<p>For Cornell students in the School of Engineering, why did you choose to go to Cornell? What's special about Cornell's engineering program?</p>
<p>If you compare Cornell's engineering program to most other engineering programs in the Ivy League, you'll see that the quality of faculty, number of courses offered, and amount of resources devoted to the engineering department is enormous.</p>
<p>what norcalguy said is all true. Cornell has wonderfully diverse engineering program. you can really feel a palpable vibe just walking through the eng quad. bUt let me dispel a rumor real quick.</p>
<p>Research is not that easy to find! Everyone always says they're so many oppurtunities open and that's true. The problem: there's so much competition for positions. I asked 10 professors to oversee my senior design project and only one had an open spot in their lab. So at a state school, they're less oppurutnites, but way more openinigs.</p>
<p>I wouldn't just compare Cornell's engineering program to the Ivy schools, however. If you compare Cornell's program to other top engineering schools, including Michigan, Georgia Tech, Purdue, Berkeley, and Illinois, I think you will find that there are more resources and opportunities per student. So while top students at those schools may not have a problem, it's easier to get lost at a Georgia Tech than it is at Cornell.</p>
<p>I think Cornell stands pretty well with Stanford, MIT, CMU, and Caltech in terms of the undergraduate engineering experience. Cornell's appeal, I think to many engineers here, is that the relatively expansive academic offerings and diverse student body means that there are a lot of interesting opportunities elsewhere on campus beyond engineering -- the performing arts, social clubs, varsity athletics, etc. You might not find the diversity of options that Cornell can offer to an undergraduate at some other schools.</p>
<p>Dontno -- I find it interesting that you had a hard time finding a research opportunity at Cornell. I can't think of one person I know who wanted a research opportunity who didn't find one. Granted, it may not have been in their exact area of interest, but at the undergraduate level its more about exposure to the process.</p>
<p>CURB</a> - Finding Research</p>
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I asked 10 professors to oversee my senior design project and only one had an open spot in their lab.
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<p>This is actually pretty standard protocol for finding research anywhere. Email professors in bunches of 10, you might get 2 replies, and out of the 2 replies, you may or may not get a professor willing to interview you. You will find a research job if you're persistent since professors are generally not very picky but it can take awhile to find the right lab.</p>
<p>1) Cornell's program is broad and diverse. You will have the opportunity to be exposed to a broad array of engineering -related areas, giving you wide lattitude, and more insight, in choosing your path. </p>
<p>Whereas, in contrast there are some "good" schools that have small engineering programs, but if you look at it they offer very few courses, and entirely miss some broad areas of engineering altogether. At Cornell you will not be funneled into a particular sub-specialty because that's all they have, Cornell has pretty much everything.</p>
<p>2) At Cornell you do not come in directly to a particular specialty (ie Electrical), you can choose it later. Whereas, I've read on CC that at Berkeley one must apply to the specialty area from the outset, and transfer is not automatic.</p>
<p>3) My recollection is that Cornell's program offers relatively wide lattitude for taking electives ouside of the College of Engineering.</p>
<p>4) A corollary to #3 is that when you take these outside electives, you will be taking them at the other colleges which are tops in their own respective fields, and have highly intelligent and motivated students themselves.</p>
<p>This may be good, but it may also be bad. At Cornell, that history class you might be interested in taking as a lark is no blow-off course, it may be populated by a bunch of high-capability students who are as motivated for that class as you are for engineering classes. This may discourage you from taking some courses of potential interest. Hopefully it won't though, and then you'll reap the benefit of the university's broad array of outstanding offerings.</p>
<p>5) The number of possible areas of interest you can pursue outside of engineering is huge, due to Cornell's diversity of colleges and areas of study generally.</p>
<p>6) There are synergies with offerings of the other colleges that may be valuable. For example, mixing civil engineering with agricultural engineering, or architecture. Potential crossover with the myriad areas of biology being pusrued at several colleges at the university . Physics, in the arts college, with engineering physics, materials science, or electrical engineering. etc.</p>
<p>7) The college is well recruited, opportunities will likely be made available to you via on-campus recruitment.</p>
<p>8) your degree is well respected, in both professional and academic circles.</p>
<p>9) The program is pretty darned tough. But then, that may be a feature of engineering generally.</p>
<p>10) Cornell, as whole and in the dorms, is fully co-ed, 50-50 M-F ratio.</p>
<p>engineers are the coolest people i know here :)</p>
<p>what i find annoying is that engineering students often roll their eyes when around non-engineers especially arts students...</p>
<p>there is a division at cornell between career-minded individuals and intellectually-minded ones...</p>
<p>ResurgamBell - I think that is a gross exaggeration if you are referring only to the engineering program by the "intellectually minded" comment. I know plenty of students who want to study engineering because it excites them intellectually and not because of a career path. In fact, many engineers do not choose to go into engineering. I know your college [ILR] is the same - you will find your pre-law, pre-business kids among the students who have no idea what career path to take. Even CAS, which markets itself as a small liberal arts college within a large university has a tremendous mix of career vs. non-career minded students. Also - I wouldn't draw the line between career-minded and intellectually-minded. You can be both, you know.</p>
<p>It would not surprise me if engineers as a group were found to have some differences in outlook and attitudes than, for example, liberal arts students as a group. (with much overlap). If this is the case at Cornell as well, I don't think it reflects anything really distinguishable about Cornell's engineering program particularly vs. other engineering programs, which is the topic of this thread.</p>
<p>What may be a more noteworthy point to make for this thread is that at Cornell, most fellow students will not be engineers, they will have all sorts of other interests and outlooks. Though there are certainly plenty of engineers.</p>
<p>One of our daughter's reasons for Cornell was the diversity of student body (i.e. more than just engineers) but all her friends are engineers or pre-meds. They call the CALs "arts and crafts". </p>
<p>Cornell engineering takes the right type of student, a pretty independent one that does not need anyone to help them with the maze of graduation requirements and education decisions. I don't think our daughter met at all with advisor on courses. Even when she changed to a different engineering major, he never responded to emails either. Hopefully she'll have a real advisor now. </p>
<p>To me (an engineer), it seems more like a state school mentality - sink or swim on own. Other schools take more nurturing attitudes that if you got in, they want to help you graduate. </p>
<p>The exams are definitely brutal with wicked curves. You don't feel like you are doing well until the grades come out and the curve corrected all. Nothing like feeling stupid after each exam. Other schools consider the teacher a bad teacher if the curve is too low. Not at Cornell. If you can't take the wicked curves, stay away from Cornell. Note this is not true for the non-engineering courses at all, just the core math/physics/chemistry/engineering exams.</p>
<p>But the campus is pretty and the name is Ivy. High school students pay way too much attention to these facts. Especially for engineering, Ivy means little. Many top schools are state schools.</p>
<p>Most important is what graduate school will you get into afterwards? A Masters degree is the minimum for Cornell level students. You can stay at Cornell for a Masters pretty easily with a high enough GPA. Make sure your budget and GPA will get you to graduate school. It is pretty easy to go down in prestige from Cornell for graduate school, and if you do well at a state school or engineering school with merit scholarships, you can pretty easily get into the top graduate schools. The graduate school launches careers, not undergraduate.</p>
<p>I'm guessing you mean CAS, not CALS. They probably have some different names for CALS.</p>
<p>She probably did in fact have to meet with her advisor. Although the quality of those meetings may well have been in the spirit of your post.</p>
<p>True, when you get out there as an engineer you will find mostly graduates of state U's, some of whom are smarter than you are. </p>
<p>True, to engineers Ivy means nothing. Nothing positive, anyway. They are all about "where's the beef?". And mostly went to state schools themselves. Including your boss.</p>
<p>Back in my day Cornell engineeers were able to get good jobs with just BAs, but I defer to you about current. </p>
<p>If you do need an M.Eng, now, true, Cornell's program was a decently easy admit from Cornell undergrad, maybe that's a point to consider.</p>
<p>I would not quibble with much of your characterization, I don't know that many engineering schools are much more nurturing than that though. I'm guessing generally not.</p>
<p>I'd say Stanford is more nurturing. They have the attitude if you get in you should get out. True my info is 25 years old from when at graduate school, but I actually thought they went too far with no-fail policy and and drops up to 48 hrs before the final. </p>
<p>RPI also is on my more nurturing list, probably just because of size. And they have much more interactive classes, they've put a lot of effort into the "getting the sage off the stage" and having smaller class sizes. We say our son there has more fun than the rest of the family combined. He says classmate are brilliant, some turned down MIT for environment and merit scholarships. 25% are medalists, which means top science/math in the high school. He works hard and does well without all the angst of Cornell exams. His friends are well rounded normal students. While my son and daughter have different aptitudes, both are great engineering students of comparable talents.</p>
<p>My state school undergrad I'd put on list as more nurturing because I was in the honors program and my advisor helped create opportunity. I was a person. I had as many friends from this state school at Stanford as did my Cornell friends. The graduate school class is diversified on purpose. Maybe most Cornellians tend to stay at Cornell.</p>
<p>Yes, I meant CAS, not CALS. Her friends are CALS, architects or engineering it seems, by natural selection in an all woman's dorm. I'm surprised cause she went to a very arty private high school with very arty friends.</p>
<p>And I think her advisor checked some preference so she could enroll in classes without approval, he might get a copy. But it is not an iterative process where he said "21 credits are you nuts" as he should have.</p>
<p>IMO applicants to engineering schools should consider sandpit's comments and take them into consideration. I personally have little familiarity with other engineering schools. Except that some MIT colleagues said their school was an ordeal. and Some state U alums I know said half their class flunked out. And a guy I know who did Stanford master's after Cornell said Stanford was a cakewalk by comparison. But then, my Cornell master's was also easier.</p>
<p>If there are indeed real differences in this regard, as sandpit suggests, that's something worth investigating, and considering. In a perfect world, college should, in proper measure, be fun.</p>
<p>RPI has a highly regarded engineering program. Though not nearly the reputation for the liberal arts & other areas which may be of personal interest, or the diversity of areas of study outside of engineering
.
FWIW, I wouldn't say most Cornellians stay at Cornell, as I recall they went all over the place. Some stay though, for M.Eng. Far fewer for beyond.</p>
<p>When I was there we actually had to meet with advisers, but not all of those encounters were constructive.</p>
<p>My adviser is there when I need him and has been nothing but helpful when I have. However, I tend to navigate things on my own. But especially as you take to small upper level classes (tend to have 15 or fewer students), you really do get to know those professors well and are another valuable resource for any of your questions.</p>
<p>I have to echo that one of the best things about Cornell Engineering is the diversity. You are not in some tech school like CalTech or Georgia Tech where everybody around you is an engineer. There are so many opportunities do do things outside of engineering, academic and otherwise. </p>
<p>I also feel that the students here are very willing to work together, which may not be as true at other schools. Walking through Duffield you'll always see groups of people working on problem sets or studying--not cutthroat at all.</p>