<p>I wanna go to Cornell to either study Physics or Engineering, but I'm not too sure about their Physics/Math department.</p>
<p>Are the teachers effective? How well does it prepare you for grad school? I saw the NRC rankings and Cornell was pretty high on Physics, and in the top 15 for Math. Anyone majoring in any type of Physics/Engineering can give me advice?</p>
<p>I narrowed my dream schools between Cornell and Berkeley, and only leaning towards Cornell because the city of Berkeley seems even more boring than Ithaca (I'm an urban person).</p>
<p>Ivy Schools have profs that are there because they do great research, and because they are great teachers. The two categories aren't mutually exclusive.....but there are certainly some awesome profs that don't have books written/papers published recently, and some absolutely terrible teachers that are brilliant.</p>
<p>If you find yourself bored/annoyed with a teacher, try and find another one.</p>
<p>Also, Ithaca isn't a city, true, but it's far from boring. During the school year, I'd imagine Ithaca has an incredible density of the 18-25 year old demographic, and probably disproportionately more than an actual city, so, it's fun.</p>
<p>(and there are many trips, Cornell organized or otherwise, to get to NYC/Boston.)</p>
<p>I'm not certain that Berkeley is more boring than Ithaca. They are probably about the same, with the major difference being that with Berkeley you have Oakland and Frisco not too far away.</p>
<p>The major difference between Berkeley and Cornell is that at Cornell you will not be treated like a number in the math/physics departments. There is a lot of student faculty interaction for physics, math, and engineering physics majors. (The later being a program you should look into.)</p>
<p>I will speak for my daughter. She is a math and economics major. Math is killing her. It is a lot more theorectical and abstract, and she is better at applied math. In comparison she finds econ and finance courses easier. She gets a lot of attention from her math professors. One prof called her in between his flight because she had a homework question. She has weekly problem sets which encourages people to work together. She got a lot of credit for her APs, so she was able to take higher level math courses right away. She complains a lot about difficulty of math courses, but at the same time she also enjoys it.</p>
<p>I studied physics there years ago; then engineering.
I found upper level physics courses to be highly challenging. To be kind.
People who did well in the program went on to top grad programs. As well they should have, they were brilliant. Teaching quality varied from outstanding to pathetic. But in the end, you can do the problems or you can't.</p>
<p>At the time, it was not a cuddly hand-holding kind of place, for me anyway,with the kind of individual attention people are talking about above. I kind of felt I was, in fact, treated like a number; most of my physics major classes were pretty large even in the upper levels. I don't know what it's like now. Some of the same people are still there though.</p>
<p>Engineering was a lot easier, to be perfectly frank. No cuddlies for undergrads there either, when I attended. Much better for grad students.</p>
<p>You would be hard pressed to find many upper level courses in any of these majors with more than 30 students and a median grade less than an A-, let alone a B+.</p>
<p>There definitely isn't much hand holding, especially in the introductory courses. But for any undergrad who is interested in interacting with faculty, the faculty are very much accessible. The faculty to major ratio is probably only 3 or 4 to 1.</p>
<p>You would be hard pressed to find many upper level courses in any of these majors with more than 30 students and a median grade less than an A-, let alone a B+.
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<p>That's not because these courses are easy. That's because almost everyone who is an AEP, physics, or math major is brilliant.</p>
<p>Look into the Applied Engineering Physics department at Cornell, as that will probably suit your interests quite well.</p>
<p>one of my double major is math. I am third year of undergrad, and I would have to say I lean towards monydad's description. i can only speak for the math dept, though, and not AEP or physics. the professors seem more interested in their research, and though this makes sense when in their shoes, it's not of great help to us students. however, as monydad stated, it essentially boils down to aptitude. if you can see the problems and solve them, that will decide your performance in the field - not the approachability of the teachers.</p>
<p>I can only speak for the math classes that I took -- 221, 222, and 311, but I always found the professors to be very accessible and responsive to student inquiry. That being said, I agree that if you can't grasp the material of upper level math classes, there's just no way around it, no matter how much hard work you may put into it.</p>