What is a a large school like?

Colleges & Universities A-Z Cornell University
1

<p>Hello everyone! I have really had my heart set on Cornell for awhile but I have been thinking- is it hard living at a large school? Is it easy to make friends, or are there a lot of cliques(the "bad" kind)? </p>

<p>I know this sounds absurd, but I want to know how it is going to feel going somewhere so . . .massive .. . . , considering I currently have 115 members of my sophomore class. I know academically this school is right for me, what is it like with so many students? Do you get lost in the shuffle? Or is it like the more the merrier?</p>

<p>Just curious.</p>

2

<p>For starters, cornell isn't massive, just big. Massive would be a school of 30, 40, even 50 thousand. Cornell is middle sized in terms of a university.</p>

<p>Living in a large school is not hard at all as long as your mildly independent. If you need someone looking over your shoulder every 5 minutes, it's not the place for you, but as long as you can be responsible enough to do your work without someone yelling at you to do it, and as long as you can seek help when you need it (rather than wait for it to come to you) you will be fine.</p>

<p>-It's a very academic environment here, so everyone around you will be focusing on their work. Not at the expense of fun, necessarily, I'm just saying it's not particularly difficult to keep one's mind on his work.</p>

<p>-Nobody is going to come to you and say "dubya-tee-eff, mate?" if halfway through the semester you have a C in every class. However, if you don't like having those Cs, there are more departments and resources (most of which are free) than you could ever want to help you out, like:
*easily accessable deans
*all professors have office hours or will set up meetings with you at your convenience
*review sessions
*learning skills/academic disabilities center
*psychological counseling services
*student organized study groups
*"takenote" review material</p>

<p>For example, I had trouble in spanish this past semester, and the last month of school, I was spending 5 hours outside of class reviewing with a couple other students and my professor, in addition to the 3 hours a week in class and the at home studying. That's the kind of dedication professors have.</p>

<p>I don't know if there are cliques, per se, but there are social groups. Most are based on either location on campus or common interest. There are some groups of people who act exclusive, but then again, if they're going to act like that you probably wouldn't want to hang out with them anyway. The nice thing is that there are so many people that (and please note that this is NOT true, just a hypothetical exampl) even if 1000 students in your class acted cold toward you, you'd still have over 2000 to choose from, just in the class of 2010. I had probably 5 social groups of friends this year: my hall, my girlfriend's hall, my fraternity, my music department friends and, while it's not am explicit group, it was comperable to the other 3 in size, random friend's i'd made.</p>

<p>As you can see, it was based on proximity, interest, and major, for the most part. I would characterize cornell as the more the merrier, as long as you're mildly proactive. In fact, it's sort of like living in a suburban town of 13000 people, all of whom share your interests and are within 2-3 years of your age.</p>

<p>Any further questions and I'd be glad to go into specifics.</p>

3

<p>I'm in a class of 145 at my highschool and I looked at all small colleges except Cornell and a couple other "large ones". You would be suprised at how amazing Cornell looks and feels. I havn't gone yet, but when I visited I was more than pleased. I think that it's not "Will I like a large college?", but "Will I like Cornell?".</p>

<p>And then of course it has the countless advantages of research and exploration that a larger university would have.</p>

4

<p>The most striking moment of how friendly cornell is I experienced on my first night. Collegetown was bumpin' with tons of house parties, and of course packs (yes packs, we travelled in packs at the beginning of the year) of freshman swarmed down. I figured we would be received less than warmly, with an attitude of "ugh, freshman, they don't even know what it's like here, they haven't taken a class yet. god they haven't even spent 1 night in the dorm yet, and here they are drinking our beer and walking around like they own the place." I thought this would be pretty much the case, especially for guys, since, lets face it, upperclassmen guys are happy to meet freshman girls.</p>

<p>Not the case at all, everyone was so friendly, offering drinks, saying "are you a freshman? awesome, how do you like it so far? cool, come back tomorrow" and just so receptive to the incoming class. It wasn't anything like HS where seniors thought "ugh, freshman idiots clogging our hallways." it was much more like "welcome to the club, we're glad to have you"</p>

5

<p>I don't think I could sum it up any better than sparticus.</p>

<p>definately, "the more the marrier".</p>

<p>My orientation experience was pretty much the same as far as the upperclassmen go...surprisingly friendly towards freshmen.</p>

6

<p>haha, my first Cornell party this dude was like "you have a free hand, fill it with another beer!!!"</p>

<p>it's weird, i transfered from a school that is smaller than Cornell, yet it felt 10 times bigger. Cornell certainly isn't your normal 'large school'. It was easy to be lost in the crowd at my other school, but for some reason this just didn't seem to happen at Cornell. I can't really explain why. The people are generally very friendly and social. There is a large mix of people: the party animals, the studious type, the moderate partyers, the movie goers, and so forth. Rather than comming to Cornell thinking "how will I make a group of friends at a school this big" start thinking "what type of friends should I look for in this large group?" After all, 700 student organizations are a good start to looking for people with similar interests as yourself.</p>

7

<p>I was wondering about this too since my school's high school has 100-115 per class. Now, my biggest class probably has 25 students this year and last year it was 28. I plan on applying and going for a physics major, so what can I expect in terms of class size? And if the classes are larger, is the educational experience in any way lessened?</p>

8

<p>Cornell isn't that huge. You can make a lot of friends from people who live in your dorm or people you meet in classes.</p>

9

<p>Well, mikeyc765, intro science classes can be as large as 300-400 or so.</p>

<p>Writing seminars are always small (10-20), same with languages (~15), and MATH 191 (do you have to take 191 for physics?). Upper level classes are also smaller.</p>

<p>My graduating class awas 94..but it wasn't bad adjusting to even the largest classes, such as CHEM 207 that had around 500 in the lecture. (1200 total enrollment for all lectures!). It was actually my favorite class...so the size has little to do with the quality of the course.</p>

10

<p>My physics 112 (intro mechanics) lectures were around 200 students (total enrollment around 400). It doesn't make it any different from a regular high school physics class of 20-30 students, other than that instead of raising your hand to ask a question every time you don't understand something, you write your questions down and then ask your section instructor (my section instructor had a Ph.D., so no worries on quality of instruction) where there are only 20 or so students.</p>

<p>As you can see, the educational experience isn't lessened. Big lectures allow for many students to have a top-notch lecturer, and the review sections allow for students to review and question concepts in a small group environment. Best of both worlds.</p>

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<p>mikeyc--I'm leaning towards an engineering physics major right now. I took PHYS 112 and 213, both classes with more than 100 students at lecture, but loved them because the professor was great. Let's put it this way: my physics class in high school had 25 kids and a senile teacher, and I would have been happy to multiply the class size by 8 if it meant getting a teacher who was 8 times better. (Required sections means you'll always have a chance to ask your T.A. questions.) It's a mixed bag -- my MATH 293 professor was abysmal, and that was also a big class -- but usually I think you'll find that Cornell uses large class sizes as an opportunity to expose more students to a great lecturer.</p>

<p>Side note: if you're worried about big classes, look up James Maas (>1000 kids in a single lecture) on ratemyprofessor.com.</p>

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<p>I came from a school with 160 graduating and I felt right at home at Cornell. Today, when I tell my friends I'm going "home," I mean Cornell, not the "home" where I grew up.</p>

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<p>I come from a school with 45 in a class :hitme: :(</p>

14

<p>that's actually very true mercury, I do it too haha. I really want to go home for the fall ;)</p>