<p>spacygirl - Congrats on your decision! Like every college, Cornell will have pros/cons, with the lists varying a bit from student to student. If you have time next year, please add a post here so hs students can have another sampling of student view.</p>
<p>ok! ill try to remember!</p>
<p>First off, I apologize to CC community and Maitai for the ■■■■■ comment. In general, CC seems to be a pretty courteous place, so I’ll do better in the future. My usual places to hang out on the internet tend to be sports forums, where jumping in and just saying “The Yankees suck” and “Jeter is a bum” will get you called a ■■■■■ and a lot worse. Some of the comments on here woke up a sleeping BearInHoney who suddently felt like he had to defend his den. He really is usually a peaceful bear :-).</p>
<p>Maitai, my real issue wasn’t that you had a different opinion than I, but that you chose to respond to a 17 or 18 year old’s question about where to go college in the manner you did. Your first comments about Cornell and Ithaca (post 12) were not any more useful than saying “the Yankees suck” to the OP and the general tone didn’t change much as the thread went on. If you had simply stated your opinion of Cornell and Ithaca in the same manner as Rutgers, I wouldnt have even paid much attention. </p>
<p>Ithaca is a very small city and is now pretty much a college town. With about 100000 residents in the county and 25000 students, it is small and everything about it will be proportionally scaled the mall, downtown, night life etc. It has good and bad parts, relatively affluent and poor, safe and unsafe. Like most places. And if you are not familiar with much of the country outside the big cities, things are spread out. Lots of farms and trees. It blows some peoples minds!</p>
<p>Ithaca is rather isolated from other places its 4 hrs from NYC, no trains, some Greyhound like buses and a 2-3 flights a day to Newark, Detroit and Philly on puddle jumpers. A car is a very useful thing in Ithaca traffic is non existent in the way folks around the city are used to. Make friends with someone with one if you cant bring one. You can be in Syracuse, Rochester, or Binghamton in the same time a you could get into Manhattan from the suburbs. If you dont have access to a car, you can feel very stranded - because you are!</p>
<p>Maitai, you are right there is not much tech industry in the immediate area. So students shouldnt expect to have a lot of opportunities for part time jobs, internships etc in the tech industry while attending classes. It is a real shame that the New York State business climate makes it very difficult to start up new businesses. The states laws, regulations, policies, labor history etc might be beneficial or at least tolerable in the city, but in Upstate, they just drive costs, taxes, workers comp, etc so high that a new business simply cant compete. VCs just take their money elsewhere. Talk to your local legislator or senator about that PLEASE.</p>
<p>And you are also right - all of UpstateNY has been affected by this. Manufacturing in particular has been gutted, either going south or out of the country. Tremendous companies are completely gone. New York City used to be a major manufacturing center too same story. But in areas Im familiar with at least, tech employment is more of mixed bag, especially for degreed engineers and computer scientists. GE used to employ over 20000 in Syracuse building TV sets and other electronics back in the 1950 and 60s. What is left of that business is now Lockheed Martin there about 2000 employees. Now losing 18000 jobs is terrible for the people involved and the community no doubt about it. But Ill bet you that they have as many engineers and certainly more programmers there now as they did back in the day if not more. Maybe that number goes up or down some as contracts come and go, but they have been pretty steady there for a long time. Where I work is a very similar story the employee count is down some (not like that!), but the tech staff is up. So keep that in mind when reading about the job exodus from Upstate. There has been a big shift in the skills required for businesses today and the people without the skills got left behind. Assembling TV sets doesnt require much skill and as well all can guess those 18000 TV jobs are now in China. And yes, a lot of time engineers and programmers get caught up in that like when IBM pulled out of Endicott, but sometimes consolidation moves work into NY like at Lockheed in Owego. </p>
<p>In fact, as a percentage of population up here, engineering/compsci is hanging in there pretty well. I happened to go to a science fair at the high school last week and the keynote speaker presented some STEM data that was relevant if a little dated (2010). It showed the percentage of scientists and engineers relative to all workers in NYS by region
.
Western NY (Buffalo) 3.4%
Finger Lakes (Rochester) - 4.6%
Central NY (Syracuse) 3.7%
Southern Tier (Ithaca, Binghamton, Corning) 5.2%
Mohawk Valley (Utica) 2.4%
North Country (Adironacks) 1.9%
Capital (Albany) 4.5%
Hudson Valley (Poughkeepsie) 3.6%
NYC 3.8%
Long Island 2.7%</p>
<p>From <a href=“Labor Data | Department of Labor”>Labor Data | Department of Labor; </p>
<p>It was balanced pretty much as I would have expected based on what I know, but would have guessed the Hudson Valley and especially Long Island areas to be a little higher. They have the raw numbers here: <a href=“Labor Data | Department of Labor”>Labor Data | Department of Labor. </p>
<p>Sure, in sheer numbers the NYC area will have many more opportunities, but this shows UpstateNY is not this vast wasteland for tech employment.</p>
<p>Concerning the suicide rate, if you want to focus solely on the 2009-10 cluster then yes, it is terrible and concerning and yes parents should know but dont you think averaging over time makes some sense? Ive forgotten most of my statistics I learned back in the day, but at a school of over 20000, is this really statistically alarming? I dont know is there a math major listening? </p>
<p>And I didnt mean to knock suffers of SAD- I apologize for that - but in context of the long litany of Ithaca bashing, it was another attempt to paint the place as a horrific place to go to live. My point was the way folks up here deal with the winter is to go out and do something proactive about it before it brings you down. Sure, if someone is depressed, they may not feel like going skiing, but if they had been participating in the ski club or theater or something else, it may have prevented them from being depressed in the first place. If one does not wish to participate in any of these things then trying the light, vitamin D etc is worth a shot, but parents dont send all of your kids up here grow lights, the police will be wanting to know what everyone is growing!</p>
<p>I absolutely agree it is terrible how some kids (and their parents) place so much emphasis on going to the right school. While they are all excellent, folks need to remember that the Ivies are really just a group of schools that bonded together to create a football league! I know there are now more relationships between the league members than sports, blah blah blah, but that was the genesis of it. Should anyone think MIT or Duke or RPI or Stevens is a lesser school today just because they didnt join a football league back the early 20th century? The Ivies is really an example of successful branding.</p>
<p>Concerning the weather Ill rephrase it to state the northeast greater than 60 miles from the coast if it helps. Not denying its colder and cloudier up here in the winter bring a sweater (or two)! But compared to the southeast, Texas, etc, the entire northeast is pretty miserable in the winter. 30 degrees in a Noreaster or 15 degrees in a lake effect storm both pretty unpleasent.</p>
<p>“These are neighborhoods, are they not? Is there a downtown associated with these neighborhoods? Do you mean the small mall (small, relative to malls where I live)? I reserve the right to be wrong. 
Im not at all aware of any other downtown type areas that kids could frequent.”</p>
<p>OK when you said the rest of the place, you were talking about only the area down the hill. I thought you were talking about the entire area. You are right theres not much of a traditional downtown. Once you get away from the big cities, not many cities and towns have a downtown like you and I may have remembered, with shops, restaurants, clubs etc. This is true not just in Upstate, but across the U.S. Some places like Ithaca do try to prop it up with mixed successes. The traditional function of downtown has moved out to the malls and strip plazas. The big boxing of America Im afraid.</p>
<p>The Wegmans comment was a joke - I figured it would get a reaction from you! No good downstate/upstate debate is complete until Wegmans gets mentioned. My point was if you didnt like downtown, go somewhere else / do something else. Thats what we did when we were in Troy. (Like I said a car is a pretty useful thing up here). I did like the cowtipping reference I wish I thought of it before you!</p>
<p>But seriously, if you are need a large club scene or lots of fancy shops, uh, dont come.</p>
<p>I never meant to say there was nothing upstateNY. OK then, were good. I was just countering you nearest career opportunity is more than 200 miles away comment. It was just stunning considering I was reading this on my phone at work at a boring meeting while a new hire recruitment day was going on!! </p>
<p>Lets say for whatever crazy reason you were laid off tomorrow … You characterized the job market up here pretty well limited turnover / limited openings. So if you look on Monster.Com or whatever, it wont seem like much is there, but I think the department of labor reports above provide a better picture. If where I work started having 30% turnover a year instead of single digits, youd be seeing a lot more visibile recruiting going on. Areas with a lot of job hopping also means a lot more people competing for the opportunities. So while there may be fewer openings, you are not competing with the 30% of your coworkers trying to hop too!</p>
<p>If I lost my job, Id actually have a good shot at a few places in town I have a unique niche that they would find useful, but sure in general, Id most likely have to move or at least make an hour or so commute.</p>
<p>My comments meant to compare a school near the city versus Cornell. People kept talking about walking in the woods</p>
<p>And I was responding to the comment that I interpreted as I’m taking about <em>**actually living </em> in the area… going downtown, shopping, nightlife, etc… You know… all that other stuff people do by saying a lot of people consider living doing things other than go downtown, shopping, nightlife. I personally enjoy a mix, but a great number of folks I know have no interest at all in shopping, nightlife, etc. I dont think anyone is saying the Ithaca nightlife = NYC nightlife. Different strokes for different folks.</p>
<p>Actually the total available market for semiconductors in the MetroNY region eclipses upstate. From your work description, you probably have access to the numbers to confirm this. Im not at all surprised at this at all, the MetroNY population and industrial base is probably 4-5 times the size of UpstateNY. I was simply responding to the comments about NYC being the holy land comment. While it may be to you, its not for everyone. Thats all.</p>
<p>Maitai, I do appreciate the reply to my post and change of tone. Even before, besides the Ithaca talk, a lot of what you said was worthwhile reading. I dont expect you to want to move up here or even like the place. And I doubt I will take you up on your offer of career help Im not sure youd give me the best recommendation at this point :-).</p>
<p>A couple of my best buddies at college were from Long Island and had a similar style of being over the top while debating. So I had to learn how to challenge them if I ever wanted to make a point. And wed even get into upstate/downstate arguments from time to time! But since this isnt a debate forum, but a forum where young adults are trying to get help in making a tough decision, we should try to keep it nonimflamatory. Simplying insulting other peoples hometowns/regions does no one any good.</p>
<p>I think we are all in agreement that kids really need to truly understand the school they are going to, the location where they are going and how that all fits into their life vision. I see while reading on CC that a lot of kids are just worried about rankings, status and what other people think. An unhealthy focus by kids and parents on Ivies, HYPSM, the best school etc is a large part of what creates the pressures that makes kids want to jump into that gorge. :-(</p>
<p>It is really all about fit. </p>
<p>Once you get some of your career under you belt, where you went to school becomes less and less important. I have many people Ive worked with everyday for years and I have no idea where they went to school! I can see situations where your schools brand name might be a benefit, but I know of hiring managers who consider going to a top school a negative in their eyes! </p>
<p>And spaceygirl (and all kids), once you get to campus, go out and engage the opportunities there. Join clubs, do activities, get out into the local area get away from the pressures of school and grades from time to time. This is an amazing time of life for you make it good!!!</p>
<p>Seriously - Peace</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>RPI is in a football league, the ECAC. Duke is also in a football league, the ACC.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I know :-)</p>
<p>I wasn’t trying to knock any schools or group of schools. </p>
<p>My point was that IMHO it is misguided for a teenager to make an important life decision based largely on rankings and brand names. I knew kids at RPI who seriously felt like they let their parents down because they didn’t get into an Ivy. Their words, not mine. An 18 yr old kid does not need those kind of pressures.</p>
<p>There may be practical benefits to going to an Ivy over a different school - that’s fine. And some of those practical benefits includes reputation and prestige. But in the two weeks I’ve been lurking on CC I’ve see an unhealthy amount of concern over getting into the Ivys, or a top ten USN&WR ranked school. They are all great schools - no doubt about it. But they were not the best fit for me. RPI was.</p>
<p>And IMO fit is what is important, not rankings or names, especially when some kids and parents are running up huge debts to pay for it. I doubt anyone has felt pressured to go to a school because it was in the ECAC.</p>
<p>Peace</p>
<p>“Your first comments about Cornell and Ithaca (post 12) were not any more useful than saying “the Yankees suck” to the OP and the general tone didn’t change much as the thread went on.”</p>
<p>Well… IMHO… I think your opinion stems from the fact that it is in stark contrast from yours. You think I’m being insulting, but you are mistaken. Very often, parents and prospective students visit these places during the summer and get a completely distorted view of the place. I simply believe kids (and parents) need to know what they see in July is NOT the environment in which they will be attending college.</p>
<p>“So keep that in mind when reading about the job exodus from Upstate.”</p>
<p>I don’t read about it. I live it. UpstateNY is part of the area I cover and I’ve watched electrical engineering jobs and TAM for semis continually dwindle… with little signs of turning around.</p>
<p>“In fact, as a percentage of population up here, engineering/compsci is hanging in there pretty well. … percentage of scientists and engineers relative to all workers in NYS by region. … It was balanced pretty much as I would have expected …”
<a href=“Labor Data | Department of Labor”>Labor Data | Department of Labor;
[Page</a> Not Found - New York State Department of Labor](<a href=“Labor Data | Department of Labor”>Labor Data | Department of Labor). </p>
<p>You may have misinterpreted this data. It is not correlated with population density so it looks, at face value, like there are similar tech opportunities in upstate as downstate. The fact is the downstate area is the most densely populated area in our entire Nation. The small MetroNY area, in fact, has about twice the population as all the rest of NYS combined. </p>
<p>“Sure, in sheer numbers the NYC area will have many more opportunities, but this shows UpstateNY is not this vast wasteland for tech employment.”</p>
<p>Consider you’re on a football field and you have 1000 apples spread evenly on one of the end zones. You’d have to watch where you walked not to step on one. Now consider there are half as many apples spread evenly over the rest of the field. You might be able to walk across it with your eyes blindfolded without touching an apple. </p>
<p>When you consider the number of positions in Upstate, compared to metro areas, and then also consider the relative geographic spread of those positions, there is little to no comparison between the tech environments of upstate and downstate. I’m afraid to say, upstate is indeed a wasteland in comparison.</p>
<p>“Concerning the suicide rate, … is this really statistically alarming? I don’t know – is there a math major listening?”</p>
<p>No need for a math major. IMHO, as a father, I’m interested in the last 5… maybe last 10 years of data. That’s it. Anything that happened over a decade ago at any school is irrelevant and non-representative in any way to the current atmosphere/environment of the school. To average this kind of data over multiple decades is disingenuous, misleading, and amoral… again, IMHO.</p>
<p>“And I didn’t mean to knock suffers of SAD … do something proactive about it before it brings you down. … participating in the ski club or theater or something else…”</p>
<p>I appreciate your position on this, but if you had any idea of the efforts being put forth by Cornell with regards to depression and suicide prevention, you wouldn’t be saying a word about this to me. I know professors and personnel at Cornell… several for over a decade. I break bread with these guys when I’m in the area. This is an issue Cornell takes about as serious as any college could possibly take it. If you were breaking bread with us, NOBODY from Cornell would share your attitude about their suicide/depression rate. They may put forth a positive outlook in the press, but behind the scenes their teaching staff is probably one of the most aware, most trained, most concerned staffs I come in contact with…. and I come in contact with all the STEM universities in UpstateNY. This remains a serious issue at Cornell and I applaud the last few comments you made regarding being involved to all young people considering this or any other school. </p>
<p>“I don’t expect you to want to move up here or even like the place.”</p>
<p>Whew! I was worried there for a bit. </p>
<p>“Simply insulting other people’s hometowns/regions does no one any good.”</p>
<p>You misunderstood my intentions. What I have written are my true opinions about the place. I have no vested interest in liking it or not. I gain no pleasure (perverse or otherwise) in sharing my honest feelings/thoughts/observations about the area. I am simply reporting, to the best of my ability and as honestly as I can, to people interested in the area.</p>
<p>“An unhealthy focus by kids and parents on Ivies, HYPSM, “the best school” etc is a large part of what creates the pressures that makes kids want to jump into that gorge. :-(“</p>
<p>AGREED!!!</p>
<p>“Once you get some of your career under your belt, where you went to school becomes less and less important.”</p>
<p>I totally agree again. That’s why I suggested Stevens (full ride for the OP, if I remember correctly) versus Cornell (full cost, if I remember correctly).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Didn’t the OP had the following choices (approximate four year costs based on post #6)?</p>
<p>Rutgers ($0)
Stevens ($64,000)
Cornell ($240,000)
Brown ($240,000)</p>
<p>Oh yeah… that was it. I was just too darn lazy to look for it in the thread. ;-)</p>
<p>Given that choice, Stevens seems the clear winner to me. IMHO, the only reason the OP would choose Cornell would be due to pressure from USNews ranking zealots. </p>
<p>Which brings up the next soap box to stand on… how USNew does an incredible disservice to students and their families. Not one single metric in their ranking system… NOT ONE!.. measures the success of the student after they leave the school. I find that ridiculous. </p>
<p>I’ve got to believe the burning question in every parent’s mind is “How well will this education prepare my child for a life of success and achievement?” It was certainly the #1 question on my mind.</p>
<p>On the opposite side of the spectrum are rankings from Bloomberg and Payscale, who’s ONLY metric is career success (with regards to salary) and how satisfied they are in their positions. In that scale, Stevens ranks 12 in the nation and Cornell ties at 34 with WPI. With regards to top salaries in engineering, Stevens is #5 in the country. Cornell doesn’t even make the list.</p>
<p>I’m not saying Payscale is perfect, so payscale-haters don’t need to get on my back. </p>
<p>But certainly the USNews ranking system is tragically broken and the education kids think they are getting is clearly not as valuable as they think.</p>
<p>I agree with maikai, do not let peer pressure force you into an unreasonable choice.</p>