<p>My son's interested in business. He thought of applying to the business school in agriculture but was told it was really, really competitive. ILR seems interesting. He might want to do something like management consulting. Is the economics major in the Arts and Sciences much more quantitative? I think he might want something a little more quantitative than ILR but it looks like he could take classes in things like accounting and marketing as electives. </p>
<p>How is recruitment from the various options - business, ILR, economics? How hard are they to get into relatively? Does it hurt to be out-of-state for ILR or the business school?</p>
<p>AEM has the best recruitment for finance, don’t know about the rest. Cornell is a private school and in-state/out of state won’t affect admissions at all, only the final cost of attendance for ILR/AEM</p>
<p>Anyone else? If you’re in let’s say ILR, can you take electives in marketing, finance, accounting, or are they restricted to majors or too hard to get into?</p>
<p>Based on your post Econ seems like the way to go since it’s more quantitative than both AEM and ILR. It’s also possible to take the AEM classes in marketing, accounting, etc. from the Econ major.</p>
<p>Econ is significantly more quantitative than AEM. Speaking as an Econ alum, it’s very easy to take some additional AEM classes to supplement the major. While I don’t have intimate knowledge of ILR/AEM curriculums, any of the 3 programs should satisfy your son’s academic desires with enough flexibility to take at least a few business, management, and/or accounting courses. That said, the Econ major is very flexible (only 8-10 classes required for the major) so if your son is more quantitative, it would probably be the best program to go more in-depth on the quantitative side. In addition to a few AEM classes (eg. accounting, marketing, and/or management), you can take CS or math classes, or even do a double major in math or CS (which would be a VERY good combo for business/banking). </p>
<p>As others said above, it doesn’t matter in-state/out-of-state in terms of admissions. AEM is the more competitive program to get into, but both AEM and ILR aren’t all that rigorous relative to Econ. ILR I think has the significantly higher acceptance rate, with A&S being closer to the AEM acceptance rate (I want to say 10% vs. 14-15% for AEM and CAS, respectively). That said, your son should apply to whatever program he’s best fit for. ILR can easily be harder to get into for someone if background and/or essays don’t demonstrate a clear passion for the ILR curriculum. </p>
<p>That said, with Econ, you do have to buy into the liberal arts curriculum. You’ll have to take at least one of science, math, social science, cultural, history, and language courses. I personally love that variety, but for others in CAS who really only wanted to study their major, it’s an issue. I think the flexibility serves students well and I know I took several courses on a whim to fill requirements that ended up being my favorites (and one even turned into a government double major).</p>
<p>My favorite method for trying to figure out which program/college to apply to is take 20-30mins and look carefully at the curriculums for the programs you are looking at and read the course descriptions. Tally which courses from which program interest you the most and that should give you more direction.</p>
<p>And as an AEM major myself, I will say that the curriculum has definitely gotten more restrictive and less flexible since I enrolled. AEM definitely focuses more on the field of business. Every other course an AEM major takes is typically some supplement to business or a CALS requirement. There tends to be very little deviation.</p>
<p>How do you structure your application. If you are applying to two colleges, it seems to me that your essays have to work well for both. I would think that economics/business work pretty well. Not sure exactly how ILR would fit in, though I’m sure it’s doable.</p>
<p>Otherwise - my strong advice – look at the ILR curriculum. If your son does not want to study this, do not apply there. I truly love Cornell and think it is a fantastic school, but it is better to get into a program that meets your interests at another school than a program at Cornell that does not.</p>
<p>In terms of in-state/out of state - remember that CAS is a fully private college within Cornell, where ILR and AEM are land-grant schools (New York residents pay about 15k less). What that means for instate or out of state admission rates I dont know. Something to look up in each college’s data.</p>
<p>“He thought of applying to the business school in agriculture but was told it was really, really competitive.”
It’s very competitive to get into, but not very competitive afterwards. CAS Econ is definately more quantitative. </p>
<p>“AEM has the best recruitment for finance, don’t know about the rest.”
this.</p>
<p>I’m confused now. In your first post, you said you wanted something more quantitative than ILR, so Econ fits the bill on that. I’m not sure AEM is significantly more quantitative than ILR, though with ILR you may have more flexibility to not choose quantitatively oriented courses. That said, I don’t think AEM or ILR ever go beyond Calc I at the undergrad level.</p>
<p>In terms of cost, Cornell is cheaper for NY residents IF you don’t qualify for financial aid or your EFC is somewhere between 35k and 55k. I was a NY resident in CAS and it didn’t matter which school I went to. I just got more financial aid than I otherwise would have in CALS.</p>
<p>BTW, I believe the reason AEM has the best recruitment for finance is because AEM students are more interested in finance. ILR places a fair amount into finance, but a lot of ILRies go the law school route. People often double up with Econ so they can have a “practical” major to supplement something like English or History, or go into policy (like me), or go on to grad school. I’m going to guess this data doesn’t exist, but the relevant factor would be how well equivalent students (same GPA etc.) from the different programs place into finance. My intuition is that it’s not all that significantly different between the programs.</p>
<p>Since around 50% of the students do not qualify or receive financial aid, the contract colleges DO make a difference in cost. </p>
<p>In terms of moving to NY State to receive the benefit - I dont know if it works the same was as in VA and CA where you must be a state resident for two years before applying.</p>
<p>We would be able to get the discounted tuition the 2nd year. I think AEM would be the ideal curriculum. that’s probably why it’s so hard to get in.</p>
<p>It’s a good curriculum in that there aren’t too many classes that some might see as irrelevant. It also could be hard for someone outside of AEM to get into some of the classes and it might be hard to fit into the schedule because of the requirements.</p>