeton. In our collective experience, both Penn and Cornell are extremely respected internationally, even more so than some domestically bigger named Ivy's. Other than the fact that they both provide great education, these two schools were extremely proactive in offering educational opportunities to foreign students dating back to the late 1800's and early 1900's, thus establishing a large alumni network and loyalty overseas. A lot of these alumni have becomed influential leaders in various fields and political arena.
7. In the same vein, part of the advantage of going to a top college is to establish a powerful future network, both schools have an excellent and far reaching network in a wide ranging of careers. In that sense, as alum of these schools, we should be thankful for our schools' inclusive admissions policy and the large size of the student population. Contrary to this fact, people on CC who narrowly focus on "selectivity" are using these two factors to denigrate these two respective schools. I find this extremely short-sighted and laughable.
8.And most importantly, we go to college to receive an education, to learn how to think, how to learn and to develop our characters. I find the talk of which school yields the most starting salaries or jobs very disappointing. College should never be misused as trade school. Do not waste such a precious advantage in life. </p>
<p>muerteapablo, I have followed your posts in the Cornell site. Pardon me if you would, it seems to me you have a real chip on your shoulder in regards to the prestige and respect you can get based on the school you go to. If I am not incorrect, you are probably still very disappointed that you did not get to transfer into Yale, which I think would have been the true answer to your torment. I can only advise you to try your best to get over it. Be very thankful you have these two great schools to learn in. Ultimately, in the longer scheme of things, it's what you have learned and get to apply in your life successfully that counts. The " prestige" of the school name will only matter to people that are shallow and ungrounded. You really don't want to work in those places anyway. Yes, it will help you get your first job, but it's what you bring to the table that counts from then on. Both Cornell and Penn , and many top 25 universities can do that well enough. So quit fretting over your school's presumed prestige and focus on getting a real education and develop your own true personal prestige instead.</p>
<p>^^^
That was a really mature reply. The next time anyone of u noobs wants to start a dumba$$ argument read the post above.</p>
<p>A very thoughtful and obviously time-consuming post from bioeng. On behalf of the thread's subscribers, I thank you.
I do have a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I was a rambunctious child from an otherwise button-down family of Harvard grads/doctors, and so in elementary school, when teachers saw my antics and decided that I was stupid, it gave me a bit of an inferiority complex. I spent all of high school trying to rid myself of that, only to be ultimately rejected from Harvard/Yale. Settling on Cornell was VERY depressing at the time, doubly so when I got there to find that most people didn't kill themselves in high school as I had, and weren't so consumed with academics. I felt cheated. I worked hard again to try to transfer to Harvard/Yale; but then Harvard canceled their transfers for the next two years, and Yale rejected me (I kind of expected that). I have other reasons to go to Penn, but prestige is a big deal to me, for whatever screwed up psychological reason, and that governs many of my decisions.</p>
<p>Anyway, here I am with Penn, and although I have resolved to try and forget the rankings nonsense, collegeconfidential makes it awfully hard to do so. Perhaps I should cancel my account? Maybe electroshock therapy would do the trick.</p>
<p>I'm embarrassed by my obsession, but I am justified, occasionally, when people mention someone's name followed by their institution: "Oh yeah, that's ____, he went to Harvard." Whatever. I guess everyone feels this way.</p>
<p>muerteapablo, it takes a brave man to admit to his own short-comings. Congratulations.</p>
<p>You come from a very well educated family, just pay attention to your own family members. See...if any one of them try to hang their hat on the mere name of Harvard, or did they go out to achieve something that they can be proud of and call their own. And remember the old adage which still rings true, "to those that more is given, more is required." That should be what you carry with behind your college name.</p>
<p>I hope someday when someone mentioning your name, it will be "you know ____, what a great human being or what great deed he did" without having to qualify it with any college name because you impress them so much that the college you went to, no matter how prestigious it is, becomes trivial in contrast.</p>
<p>Good luck, and enjoy your time at Penn.</p>
<p>"Settling on Cornell was VERY depressing at the time"</p>
<p>you make me sick. there are a thousand kids who would give an arm and leg for cornell.be thankful for what u have.</p>
<p>I don't want to get involved in this that much, but I have to dispute two things....</p>
<p>1.) Cornell tries to be all-inclusive and accepts inner-city students, unlike Penn which only cares about rankings</p>
<p>As an inner-city student myself, I can say that Penn has done a fantastic job increasing the amount of local Philadelphia students. They recruit constantly at all of the highschools in the city. I personally met my admission rep 3-4 times. They took risks on some friends of mine from highschool - 1200 SAT (old scale) (non-URM) kids got in for example. But they realized a lot of that was due to poor resources. That same friend now has a 3.1 in engineering (not too shabby).</p>
<p>In terms of financial aid, they are extremely accomodating to inner-city and low-income students. They financed my summer study abroad, for example. Now they've been handing out wads of cash to kids from below 100k families.</p>
<p>2.) Penn has no name recognition in Asia</p>
<p>Are you kidding me? Practically the entire country of Singapore goes here :) and the amount of South Koreans, Indians and Pakistanis is high, too. Not second generation Asians - off the boat, spend summer break in Asia asians.</p>
<p>I realize that Penn makes an effort to recruit kids from inner city philadelphia, but c'mon, lets be realistic, Cornell's efforts extend beyond just their locale or even their state. Our entire charter suggests inclusiveness, a standard set back in 1860s. We were the first institution to admit women, and many of the academic programs are first of their kind. I find it hard to believe that any of the other Ivy League institutions do anything remotely as good. </p>
<p>Secondly, no bad on your friend, but I don't think a 3.1 gpa is particularly impressive. Especially at Penn Engineering, which is notorious for producing non-engineering engineers, if that makes any sense. </p>
<p>Thirdly, you're dumb. The fact that you have Oriental and south asian students at Penn, doesn't mean that Penn has name recognition. All it means is that some kids knew the Penn existed, by either a) googling the top institutions in the United States or b)his guidance counselor telling him. This by no means proves that the average person would ever know Penn. On the contrary, Cornell is widely recognized in that part of the world because of its goal of being an international institution and that fact that it created the first overseas US medical school. There are other factors as well, which I won't get into. </p>
<p>@muer - "settling on Cornell" - ok.......well, its unfortunate that people with your mentality pervade these boards, but w/e. I'm just going to say, that such things aren't important.</p>
<p>^a 3.1 not impressive when the average at SEAS is bellow a 3 while his SATs were 200+ points bellow the average for SEAS admits? Glad to see that only Cornell engineers have a tough curriculum while the rest of the engineers in the Ivy League coast through easy classes to get their degrees.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Our entire charter suggests inclusiveness, a standard set back in 1860s.
[/quote]
If Quakers weren't the first all inclusive people in the USA then I don't know who was.</p>
<p>Finally, I strongly doubt that the average person in Asia knows Cornell or Penn. If they know an American college it is Harvard. Either way the average person in Asia is probably most concerned with the risings costs of food than any American university.</p>
<p>cornell2011, ignore stupid comments from high schoolers. They don't know what they are talking about. No student who actually goes to Penn (excluding recent admits to the class of 2012) has said anything bad about Cornell. Why are you attacking Penn students for displaying the positive aspects of their university?</p>
<p>cornell2012, I go to Cornell and I feel that you are not being fair with regards to Penn. In Asia, Penn enjoys a pretty big rep, just like Cornell. It is funny, most Asians know Penn by "UPenn", and they wouldn't know it if you say "University of Pennsylvania" or just "Penn". Also, most people don't know that Wharton is a part of Penn. They think that Wharton is like LSE, a seperate, ultra-prestigious Econ/Biz school in the U.S. If people knew that Wharton was a part of UPenn, I suspect that Penn's prestige would soar to rival that of Stanford's or even Yale's. </p>
<p>To the OP, muerteapablo, unfortunately, as I suspected, you are just another prestige-obsessed sad individual who is out of touch with the reality. You launched numerous attacks on Cornell and its student body as being inferior. I would suggest, now that you have transferred, to move on to care about more deeper things, such as your studies, career goals, rather than caring about the perceived prestige. To be honest with you, neither Cornell nor Penn will give you that ultra prestige you seek, only HYPS will do. You remind me of that old Cornell poster on CC named "bball", who was also prestige-obsessed, who transferred out of Cornell to Northwestern, then again to transfer to UPenn after getting rejected from Columbia, Yale, Harvard, and Brown every year he applied. Perhaps you guys could meet up at Penn.</p>
<p>I know, I'm probably not being fair, but I think most of that was motivated by emotion, rather than rationale. I know Penn is a great school, I applied to it for goodness sake, but it ticks me off that people discredit Cornell, without any warrants for their claims. Its motivated EXCLUSIVELY by hearsay.</p>
<p>And, I honestly don't know what level of prestige people are looking for? HYPS? I don't think Penn and Cornell are far behind. And don't even compare Brown and Cornell, we're light-years ahead in that.</p>
<p>"And, I honestly don't know what level of prestige people are looking for? HYPS? I don't think Penn and Cornell are far behind. And don't even compare Brown and Cornell, we're light-years ahead in that."</p>
<p>This is simply according to you. For me, Brown is "light-years" ahead of Cornell.</p>
<p>This thread is hilarious. You guys might as well be debating which archangel is more prestigious. (Uriel: the worst archangel?)</p>
<p>Both Penn and Cornell are easily among the 20-30 most vibrant, successful universities in the world right now. The opportunity to attend either is a tremendous privilege. Anyone who has reason to care about such things knows that. Does Harvard or Stanford have more man-on-the-street name recognition in Asia? Doubtless. But who cares? What does that do for you, other than giving your great-uncle in Szechuan bragging rights at the mah-jong club? Harvard and Yale definitely have more name recognition among 12-year-old girls, thanks to The Gilmore Girls, and no one ought to give a hang about that, either. In terms of educational opportunity, the similarities among these elite colleges are fifty times more important than the differences, and in terms of economic opportunity it's about the same.</p>
<p>In any event, merely graduating from anywhere gives you the right to pay retail for coffee at Starbucks. The important question is what YOU do with your opportunities. Penn and Cornell both provide enough great opportunities for fifty undergraduate careers, but that doesn't mean that every undergraduate takes advantage of them. And even if there are meaningful differences among these institutions, those differences will affect, at most, a handful of students at each of them. If you are really making the most of your opportunities at any of these colleges, you will have absolutely nothing to complain about and nothing to regret about not having been at a different one.</p>
<p>Finally, a little history: Cornell was the leading edge of a wave of educational innovation in the second half of the 19th Century -- the same wave that led to the establishment of Stanford, Chicago, Carnegie-Mellon. etc., and to the reorganization of Duke. It was absolutely a leader in adopting the model of German universities to the U.S., and in opening up higher education to the non-rich and to excluded groups like women and ethnic minorities. That legacy ought to be honored. However, the innovations that Cornell made were so influential and so widely copied that Cornell's particular history has almost no practical impact today. Harvard, Yale, Penn as we know them now owe a huge debt to Cornell, but that doesn't mean a whole lot to anyone -- just as all of their debts to Konigsberg and Gottingen don't mean much, either.</p>
<p>ok.....keep dreaming.</p>
<p>^^ well said.</p>
<p>Ivy League Rankings
1. Harvard
1. Yale
1. Princeton
1. Columbia
1. Dartmouth
1. Brown
7. Penn
8. Cornell</p>
<p>I'm glad you guys are fighting for who is the second worst in the Ivy League. No one wants to be last place. :)</p>
<p>Here's a nice little ranking system (not really sure how you came up with yours):
There are lots of relevant ways to measure this: </p>
<p>Endowment </p>
<p>Columbia </p>
<p>Penn </p>
<p>Cornell </p>
<p>Dartmouth </p>
<p>Brown </p>
<p>Endowment per Capita </p>
<p>Dartmouth </p>
<p>Brown </p>
<p>Penn </p>
<p>Columbia </p>
<p>Cornell </p>
<p>Research Spending </p>
<p>Penn </p>
<p>Cornell </p>
<p>Columbia </p>
<p>Brown </p>
<p>Dartmouth </p>
<p>Historical Prestige (hard to compare these schools on this metric) </p>
<p>Columbia </p>
<p>Cornell/Penn </p>
<p>Dartmouth </p>
<p>Brown </p>
<p>Current Prestige (recent Gallup surveys, other alumni group surveys) </p>
<p>(plus hard to compare these schools on this metric) </p>
<p>Penn </p>
<p>Columbia </p>
<p>Cornell </p>
<p>Brown </p>
<p>Dartmouth </p>
<p>Quality of Grad Programs (this is where the prestige really comes from) </p>
<p>Penn (really a HUGE biomedical complex with top 3 bschool, top 7 law school and top 10 humanities program attached to it) </p>
<p>Columbia (top humanities professional schools, top 15 in sciences, top 8 in arts, top 10 in humanities, top 5 law, top 10 business - solid across the board) </p>
<p>Cornell (tops in sciences and engineering, strong humanities) </p>
<p>Brown (humanities, good teaching medical school) </p>
<p>Dartmouth (not as strong as the others) </p>
<p>Overall Relative Ranking based on the above </p>
<p>1 Penn </p>
<p>1.5 Columbia </p>
<p>2 Cornell </p>
<p>6 Brown </p>
<p>8 Dartmouth</p>
<p>get a life people.
vaunting your university and bashing its peers just shows how insecure you are...being humble is still the best way to show pride.</p>
<p>this is so sad...
to penn students, why would even entertain posting here?? To cornell2011, you sound like a winy valley girl who thinks she's smart. I respect your school, but every time you post, my respect for it drops.</p>
<p>Love the school you go to not for its name or prestige. To the OP, if you care about prestige so much, I guarantee you you will fail in life, not because you aren't educated, but because when you come to penn, you will drown yourself in the midst of pursuing prestige, something that has no end. You can always climb higher, wherever you are. Sure, to the grandmother down the block, Penn will be Penn State. Frankly put, I don't give a damn. Last time I checked, grandmother down the block hadn't done anything significant in life.</p>
<p>Will Penn fall? Penn will not fall, but unless you change your mindset, you will. This goes for the Cornell kid as well.</p>
<p>what a joke</p>
<p>Ditto in regards to the posts of Rister_chutophs and colt45. No wondering some see these too schools to be at the bottom of the ivy league ladder. We're full of insecure immature high schoolers.</p>
<p>Haha, I love how you quickly dismiss all my posts and use stereotype to do it. I'm the only one on here making any warranted claims, with evidentiary backing, barring a few irrational comments. You on the other hand, have no objective way of determining how intelligent I am or who I am. I don't care about your opinion, because I don't know your credentials, nor do I care what you think of me. However, if you can objectively convince of your beliefs, then that's a different story.</p>