<p>Which do I choose???</p>
<p>More info pls. Your major, your ambitions, what kind of environment you want, is money a factor? </p>
<p>I’m undecided for both (Cornell in the School of Arts and Sciences and Berkeley in the School of Letters and Sciences). I know I want to go to grad school or get at least a master’s afterwards but I’m not sure what in yet. I’m from Los Angeles. I have no preference for environment. I’ve visited both schools and loved both. I’m getting no finaid from either school so money is sort of a factor although my parents will send me to Cornell if I feel it is the right place for me. </p>
<p>if you like both schools equally, go to the one that’s cheaper to attend. there is absolutely no reason to spend more dough to attend one school over the other, when the two schools in question are of comparable quality and desirability.</p>
<p>"when the two schools in question are of comparable quality and desirability. "</p>
<p>Yeah go to Berkeley and pay instate. Tuition ~12k vs 47k/year. Save 35k a year. What can you do with all that money? Buy a nice car, house, investment/stocks, or start a business!</p>
<p>If you are instate go to Berkeley. If OOS for both, go to Cornell.</p>
<p>I’m a Berkeley alum and current Cornell grad student. I HIGHLY recommend Berkeley over Cornell for many reasons, and in-state tuition is only one of them. If you like, you can send me a message and I’ll give you a good comparison between the two, particularly things which you won’t learn from simply visiting the campuses. This goes for anyone else who may be reading this post who is also picking between these two schools.</p>
<p>slurryseal - I think it would be valuable for you to share on this forum publicly because it may benefit a lot more students. It is one great thing about CC, sharing of information.</p>
<p>I think if you are in-state then go with Berkeley if money matters. </p>
<p>Depending on financial status, one could get equal or better FA from Cornell.Correct? </p>
<p>Correct, if you are eligible for FA schools like Cornell sometimes are cheaper than in-state public.</p>
<p>Cornell is need-blind and would provide whatever FA they determine you need to attend the school</p>
<p>Cornell would give you what they determined is your family’s EFC, but it may not necessary be what your family could afford.</p>
<p>For a different opinion from above, from someone who also attended both schools but in the opposite order, read post of jamescchen here:
<a href=“Cornell vs. UC Berkeley - #16 by Melodie - University of California - Berkeley - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/university-california-berkeley/888248-cornell-vs-uc-berkeley-p2.html</a>
I’m not in a position to evaluate either view, but I will say that being a grad student somplace is a lot different than being an undergrad there. I say that having done bachelors, then M.Eng at Cornell. I’ve noticed from CC that people tend to have more loyalty to their undergrad insitution than to their grad schools. Four years someplace, at that formative stage, can have some influence. In addition to whatever other actual issues there are.
There was someone who transferred to Cornell from Berkeley in D2s cohort, as an undergrad. That would be a better perspective. if I can track him down I’ll get his thoughts. My understanding was he preferred Cornell.</p>
<p>Unless you have excess money to burn, go to Berkeley. However, do visit Cornell and see if you absolutely love the place, it is more rural, hard to get to from LA …and the weather can get depressing. Also it is a fairly large school so it is not like you are getting a lot of 1:1 attention there. And you are paying through the roof …</p>
<p>
Both of my kids got a lot of attention at Cornell. Only introductory at courses they had a lot of students (100+), most upper level courses are around 20 students. For large classes they have sessions outside of class taught by TAs. It is also very easy to get into most classes, even when one is wait listed. One could take the same course at multiple schools at Cornell.</p>
<p>Would you survive Math 1B at Cal? It’s a great school, but there are some crazy smart kids (and difficult classes) there. </p>
<p>If you’re OOS then I’d definitely choose Cornell; if you’re in-state like me then I guess you could technically go to either. Also, location is something you have to consider too. Maybe I’ll get tired of it eventually but I’m really excited to see snow! </p>
<p>Since I received multiple messages and someone suggested I post publicly anyway, I will do so. Keep in mind that my experiences with Cornell are as a grad student, so it may not be a perfect representation of what it would be like as an undergrad. It’s mostly based on my own observations (I have taken a few courses at Cornell which are cross-listed as senior-level so many of my classes have undergraduates) and various things my classmates (those who did undergrad at Cornell) have told me. And like someone else said above, people generally have more loyalty to where they did undergrad, and I fall under that category. I’ll try to be as unbiased as possible though. I hope I don’t horribly offend anyone with my opinions.</p>
<p>Location: Berkeley is located in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is next to Oakland, and just 15-20 minutes away from San Francisco by car, bus, or subway. About an hour south is San Jose and the Silicon Valley, the major tech center of the country. Cornell is in Ithaca in upstate New York. It’s a very scenic city, particularly in summer and fall because the city has so much natural beauty. The closest “major” cities are Syracuse and Buffalo, both about an hour away. Contrary to popular belief, Cornell is not close to New York City at all. A bus will take five hours to reach Manhattan. If you prefer being surrounded by urban areas, Berkeley is the way to go. If you want a more rural/secluded town experience, Ithaca may be a better bet.
ADVANTAGE: depends on what you prefer- urban or rural.</p>
<p>Weather: Berkeley weather is pretty tame. You might experience a few hot days (90+) at various points throughout the year but it’s rare to have consecutive days of it. It does not snow in the bay area so you won’t experience anything lower than mid 30s in the winter. Cornell is in upstate New York, and the weather there falls in a bigger range. Ithaca can get pretty hot in the summer (90+) like Berkeley, but it’ll probably snow from October through April, with lows in January and February around -10 Fahrenheit.
ADVANTAGE: Berkeley</p>
<p>Dorm food: Berkeley’s dorm food is pretty terrible, but I learned to live with it for a year. You should only expect decent food when there is some sort of special event which the dining halls are catering, like when admits are visiting, or when there is a conference in town. I have not tried Cornell’s dorm food at all but it is considered some of the best in the country.
ADVANTAGE: Cornell</p>
<p>Off-campus food: Berkeley may suck at providing dorm food but it completely dominates Ithaca in off-campus food options. Around campus you will find hundreds of places to eat, and some of them are even quite famous. Because of the bay area’s diversity, you’ll find cuisines from lots of different cultures. And if you can’t find something you want in Berkeley, chances are you’ll find something to meet your cravings in one of the nearby cities. Ithaca, on the other hand, has TERRIBLE off-campus food. You’ll find the staple college town food options like pizza and burgers, and a lot of sub-standard Asian restaurants. Anything decent is probably gonna cost you at least $15 per meal and aren’t close to campus. There are some exceptions, but not enough for it to measure up to what Berkeley and the bay area offer.
ADVANTAGE: Berkeley</p>
<p>Dorms: Berkeley dorms are ridiculously expensive, even compared to local apartments. Berkeley students tend to just live in the dorms for freshman year in order to meet other freshmen, which I say is a worthwhile experience. Very few live in them during their sophomore year. It’s almost unheard of for juniors or seniors to live in them, other than RAs. I do not know anything about dorms at Cornell other than that most of the freshmen live in dorms on the far north side of campus which is far from the engineering buildings. A friend of mine helped her sister move into her Cornell dorm and said they are comparable to Berkeley dorms. You’ll need to ask some Cornell undergrads about quality of life there.
ADVANTAGE: I would guess Cornell unless I hear something negative about Cornell dorms.</p>
<p>Off-campus housing: Berkeley off-campus housing is expensive. Not only is it in the expensive bay area, but there is insanely high demand for it with students constantly moving in and out. If you want a single bedroom within short walking distance to campus (10-15 minutes), expect to pay at least $800 for a small/crappy unit. Many student tend to split bedrooms or convert living rooms into bedrooms to bring down costs for each person. Some students will live in Oakland and take a bus to campus in order to save money but they say it’s very troublesome sometimes. Ithaca has cheaper apartments than Berkeley by several hundred dollars, and they’re generally better and more spacious.
ADVANTAGE: Cornell</p>
<p>Sports: Berkeley’s biggest sports are football and basketball. Students have a lot of spirit for teams despite the many shortcomings. Football is currently at a historic low, but is rebuilding under a new head coach. For the past decade, the program has been an NFL pipeline. Men’s basketball has recently seen some success within the Pac-12 conference. Women’s basketball reached the Final Four last year. Berkeley also excels at swimming and has a recent history with Olympic gold medalists. Berkeley students are very spirited about the rivalry with Stanford in all sports, in academics, and everything in life, pretty much. Cornell competes in the Ivy League, which is not a league which recieves much national attention, and I personally don’t pay much attention to because of the lack of spotlight and success. It’s sad to say but Cornell football is a joke (they’re like a medicore high school team), and what makes it sadder is that Ivy League football overall is nothing compared to FBS-level football. Cornell is most proud of its hockey team and students are very spirited about it. Lacrosse is supposed to be very good too.
ADVANTAGE: Berkeley (but Cornell if all you care about is hockey)</p>
<p>Quality of education: Higher ranking does not mean that one school dominates the other at academics. Ranking is more of a measure of prestige and name recognition rather than actual quality. Sometimes it’s correlated because higher ranked universities can attract better researchers, but when you’re at the “top tier” of prestige, the quality of researchers are pretty much the same across the board. But also, GOOD RESEARCHERS ARE NOT ALWAYS GOOD PROFESSORS. Berkeley and Cornell have some amazing researchers, but like any other university, these people may or may not be good at teaching. Likewise, some low-recognition school may have some professors who are terrible at research but may be some of the most dedicated and passionate instructors ever. In my case, all my professors at Cornell simply read off PowerPoints and try to get through the material as quickly as possible, and many want nothing to do with students other than short chats during office hours. The lectures are all theory and no application. I’m sure they do some interesting research and are well-known in academic circles, but they suck at teaching. At Berkeley, my professors in my department cared greatly that students learned the material, and designed lectures and coursework so that students would get firsthand experience in their research interests and in professional experiences. For me, Berkeley’s professors happened to be some of the leading researchers in my major so topics were discussed at very great depth from a research prospective. More of my professors at Berkeley also tried getting to know students in their upper division courses. So I would say that, for me at least, the professors I had at Berkeley were far better and made me more motivated to learn, and at a greater depth. This may not be true for other fields though. I’m sure that Cornell will have faculties which outclass Berkeley’s at teaching, but I can’t speak on those.
ADVANTAGE: Depends on your major. If you’re doing engineering, Berkeley without a doubt.</p>
<p>Academic environment: They say that at private universities, the school will hold the students’ hands until graduation and make things very easy for them. In my opinion, this is very true at Cornell. I know Cornell has a reputation of being the most rigorous of all the Ivy League schools, but from what I have experienced and from what I have seen of the undergrads at this school, they have things pretty easy compared to Berkeley students. What I mean by this is that professors are pretty lenient, curves are insanely generous, and grades are highly inflated. At Berkeley, there’s more of a “earn what you want” attitude. While professors will be there to help you out in office hours, they’re not simply going to give you answers. I know this sounds like a sweeping generalization but this is just how I experienced it and how ~80% of the undergrads I’ve seen behave. I’m sure there are plenty of smart kids at Cornell, but up until now it just seems like these kids just expect things to work out for them without working hard for them.
ADVANTAGE: Berkeley, because I believe that things in life should not simply be handed to you.</p>
<p>Competitiveness: One of the major factors which turn people off from both schools is that they perceive the academic environment to be very competitive between students. At Berkeley, this competitiveness only exists within pre-business students (you have to apply for the business major during sophomore year and only about half the students are accepted, so students try to beat each other out to earn spots) and some hardcore pre-med students (they want high GPAs to get into med school), but the intense cutthroat individuals are not common. It does not exist at all among any other majors. In fact, in engineering you’re heavily encouraged to work together (as in you should be helping each other understand the material, but not cheating). At Cornell, I can’t speak on anything outside of engineering. My classmate who did undergrad at Cornell said that students refuse to work together or share notes. One isolated incident involved a student sabotaging other students’ work in a laboratory overnight, which is something I’ve never seen elsewhere. Many of my professors discourage students from working together, which tends to lead students to not helping each other out in order to secure higher grades. One of my professors won’t even allow students to attend office hours together because they don’t want students to work learn together. This may sound like a contradiction to my previous point about Cornell making things super easy, but all I’m saying is that students still don’t want to help each other out, despite everything being made generally more easy for them to all do well.
ADVANTAGE: I don’t know enough about Cornell outside of engineering, but I would have to say Berkeley unless you’re pre-med.</p>
<p>Class sizes: Another misconception with Berkeley is that classes are much larger than you’ll find at any private school. This is actually true with Cornell too, or any university for that matter. There’s a class at Cornell with over 1600 students, and if you don’t consider that large, I don’t know what is. The main issue with large classes is that it’s harder to get to know the professor. Of course, with larger classes often you’ll be working through your grad student TA rather than the professor, so at least you have that. But once you reach upper division, at both universities you will have plenty of access to your professors to get to know them, get a better grasp of the material, and learn more about their research.
ADVANTAGE: Equal</p>
<p>Suicide: Both universities have a reputation of high suicide rates, supposedly because of the rigorous coursework. In reality, suicides occur anywhere, and at both the rate is blown out of proportion. In my four years at Berkeley, there was only one unfortunate incident and it is unknown if academics had anything to do with it. At Cornell, the reason why it’s blown out of proportion is that there are lots of gorges throughout the area, and an event like that would certainly draw a lot of attention. It fortunately does not happen nearly as much as it is reputed to.
ADVANTAGE: Equal</p>
<p>Name recognition and prestige: Berkeley has better name recognition on the west coast, because most people/employers on the west coast do not immediately recognize Cornell as a prestigious university. My parents had never heard of Cornell until I told them I was going there, and my coworkers had never heard of it either. Cornell has better name recognition on the east coast, and Berkeley is sometimes almost unheard of on the east coast. In fact, on multiple occasions this past year, multiple undergraduate students at Cornell talked down to me because I attended “some lowly public school” for undergrad. Keep in mind that I’m not saying that’s the attitude of everyone in each of these places, but it does seem to be the trend among those populations. Additionally, Berkeley has better recognition in Asia (according to my international classmates from China, Berkeley is regarded as the best university in the US). Cornell has better recognition in Europe. Most importantly, prestige only matters in getting your foot in the door. In the future, work experience is gonna count a lot more than where you spent four years developing your alcohol tolerance.
ADVANTAGE: Should not matter.</p>
<p>Student activities: College is more than just about getting a degree. During your time in college, you should be exploring outside activities which interest you. Both schools offer a variety of clubs that people can participate in such as cultural, dance, singing, literary/publication, political, intramural sports, etc. The difference, however, is the visibility of these clubs. At Berkeley, you can walk through campus and it’ll always be lively in the main plaza during the day because of how many people have tables set up for their clubs, live performances, fundraisers, and distributing flyers. This occurs pretty much all year, rain or shine, except for during finals. You will not find that at all at Cornell. I’ve walked through campus (on nice days early in the fall semester) and did not see any student activity groups and the only thing I saw was a sorority selling donuts outside the student store. I know student groups exist at Cornell but they have terrible presence on campus.
ADVANTAGE: Berkeley</p>
<p>Political environment: Berkeley is a very liberal campus because of the majority of California residents, and many students are very vocal about what goes on in state and national politics. Cornell is more in the middle. At Berkeley, there are many students who consider themselves conservative or Republican, but they are still greatly outnumbered. If you are conservative, you may find a lot of people at Berkeley who oppose your views, but in general your platform can still be heard as long as you don’t intentionally try to offend anyone. Cornell students are not nearly as politically active as Berkeley students, although I’m sure there are plenty of people who follow what goes on in politics.
ADVANTAGE: Berkeley if you want to get into politics, or if you want to be in a super liberal environment. If you’re conservative, you may find it more comfortable at Cornell where people are less likely to judge you for your conservative views. If you don’t care about politics, then this criterion doesn’t matter.</p>
<p>Study abroad - If this is something that interests you, Berkeley and the UC system have a very heavily established network of partner universities around the world which make studying abroad very accessible and saves you a lot of trouble. Cornell students can still study abroad but they do so at probably 1/10th the rate of Berkeley students, probably because the process may not be as streamlined. I base this estimate on my own study abroad experience, where there were 12 Berkeley students at my university, around 60 more from other UCs, but only one from Cornell (or any other Ivy, for that matter). Just FYI, at this university, Berkeley sends between 10-30 students every semester, so it’s not an unordinarily disproportionate event.
ADVANTAGE: Berkeley</p>
<p>I know there will be people who will greatly disagree with what I said, especially Cornell alumni since I rag on this school a lot, but these are just my opinions as someone who attended both. In the end, I suggest prospective students go with whichever one they think is a better fit for them. Personally, Berkeley was the perfect fit for me for undergrad, and my experience as a grad student elsewhere strongly confirmed that. I will always highly recommend Berkeley over Cornell to anyone who asks, but I know this won’t be the case for everyone so go with whichever you think is better for your own needs. I listed a bunch of non-academic factors because the decision on where you spend the next four years shouldn’t just be based solely on what school sounds more impressive on your resume. The decision should be based on what you think is best for you, your goals in life, the kind of people you want to be surrounded by (they really will be your friends for life), and the quality of life you wish to have for the next four years.</p>
<p>@slurryseal, really well said. anyone choosing between colleges should consider the components listed above as a reference guide.</p>
<p>one side note, though. too many young students and their parents get caught up at the ‘academic competitiveness’ of a college, grad school, whatever. while attending a high-ranked school is a plus, what really matters in the end is the individual talent.</p>
<p>one of my friends from high school attended University of Illinois. not the most prestigious college there is. he went there because he got full ride at that school and because many of his close friends were attending. He triple majored in math, physics & stats, got near 4.0 gpa at graduation (the guy was borderline genius), and now works at a top hedge fund as a trader. last time I heard, he was pulling down 700k+ a year as a 25 year old. He’s by FAR the most successful person I’ve ever met in my age group.</p>
<p>on the other hand, I know many guys who graduated from different Ivies now enjoying their wonderful careers as full time bartenders at x,y,z club, barista at Starbucks, or babysitters / nannies in nyc. I almost felt bad for this girl I met at the NYC cornell alumni event recently, when she braggingly said ‘actually you know… baby sitters / nannies are like 4th or 5th largest professional group in nyc, and there is a ton of financial upside in the profession’</p>