<p>Which would provide the better overall engineering and college life experience? At this time, cost is not the issue. I don' want D to get pressured in selecting Cornell because it's an Ivy. However, I don't want D to select a program where the overall college experience will be lacking due to the stress of an engineering program or the lack thereof. D liked both campuses in the Fall. The winter may be a different story at Cornell. (We live in VA.) D wants to major in Computer Science/Computer Engineering.</p>
<p>If she’s serious about Computer Science, go to Cornell. The CS program is top notch. </p>
<p>Looking at the UVA course selection for CS, it looks like their focus is more applied than Cornell, with emphasis on Software Engineering and internet technology, which is not the case at Cornell (Cornell’s course offerings tend to be more theoretical and diverse). Their course selection also seems subpar to me, personally. I looked at their offered courses this semester, imagined that I had transferred there, and realized I would have been interested in only one of their courses. For example, there was only one course in Artificial Intelligence, my main interest in CS, which would have driven me insane in UVA as I would probably would have been forced to take stuff like compilers/parallel computing/graphics to complete my degree, which I dislike. In contrast, after 6 semesters in Cornell, I signed up for 5 CS courses next semester that I’m extremely interested in and furious that I can’t take any more (because I would die from the workload). That is my personal preference, of course, but if your daughter interests are like mine (or in stuff like machine vision, network science, language technologies, theoretical CS, which I didn’t see many UVA courses in), she might be disappointed if she goes there. </p>
<p>As for overall life, I can’t comment. Never been to UVA. My life is pretty stressful, though it’s more of because of the courseload I force upon myself because of all the courses I want to take.</p>
<p>Ray192, what year are you? As a freshmen at Cornell, did you find it overwhelming? That’s one of my biggest concerns. D has worked hard throughout hs and will be graduating early. I don’t want her to be completely stressed for 4 more years. Her intention is to continue to grad school–MsPhd. I don’t think she knows what she really wants to do in the CS or CompE field. Right now she’s into researching robotics and voice commands.</p>
<p>Freshman year? Not particularly. In fact, I had practically no work freshman year compared to junior year (my current year). Then again, I’m in the college of Arts and Sciences, not Engineering, so I didn’t start by taking the engineering physics/chemistry/math courses, so my experience might not be analogous to her. If she’s in the top 5-6% of UVA engineering, I doubt she’ll be a bottom-feeder in Cornell (as a semi-TA for the intro java programming course, I think that anybody with a slight affinity for programming will rock the course). I will say, however, that engineering is stressful, regardless of where you go. But it’s not always “bad stress”. The feeling I get from completing a major project often times makes up for a lot of the frustration. </p>
<p>If she wants to do Robotics and speech synthesis, Cornell definitely has more than enough things to satisfy her. There are 4-5 major project teams that build autonomous vehicles/robots for the whole year, that I can think of, and numerous professors researching robotics/AI/language technologies. I have taken classes in natural language processing and computational linguistics and they were all cool. There are robotics courses spread through the MechE, ECE and CS departments (the new Robot Learning course seems very promising). </p>
<p>Though I will say that the ECE department in Cornell seems to be worse at teaching than the CS department, from what I hear. But that might have just been a biased sample of complaints.</p>
<p>My daughter is a current Rodman finishing her first year. You might want to post this over in the UVA forum- you may receive more responses from current students.</p>
<p>Ray192, thanks for your insights.</p>
<p>As a first-year Rodman scholar at UVA, I am going to definitely recommend UVA over Cornell. While UVA is a huge school, the Rodman program has fostered such a good community - most of my closest friends are in the Rodman program with me. Furthermore, you get priority course selection, a boost in applying for/getting accepted to your major (not officially, but it certainly helps), and just a general benefit from the prestige of the program. And, obviously, it’s UVA - all of the academic programs are strong. Many of the Rodmans in my year chose UVA-Rodman over schools like Cornell and Duke - if you have any other questions, feel free to shoot me a PM and good luck with your decision!</p>
<p>sabaray, good idea! I’ll do that. I would like to know what schools/programs Rodmans turned down. For I’m sure, that any of the Rodmans could have gone to any of the higher ranking schools.</p>
<p>Dean J has some great insights into the engineering program as well and she frequently comments over there. I think she may have done admissions for Olin previously, but I’m not sure.</p>
<p>I would suggest posting this on the Cornell forum. There are a few engineers that frequently post.</p>
<p>My Son went to Day on the Lawn yesterday and he has been accepted as a Rodman Schoar. I thought his first choice was Cornell and he went there last week. Now he is more interested in UVA. He was also accepted at UChi and Carnagie.</p>
<p>I guess the Rodman Scholar is geared toward attracting students who would have gone to another school over the Non-honors/Rodman program. I think if my son was not offered the Rodman program, he would not be considering UVA so seriously.</p>
<p>Kareno, has your son officially decided on UVA? If so, what sealed it for him? Congratulations and best of luck for whatever he decides.</p>
<p>I don’t believe that the Rodman Scholar is geared toward attracting students who would have gone to another school, I believe it is offered to the top 5-6% of the class. By nature those students are often looking at several schools, but it is not offered as an incentive to those who are ‘shopping’.</p>