<p>as for the competitiveness, i’d say that’s not true at all - no cornell students i’ve met compete with each other and everyone is happy to work together because it’s often tough to do well if you don’t</p>
<p>I don’t know if my kid’s friends lucked out, but in 2011 they all graduated with a job. I do hire a lot of Cornell graduates and they are usually very good hires. It is a generalization, but I find them to be “do whatever to get the job done.” </p>
<p>Slurryseal took a lot of time to do the write up and it should be a good reference for many students. I won’t know as much as current students and what I know is mostly from my kids/their friends, but I will offer up few points.</p>
<p>Study abroad - it is not feasible for every student at Cornell due to their major’s requirements. It is especially the case for engineers. One needs to be organized and make sure courses offered abroad can fulfill their major’s requirements. Of all of my kids’ friends, about 50% of them go abroad. It is why there are so many apartment sublets by juniors. Cornell allows its students to pay the host college directly therefore cut the tuition as much as by half. I know most colleges charge students same tuition even when the host college only charge half. Cornell encourage students to study abroad by not factoring study abroad’s grades into student’s GPA, only P/F.</p>
<p>It is silly to talk about political climate between Cornell and Berkeley. Cornell is a very large university, just like Berkeley. I would venture to say out of 13K students, there are a lot of different political affiliations. No matter what your believes are (may it be politic, religion), you will find like minds and clubs to join. </p>
<p>I have visited Cornell numerous times over last 5+ years, both to visit my kids and to recruit for my company. I have randomly walked into the student center, and there were kids doing performances or booth set up. Staying at the Statler, I have been woken up by marching band outside of my windows. Granted, with Cornell’s cold weather, you are not going to see as many activities outside. From what I know, Cornell students are generally very busy, not just with school work. My older kid was very involved with the student government, dance and her sorority. My younger one is in one of Cornell’s special program where she is involved with bringing Cornell and communities together (both local and overseas). In speaking with them, they usually had more things to do than they have time for.</p>
<p>Competitiveness - my kids are extremely competitive. The older one graduated with good enough GPA to get a job in IB, and the younger one has close to 4.0 in a very tough major in CAS. She has aspiration of getting into a top law school. Maybe they were insulated or naive, but I have not heard of them complaining about other students. My older one was very sick freshman and sophomore years. Her friends helped her with notes and her professors were more than accommodating. They allowed her to make up exams and homework. i still remember one professor was catching a flight overseas to go to a conference, he emailed my older daughter to let her know he was getting on the plane, but would call her when he landed before he got on his overseas flight. It was because she had a question on a problem set.</p>
<p>Food off campus - Ithaca has some of the best restaurants. Whenever I visit I always look forward to dining out with my kids and their friends. Kobe burger at the Ale House, tapas at Just a Taste, Maxie’s seafood, and all the Japanese, Korean, Thai and Chinese food. If you don’t have a car, you can use Ithaca’s taxi services. It would cost you less than few $$ if you share a taxi with 3-4 people.</p>
<p>Life after Cornell - A lot of companies recruit on campus. It is due to alumni network. Where company recruits often depends if its alumni push for it. Companies also look at their success rate from each school. Cornell has 7 schools to recruit from. When companies come on campus, they get a lot of bang for their bucks. It is a one stop shopping. The interviews are not limited to any particular school as long as applicants are qualified. My kid was able to interview at all finance schools even though she wasn’t in AEM. My nephews are getting their internships from a lot of Hotel alums. Hotel school has the highest employment rate at Cornell.</p>
<p>Cornell is not right for everyone. It is big and can be impersonal at times. if you need a lot of hand holding and hate cold weather, it may not be the best fit. Cornell has one of the most beautiful campus. Just walking around, even when it is cold, you can’t help but appreciate its beauty. My kids feel very lucky to be at Cornell. My older one said it was the best 4 years of her life because of the location, academic and life long friends she made there. I am sure many Berkeley graduates feel the same.</p>
<p>The graduate(cross-listed with seniors) course grades were inflated when I attended, too. It came as a surprise to me,.
But that was in contrast to the grading that I experienced as an undergrad, prior to that, at the same school, in the lower level classes. That’s one of the ways that the undergrad vs grad experiences were different. As an M Eng student I had zero intimate contact with underclassmen courses, to know what went on there, I knew it because I’d gone there undergrad and took those courses…</p>
<p>Faculty conduct of classes is virtually entirely up to the individual professors, at everyplace I’ve ever studied.
.It sounds like you unfortunately hit a string of relatively poor professors.In the what, six courses you’ve taken there, total, all graduate and senior level ? [Plus design project, but that’s different].In my M Eng program I had courses that were straight lectures, but others that had labs, one that had a year-long simulation project associated with it. It depends what you take, I did indeed have some boring professors, but also great ones and everything in between. I actually learned the most from the most boring one. But my guess is level of faculty course engagement has a bell curve distribution, and your dice unfortunately rolled you onto a tail.Unless one can find some systematic reason why they would actually be different, institutionally. Like if you can show me tenure policies that put different weighting on teaching or something. </p>
<p>Engineering students were not as you described when I attended, though that was eons ago. More of a “all in it together” mentality, studied together. If that’s really different now that would be sad. But interested parties should investigate, and talk to a number of actual undergrads there about this, before they just accept it.</p>
<p>Besides,the OP is studying liberal arts. My D2 recently graduated from Cornell CAS and had very good instruction there, overall, is the report I got. And did not report experiencing any of these other issues either.</p>
<p>Interested parties should investigate, but personally I doubt that it’s difficult to do study abroad there.
If it’s actually true that a smaller proportion of Cornell (& other Ivy, as you cited) students are studying abroad, consider that it’s not necessarily because the schools make it hard to do, but rather because proportionally more of the students prefer not to leave their schools. Our friend’s son recently graduated, his parents had wanted him to do study abroad, but he didn’t want to go. He said he would miss too much at Cornell, and didn’t want to miss out on any of his college experience there. Meanwhile my son attends a state U and is studying abroad as we speak. He had no trouble pulling himself away from his school. I have often seen various LACs touting how much their students do study abroad. And I think to myself it’s no wonder, because their students are probably sick of their boring little campuses after the first year.
Alternatively (or additionally), maybe they do study abroad plenty, but they tend to do different programs than the one you went on. They may have their own.
I would imagine it’s less common for enginers to study abroad though,not from Cornell specifically but in general, due to possible curriculum differences, vs ABET, different units systems (yecchh), etc.</p>
<p>I think the food around there is decent, actually, for a college town of it’s size. It’s certainly not the bay area, in that respect, but students don’t have the money to go to most of those places. I like the Ithaca area, a lot. It is best enjoyed with a car though.</p>
<p>There are plenty of student groups, eg:
<a href=“http://os_extranet_files_test.s3.amazonaws.com/24965_50179_Organizations_2012_13.pdf”>http://os_extranet_files_test.s3.amazonaws.com/24965_50179_Organizations_2012_13.pdf</a>
the problem is more not having the time to do everything you want to do.
Whether they display themselves exactly the same way at both campuses is another matter; likely weather-associated. But not sure why that’s a big deal. </p>
<p>Suggest you go to a few hockey games, they’re a lot of fun there. But I guess you’re too late?
But anyway sports-minded students typically wind up adopting hockey, whether or not they were into it before, and get their fix from that, Lacrosse is fun too, you should check it out. I never saw it played before I attended Cornell. There are also lots of intramural sports leagues, IIRC.</p>
<p>Slurryseal, I think many on this forum appreciate that you spent much time to write up the post, including me. However, your view is from a different aspect. I will only touch on some of your points.</p>
<p>Activities: Keep in mind that experience as an undergraduate student and a graduate student are entirely different even in a same university, let alone different universities. My experience as a graduate student is very different from my friends who were undergraduates during the years I was there. Graduate students care much less about activities, clubs, and student organizations, this may be why YOU don’t see a lot of activities at Cornell. But there are 500+ clubs at Cornell, I don’t think you saw them everywhere but they were happening all the time. (also check Cornell website event schedule, you will see things going on all the time.)</p>
<p>I took my D to visit Cal before. The weather is usually nice, but the campus is much smaller than I expected, given the number of students at the university. We saw students who were tanning or playing Frisbees on the lawn. You would see that all the time during your 20-minute walk through the whole campus. For those who like the full-of-people atmosphere, they will find it at Cal. Cornell on the other hand is with a much bigger campus, in most cases bigger and better-maintained buildings, and many student events/clubs/organizations. However, one will need to understand that activities are not concentrated at one place.</p>
<p>Your experience isn’t with both schools for undergraduate and mine was mostly from my D and the times we visit these universities. If one really wants to get ideas from those who have experience with both schools, he should ask transfer students. I know of my D’s three friends transferred from Cal to Cornell, all of them are happy at Cornell and like it better, though these are subjective opinions. (I’ll try to get them to come on CC) I also asked a friend’s daughter, a current senior at Cal, if any of her friends heard of anyone who transferred from Cornell to Cal., there were none. And why is that? Maybe I should imagine that it is becasue these students never have done any research on whether they should transfer to the other school?</p>
<p>Political environment: Cal is having more Republicans lately. I heard that a new trend is to become a Young Republican – maybe there are too many Democrats for too long and continue to be a Democrat is conservative. It is a new trend everywhere as well. Everyone can always find their political group.</p>
<p>Competitiveness: “Many of my professors discourage students from working together”. You are a graduate student, you are asked to do independent research and take classes independently. It is normal for a graduate student to study, take classes, and do research alone with the instructions from his advisor. This is to train researchers to be independent. Undergrads are different; my D has a lot of study time and project collaboration with her classmates. They just need to aware that it doesn’t mean they can copy anyone’s work.</p>
<p>Cal and Cornell are great/ tippy top schools. Gets into both is a huge accomplishment for OP and he deserves a celebration. I agree that since OP is a California student, Berkeley will be a much more affordable choice. I guess that is a largest factor for ‘fit’.</p>
<p>Wow, so many great replies. </p>
<p>I’m currently wrapping up my first year at Cornell and I was in a similar position as you (USC vs Berkeley vs Cornell) except mine was much easier… Cornell gave me the most aid so it was actually cheaper to come here.</p>
<p>I think what everyone else said has a lot of validity. You really can’t go wrong with either one. If you were in engineering, then I think it would be hard to turn down Berkeley. But if you’re not then, here’s some things I think you should consider.</p>
<p>Where are you from? If you’re a native Californian (like myself) then I would highly encourage you to come to Cornell. You get to meet a whole different type of people. East coasters are incredibly different from west coasters and I think having that perspective is important. Also, Cornell is much more diverse than Berkeley (thanks, in part, to affirmative action) so you get to meet people from more diverse backgrounds and ethnicity. Berkeley has a reputation of being mostly Californians and Asian/White. If you never experienced that, then go for it! But growing up in the bay area, I wanted to experience something new, not just go to another version of my high school.</p>
<p>Berkeley’s campus is also much more condensed. It takes about 15-20 minutes to cover a campus while Cornell is surrounded by trees and has beautiful gorges/lakes to walk around. You experience seasons here… Fall is absolutely gorgeous here… Something you won’t get in California.</p>
<p>But I think at the end of the day where you’re originally from really matters. If I were an east coaster, I would choose Berkeley. College is about learning and growing and nothing catalyzes that more than moving to a completely new place and forcing yourself to grow. You’ll find a home at both places, but I can’t stress enough the lessons that going 3000 miles away from home has taught me.</p>
<p>(Note: in my intro Chem class (Chem 2080) we’re forced to do group homework assignments and labs… So professors do encourage it and it has its pros and con’s)</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>If the comments of the guy I linked in post #13 are correct, I dont think it would be particularly hard to turn down Berkely engineering at all. Actually. leaving aside his other comments, the notion of possibly impacted majors, and that you have to commit to a particular engineering sub-specialty before you even set foot on campus, seems horrible to me. For one thing. Berkeley’s Phd program has a great reputation but we’re talking undergrad here, and Cornell’s engineers are held in high regard.</p>
<p>Slurryseal - thanks for your insightful comments. I just have one comment regarding politics at Berkeley. My son is a member of the Campus Republican Club. The club president is gay, supports abortion rights and gun control. My son is straight, but also supports gay rights, etc. They are only conservative on fiscal matters. I’m very proud of them, but social conservatives won’t find many like minded at Berkeley. </p>
<p>Son choose Cornell over Berkeley. The general consensus was that he needed to get out of his comfort zone after growing up in the Bay Area. Further, the feedback from friends was that Cornell would be better feeder school for top MBA programs. Cornell actually seemed more diverse to my son than Berkeley. </p>
<p>@Caliboyparents
We’re from California as well and my daughter also is going to Cornell this fall. My daughter choose Cornell over Berkeley/UCLA/USC.</p>