<p>Please...for the sake of my sanity. I want to apply to HumEc, but my friends and family are all convinced it's a "joke" school. apparently CAS and engineering are the only "real" schools, and hotel managment, but only if you're specially interested in it.</p>
<p>Honestly, I have no idea about the "prestige" or "respectability" of any of cornell's schools. I only know that as a student, my interests/passions will be satisfied at either CAS, HumEc, or engineering (I want to be a pre-med student with some kind of science major, possibly an english double major, and I want plenty of research opportunities). I am putting CAS as my first choice, but I'm stuck on the second choice. Engineering or HumEc? Honestly, I'd prefer HumEc, but engineering seems to have the higher acceptance rate for girls and it is apparently more respectable. apparently.</p>
<p>And of course, my parents are the ones paying for college, and they really buy into "prestige" and rankings. If I can't convince them HumEc is a highly respectable school, they'll just tell me to not bother applying.</p>
<p>So can anyone please shed some insight/light into this matter?</p>
<p>Cornell is Cornell. It is an Ivy League institution, with superb academics in all of its schools. The College of Human Ecology is a very unique school, especially as an undergraduate institution, and as such it is very highly respected. NO ONE is going to look down on you because you attended a particular school at Cornell. Please feel free to search this forum for related threads that have reached this same conclusion.</p>
<p>I certainly hope you don't buy into the whole prestige thing like your parents do. First of all, your degree, no matter which college you go to, is going to say Cornell University, not whichever particular college you attend. Second, Human Ecology is one of the best college's you can possibly attend for the majors it offers. However, it's not about rankings, it's about what kind of premed you want to be. I am not sure, but I believe there are 3 colleges where majors strongly relate to the premed program, CAS, CALS, and HumEc. Usually people who want to focus on more of the human side of medicine (not as opposed to animals, but think human interactions, communities, etc) take up either a Human Biology, Health and Society major or Biology and Society major. There are also a fairly large amount of people majoring in Human Development going for premed.</p>
<p>So even though your parents might be paying for it, I damn sure hope you have the gull to fight to choose the college YOU want and the major YOU want. You're going to do your best where you want to be, not where your parents want you to be. A vast number of majors are common for premedical sciences and you can bet that all of them are successful programs for sending kids into medical school. So if you know the end result is "medschool" which makes your parents happy (and I really hope you as well), then I'd suggest choosing the path to get there yourself.</p>
<p>Yeah, I think you should worry more about getting accepted rather than the individual prestige of each school at Cornell, because as ThePhilosopher said, Cornell is Cornell. Individual prestige does not exist. Focus more on fit, because that is the most important thing when it comes to choosing a school. The more you fit into the program, the better chance of being accepted. You would be surprised of how many students with strong academic records are rejected each year due to a lack of fit.</p>
<p>Acceptd is just flat-out annoying the CRAP out of me.</p>
<p>And yes, apply to the program at Cornell that best suits your interests. However, I did so with a strong academic record and got deferred anyway.
"Easy to get into", eh?
Don't buy into the whole Cornell-is-sooooo-easy-to-get-into schtick. It's not. Many applicants with ridiculously high grades/SATs get rejected because of "fit", which is a very abstract and subjective thing.</p>
<p>a word to advice to prestige-$*#@'s who shall not be named-</p>
<p>In times of economic instability (and that's a conservative label for this period), do you really think the first thing on employer's minds' is the prestige of the applicant's undergraduate education? I believe some of you are confusing prestige with connections (and this is a huge mistake! They are very different!!) . And being that Cornell has a vast alumni network, I would be comfortable in saying most Cornell grads. will have plenty of connections. You can lead a horse to water but does that mean he will drink? Cornell, like all of the ivy-league schools, gives you great tools to work with. It is the carpenter's job to make use of them...</p>
<p>Apply to the college that best suits your interests AND that your high school academic strengths and activities fit with. Engineering (hard sciences-math, physics) is very very very different from HumEc (human biology mixed with a lot of psych, sociology, etc). </p>
<p>The first choice school you apply to is the most important anyway- do your parents know this? Even if they say HumEc isn't prestigious, would they discourage you from applying to CAS as your first choice?</p>
<p>OP - your parents are paying, it is your job to convince them on how to spend their money. You sound like a good fit for CAS. You should be very certain Engineering is where you could be happy at before you put it as your second case, just in case if you should get in. From what I have gathered, it is a lot harder to switch out of Engineering than any other school. My daughter's friends have switched out of CAS into Hotel, from AEM into CAS. With Engineering, once you declared you are switching out they put you on a different track for a semester, if you are not successful in getting into another school then you could possibly lose your spot in Engineering. I think because Engineering courses are so difficult it's hard to make up that semester. This is all from my daughter's friends' experience. Maybe someone could share their actual experience here. Don't apply to Engineering if you have absolutely no interest, and it is also very difficult.</p>
<p>IMO, the "second choice" option has almost no utility if CAS is your first choice. Because the colleges and their curricula are so different that another of the myriad arts & sciences colleges in this country should almost always be preferred to one of Cornell's specialty colleges, which have vastly different curricula and programs of study. Assuming you want a liberal arts education in the first place. And if not, then why CAS?</p>
<p>IMO you should apply to schools that actually best suit your academic interests and objectives. Hum Ec ,engineering, and CAS each have particular curricula, quite different actually, that can't possibly appeal to you equally.</p>
<p>there is no glory in being admitted to, and then attending, a college whose program of studies does not match your interests well, as compared to other colleges you could have attended.</p>
<p>Ithaca, NY is a nice place, but it isn't so special a location that you should go there to study just anything whatsoever, without regard to the curriculum.</p>
<p>whats with the hatred.. lol Of course cornell is a godly school. it's ivy league afterall. I'm not bashing on it if you misinterpreted.. all i'm saying is that saying to your future employer at an interview that you went to HYP is infinitely times better than telling him/her that you went to cornell... if you try to dispute that, then idk wht to say</p>
<p>but no cornell still amazing - and tell your parents that the diff. colleges of Cornell won't really have different prestige levels in the eyes of future employers.</p>
<p>well if i went to an interviewer for an architecture firm, being from cornell architecture is more "prestigious" than being from HYP. even if they have programs, HYP's 4-year programs arent even ranked on design intelligence's annual ranking, whereas cornell is number 1. thus, your statement is false.</p>
<p>lol... now talk about CAS < which is what i originally intended (just thought you'd be able to understand that it was implied -- obviously you're not capable of making that jump in logic by yourself)</p>
<p>Actually, Acceptd, you didn't mention that. And an insinuation that it would be a "logical jump" is, simply, illogical. CUAmbassador11 was simply responding to what you said, and what you said is, indeed, incorrect. There is no reason to degrade other members of this forum. Constructive discussion of the topic would be the most useful thing on this thread.</p>
<p>acceptd, there was no need to be rude on your part. i was just proving a point and indicating why your post has no proof to reinforce it. and apparently, because you claimed to be talking about CALS even though you made no indication whatsoever, you are unable to be clear in your writing...maybe thats why you were deferred from yale ED instead of being "acceptd". you arent even in college yet. stop trying to outsmart someone who is</p>
<p>and are you trying your chances at all of the ivys? thats not a very logical idea either.</p>
<p>Cornell is the hardest Ivy to stay in for all four years. It has the only ivy hotel management school and it is the best program in the world. It has an outstanding engineering school and is ranked very highly when it comes to undergraduate business programs. These types of posts are what's annoying about the college process. Everyone wants a name rather than substance, which is understandable since it has been ingrained in our heads that Harvard, Princeton, and Yale are the end all or be all of good schools. Cornell is as prestigious as it gets so be lucky if you go there.</p>
<p>You CAN'T rank the colleges within Cornell. Each one is unique. You can't compare totally different institutions like that: Apples and oranges...</p>