I’m going to be visiting Cornell on January 20 on my way up to Syracuse. Both of my parents are Cornell alumni and I know the campus like the back of my hand, but I want to a) look at it as a potential student and b) receive acknowledgment from admissions that I visited (this excuses my absence from school.) I have read that Cornell doesn’t consider interest shown by visits, etc. as admissions criteria, but I figure it can’t hurt, can it?
Cornell is not offering any tours or info sessions of any description until February 13. I have visited a good number of schools and this problem has never come up before. Does anyone have any ideas as to what I should do when I get to Ithaca? Let me know!
I made an account to answer this. There are tours crawling all over the campus despite the fact that classes aren’t in session until the end of the month. It’s a great idea to visit despite your parents being alumni and I can’t comment on the admissions office, but definitely re-check if there’s tours available.
You could simply send them an email letting them know you are visiting and that you realize that there are no tours but ask if they had suggestions for places to see in and around campus.
At one school we visited during a non-tour day, we stopped by the Admissions Office and asked for a map and info and they took my daughter’s information as a record of her stopping by. You could always pop in to Day Hall and act like you’d never been there before and need a map and other stuff.
The problem is that school is not in session and no tours are running. My D is a tour guide. It’ll be pretty quiet on campus, but you can stop by admissions and get a map and do a self guided tour.
@JerzJim , If you are applying to CAS, then Cornell website encourages visit. If engineering, they don’t care. So, read up on specific college website if visit is “suggested”. You can walk over to admission dept, ask them to give you pamphlets for self guided tour and register that way as well.
The campus will be very, but not completely, empty as classes are cancelled Mon & Tues for the long weekend. This is why you do not see anything on the calendar.