<p>Hey so I just got accepted ED to the arts and science college at Cornell and am sorta concerned about a few things.</p>
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<li><p>I really want to go into business and heard the Johnson undergraduate school is the top tier business school at Cornell. What is the deal with that if you aren't in the ALS college and can AS kids get into the AEM program?</p></li>
<li><p>How hard are frats to pledge and are they selective? Do you rush freshman year and get in sophomore? How is the party scene? I want to really party hard but I hear it is hard as a freshman.</p></li>
<li><p>Are classes as hard and miserable as everyone makes them out to be? Is the course load way to much?</p></li>
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<p>As a CAS student you can take finance courses in AEM and Hotel. You can major in Economics and take few finance and accounting courses if you are interested in business.</p>
<p>Cornell’s rush period is the week before spring classes start. This year it will be the week of Jan 14th. It is mostly for freshmen, but some sophomores (especially transfers) do join the rush. It is not hard to get into a fraternity if you are not stuck on getting into a “top tier” fraternity. Pledge period used to end on the Slope Day, but this is the first year that Cornell is banning pledging, [Cornell</a> Chronicle: Skorton bans pledging in Greek system](<a href=“Home | Cornell Chronicle”>Home | Cornell Chronicle) , due to few recent incidents.</p>
<p>Not sure what you mean when you say you want to party hard. Cornell students are known to work hard and play hard. My older daughter did, and my younger one seems to be out quite a bit. I am familiar with Cornell’s Greek life because my older one was very active and the young one probably will also follow her sister foot steps.</p>
<p>Cornell is not an easy school, but there are plenty of kids getting above B. My older one got good enough GPA to get a finance job, and the younger one got close to 4.0 the first semester.</p>
<p>I am sure currents students will chime in to share their point of view.</p>
<p>I cobbled together my own unofficial business minor by taking classes in Hotel, the Johnson School, Ag Ec (now AEM) and Engineering–ORIE. City & Regional Planning in AAP also offered fascinating courses, but I didn’t investigate it early enough to get through the pre-reqs.</p>
<p>As Ezra said, “I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.” Have a fun four years!</p>
<p>1) You can take AEM classes, but they won’t count towards the 100 Arts credits you need to graduate. However, the business minor provides a new incentive.</p>
<p>3) Depends on the class. I literally never did any of my FWS homework and wrote every essay the day before, yet still got an ‘A’.</p>
<p>1) Your best bet is the AEM minor + Econ classes in CAS. You can transfer to AEM, but it’s one of the few “difficult” transfers. Note: Johnson school and AEM in CALS are different programs. The Johnson school provides a professional-level graduate MBA degree.</p>
<p>2) Some frats are more selective than others. If you want to “party hard” you shouldn’t have a problem. </p>
<p>3) Difficulty varies substantially by class/major.</p>
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<li><p>If you are AS and decide you want to major in AEM you will have to apply to transfer to CALS. What you can do is major in Econ and minor in AEM. Btw the undergraduate business program is not the “Johnson undergraduate business school,” it’s the Dyson school of business or AEM in CALS. It is not really necessary to major in business to get a job in finance or anything though, so think about whether you want to transfer or just take some classes. Maybe try to take the intro AEM class your freshman year. </p></li>
<li><p>There are like 40 fraternities, pledging and selectivity varies. You rush during the week before spring semester in January. When I was a freshman it was really easy to party hard if you wanted to. I definitely went out every weekend and had a great time. Nowadays though, I really don’t know. There have been a lot of new rules put in place and apparently freshman can’t go to open parties anymore. Somehow I feel like they still do because I have no idea who goes to open parties then…but idk. </p></li>
<li><p>Classes and difficulty of courseload depends on your major and course selection. Most people I know including myself end up making things difficult for themselves because they are the type of people who try to do everything and are involved in a lot of things on top of that. If you want to just coast by and not do much work you can usually do that too (unless your major itself just necessitates a lot of work). For instance, I had a really stressful fall semester this year and slept a total of 8 hours during the last week of classes. Only 1/5 classes I took was necessary and the rest were just things I wanted to do.</p></li>
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<p>One important thing to consider. Coming out of Cornell, your choice of major won’t matter much for employment purposes in ‘business’ sector, including investment banking or consulting. Some of my friends who work at bulge bracket banks or consulting firms were liberal arts majors, such as government, history, or sociology. GPA and internship are much more important factors in landing the job, than being an “AEM” major.</p>
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<p>Some frats are selective; some others aren’t. You can rush as a freshman or sophomore. Party scene at Cornell is incredible. I live in NYC now, but the memories of partying up back in Ithaca are sometimes too wild for me to digest, even now. It is very easy to party as a freshman. The best way to go is to form friendships with people who enjoy partying, and go to house parties hosted by people who are friends with your friends, etc. I recommend this route much more than going to a random frat party and just drinking cheap beer and playing beer pong. There are lots of legit house parties in collegetown, that have quality booze, nice music, much more private & intimate, and plenty attractive females to hang with. You just have to know the right social circles.</p>
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<p>As others said, it depends on major and class. Some classes I took at Cornell were complete joke. It was very hard to get anything below a B in those courses. Some other courses were insanely hard.</p>