Mean *analogous, not analogical - long day.
Berkeley isnât just any state flagship, too. Itâs one of the strongest and most prestigious universities in the world. Iâve been admitted to Cornell and am partial to it, but Iâd say go with Berkeley at this price point. You wonât be missing out.
For what it is worth, this is what Pew has to say about what constitutes middle class: âPew defines the middle class as those earning between two-thirds and double the median household income.This means that the category of middle-income is made up of people making somewhere between $40,500 and $122,000. Those making less than $39,500 make up the lower-income bracketâ. In my state of NC the median income is around $52,000, so middle class would be between $35,000 - $104,000. For the OP state of California it is around $72,000, making the middle class $48,000 - $144,000. Even in California a middle class family would be hard pressed to be full pay at a university costing $70,000+ a year. With that said, UC Berkeley is an outstanding school in their own right and if you were my child that would be the direction I would be headed towards.
Yes, but would a family with $144,000 or lower income get no financial aid from Cornell or similar good-financial-aid private school?
Iâm getting disappointed that every other thread at CC devolves into nitpicking issues not related to finding a solution. Yikes, people. Find a hobby.
Thatâs said, OP, I think the choice is obvious. Enjoy Berkeley. Youâre very fortunate. ?
youâre not middle class. iâm middle class, and i receive extensive financial aid from the college i attend. thank you, next.
go to berkeley. simple decision, honestly.
@ProudLoomisDad âFind a hobby.â
This IS their hobby : )
While Cornell is mostly private, it is similar to flagships, and to other large public schools, in that it is a land grant school, one of the few private ones in the USA. That means that it was required to have a focus on things like Ag and engineering from the beginning, and was established to provide education to the public, rather than have a mostly Liberal Arts focus, and have a mission of mostly educating the kids of the upper classes, as was the case for the rest of the Ivies. The differences between Cornell and the other Ivies were reduced as the other Ivies started allowing academically accomplished kids from poor families to attend, early in the 20th century, and, after the 1950s, when the tech race with the USSR and the importance of high tech in the military raised the profile and prestige of engineering and of engineers.
So Cornell does have a vibe that is more similar to state flagships. However, NYâs flagship is SUNY Buffalo.
Even if your parents can afford it, unless your family is rich enough that $160,000 is chump change, itâs money that could be put to better use for other thingsâŠ
Personally, I would go with UCB because of weather, but Iâm partial to warm weather places.
Thereâs no bachelors degree Iâm aware of thatâs worth $300k. Thatâs more than most medical schools. Save your money. Thereâs nothing that Cornell offers that Berkeley doesnât already have.
MIT is also a land grant private college. Cornell was modeled after U of Michigan, a public flagship, of
the same age. Cornell and U of Michigan are very similar, but the New York State Flagships are SUNY schools,
not Cornell. SUNY is State University of NY. Buffalo, Binghamton, in upstate, and Stoneybrook on Long Island.
For finance, Cornell is tightly connected to New York City and Wall Street.
Does OP want an MBA, then undergrad school matters less. Do you need an away experience, and
can you really afford Cornell? Do you want the rural, wet cold weather, that Ithaca dishes out and
the natural beauty of the Finger Lakes over easy access to San Francisco?
Do you want to eventually go back to California, for a job? Berkeley would be best.
Do you think you might want to move to New York City, then Cornell would be a little better, just
to get the feel of the east. Cornell Tech is in New York City , as is Cornellâs fine medical school,
so there is a daily bus between NYC and Ithaca NY. Very tightly connected, I would say for jobs.
^ Huh, yes, there is a Cornell/NYC bus. 4.5 hours each way.
For an away experience, you could also study abroad.
Here is the Cornell /NYC bus to the medical school area of Manhattan, and the Cornell Club in Manhattan.
https://fcs.cornell.edu/content/c2c-nyc-departures
Also note that Cornell Tech, a two year old city campus, has taken over an island in the East River, its a graduate school in Manhattan for CS, and other subjects.
https://tech.cornell.edu
So Cornellâs ties to NYC are better and better now.
Cornell Tech offers an MBA right in Manhattan tooâ
https://tech.cornell.edu/programs/masters-programs/johnson-cornell-tech-mba/
Its good to be aware of all the business related programs Cornell offers and why their grads have an edge in NYC.
Hi all,
Thank you for your responses on this matter. I just have a few more things to add:
The upper-middle class versus middle-class argument is difficult. If one is making over $200k in a year, it cannot be assumed that the person has been making that sort of money their entire life. One of my parents got a new job paying that figure relatively recently. Additionally, when you look at that income, about 35% is taken away from it by taxes, leaving one with $130,000, then with $70,000 taken away by college one is left with $60,000 which is not a large amount of money to use to pay housing bills, lifestyle expenses in the Bay Area and contribute to retirement accounts. It is not like my family doesnât have any savings though so I am fortunate to be in a situation where my parents are willing to let me consider full-pay Cornell vs. in-state Berkeley, especially since they know that I would like to attend a private University on the east coast, and Cornell just so happens to have the Ivy League luster.
At the same time, I am not sure what the exact financial situation of my parents is, as I am their kid and they are not completely transparent about the situation with me. I am not sure if $160,000 is âchump changeâ to them so maybe it is best if I exit this relatively privileged conversation on CC and have an honest conversation with my parents so that we can come to a family decision on the matter.
(continued) To address the conversation of Cornellâs contract colleges being private and/or public, I did a lot of research on Cornell since I am really interested in the school and I found more information indicating that it was originally intended to be a public school. From what I read, Ezra Cornell and AD White arguably swindled the State of New York of its Morrill Act land-grant funds signed into law by Lincoln and created a smashed-together private/public school that is simultaneously privately endowed and receiving a non-trivial amount of funding from the State of New York. Unlike its Ivy League peers, Cornell was not founded in the pre-Revolution timeframe between the 1600s and late 1700s - it was founded in 1865, just 3 years before U.C. Berkeley, which is also a land-grant school. Someone pointed out that M.I.T. is a land-grant; that is interesting, I will have to look into that. So its membership in the Ivy League/âAncient Eightâ is dubious. But although Cornell has over double the number undergrads of most of the Ivies and almost double the student-faculty ratio, it still has half the number of students and half the student-faculty ratio of Berkeley, resulting in smaller class sizes, so it canât be equated to Berkeley. Ultimately this decision is difficult because we live in a society that is striving to give a student, no matter what their financial background, an opportunity to excel at the highest level of merit without regard to finances. But that is a utopian view. As can be seen in this thread, financial considerations are important for those debating between schools of similar stature but with a high difference in cost. In a utopian world, I would be able to simply pick Cornell since, according to my preferences in going to a better funded and endowed school, it is the clear pick over Berkeley for me. But due to real financial considerations and the fact that Cornell and Berkeley are âclose enough,â I have to pick a worse (in my opinion) University, Berkeley, and go to school with double the number of undergrads and student/faculty ratio for four years - potentially putting a dent in my future vs. what I would have access to at Cornell.
For me, if the choice was Harvard, Yale, Princeton or Penn-Wharton, the answer would be clear as day. Pour the money into the more prestigious program, taking out loans if you have to, and let life and the networking take you from there. But those are not the schools that I am able to pick from. And because of that, there is a really high chance that I will wind up at a state flagship school instead of a private school that I marginally prefer.
Cornell holds an unusual place in our household. Two of my kids turned it down despite it being an ivy and âhigherâ rated on the prestige scales. One refused to even apply though he would have been a strong candidate. His best friend also put his nose up to it despite a hook there.
I donât know whether Id pick Cornell over Berkeley because Iâm not knowledgeable enough about B, but Id pick Michigan over it as my one son preferred. And several others here in NY chose. Also UVA, Hopkins, Emory. On several occasions. This is all without cost taken into account.
I think there is an intensity about Cornell that takes some of us aback. I, for one, felt that UMichigan had a more relaxed atmosphere and I preferred Ann Arbor to Ithaca. Just the slightest of nuances that made the difference.
Throw in a cost differential and even most avid Cornell fans will vote for Berkeley. A business degree from Haas is certainly not going to hold you back on Wall Street.
Note that when it comes to student-faculty ratio, they may not be apples to apples as not all schools use the same denominator.
When it comes to classes of under 20 and classes over 50, there is little difference:
Under 20: Cornell 57.3%; Cal 53.5%
50 and over: Cornell 17.8%; Cal 18.6%
In a popular major like CS, you will be going to huge classes at both schools.
What schools have you been admitted to at each?
Both Cornell and Cal would be intense.
Also, even if your parents have budgeted $300K for your education, if you go to Cornell, youâd blow through all those funds. If you go to Cal, youâd still have enough left over for a 2 year masterâs (or 2 1 year masterâs; or most of the costs of an M7 MBA). Basically, in exchange for what you consider a worse undergrad experience, youâd have bullets left in case you want to change careers or get an Ivy masterâs or invest or travel the world or whatever.
And Cal isnât exactly chopped liver. Itâs merely one of the most respected research universities in the world (reputation on par with Cornell outside the US, if not better).
@PurpleTitan I have a few friends who went to Berkeley and they tell me the âUnder 20â and â50 and overâ statistics are misleading because many courses and discussion sections are taught by TAs and GSIs instead of faculty. They said that the lack of faculty interaction is a big problem at Berkeley, and Cornellâs having half the number of students as Berkeley is a definite plus for Cornell. However Cornell is no star itself, having almost double the student-faculty ratio of schools such as Stanford and Harvard.
@hstarschools, why do they find the lack of faculty interaction to be a problem? Are they looking for faculty recommendations?
Would you?
One of the best classes I took as an undergrad was a seminar taught by a grad student (at an Ivy-equivalent). Heâs now a prof at SOAS in London.
At Cornell there were about 450 students in my first-year Biology lectures, 900 in the Intro Computer Science course (dropped it for the âsmallerâ Calculus class), and 1700 in the Intro Psychology class. Thank goodness for my French and Comparative Lit classes. 