<p>Schools with similarites to Cornell, preferably less selective. thanks.</p>
<p>The University of Michigan (less selective) and Stanford University (more selective) come to mind.</p>
<p>In terms of being in the middle of nowhere, Notre Dame, which is about equally selective, comes to mind.</p>
<p>Piggybacking:</p>
<p>Anything similar to the Industrial and Labor Relations school?</p>
<p>Tufts, Lehigh, Colgate, Bucknell, JHU, URochester are all somewhat similar, somewhat less selective options.</p>
<p>Seemingly every recent President of Cornell has come from a Big Ten school, so it seems these must be similar, at least in some material aspects relevant to governance.</p>
<p>To be "similar" a university must have several separate undergraduate colleges (the more colleges, the more similar, since Cornell has seven IIRC).
Penn, Northwestern, NYU come to mind in this regard. And it would help if it was a land-grant school with an agriculture college and a non-urban setting..</p>
<p>Penn State.</p>
<p>The University of Virginia</p>
<p>Similar and less selective schools in NY: I would definitely say Colgate, which has a beautiful campus also in the middle of nowhere.</p>
<p>I think we need more info from the OP as to similar to what? Cornell is very unique. Relatively large school in a rural, pretty and depressed area, with great name recognition around the world. I would then say Michigan, VA, Duke, etc.</p>
<p>Perhaps times have changed, but while I was there I never considered the area depressed.</p>
<p>And, Ithaca is itself in actuality a pretty happening college town, with 30,000 students. In fact it usually appears on lists of the best college towns. (And the best small cities to live).The town itself is less "no place" simply because the university is itself "someplace" of note, and of considerable size. (as someone pointed out, concerning Penn State, on another thread). Ithaca is also the cultural center or the surrounding finger lakes region, with over 100,000 people in its metro area. It is not New York City, but it feels a lot more in line with other college towns around large universities, like Lawrence, Kansas, than it does with someplace like Hamilton NY- a tiny town with a tiny college.</p>
<p>Berkeley...</p>
<p>But probably tougher for OOS admissions.</p>
<p>Great engineering and science departments. And our clock towers are similar:</p>
<p>Image:Mcgraw.jpg</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Image:Sather-Tower.jpg</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>
<p>^^^Ha, ha. I was going to suggest Berkeley too because of the clock towers! Monydad, I guess I was referring to the general "depressed" areas in upstate NY, in terms of jobs and career opportunities.</p>