38angel

Ahhh...thanks for enlightening me, Figgy .*grins*. Right. So which profs should I avoid like the plague because they refuse to give out A pluses?

norcalguy

I never really know if a professor doesn't give out an A+ or if I simply didn't achieve an A+. Different professors have different policies: some give out an A+ if you get 100%, some for a 98%, some give out A+'s to the top student, some give out A+'s to the top 5 students, etc.

There has been only 1 time where I felt I deserved an A+ but didn't get one. It was in BioBM332 (biochem). The mean in the class before the curve was a D+ (68%). I had a 94% before the curve so I already had an A. The mean ended up being curved to a B+ but somehow my grade still stayed the same after the curve lol

foxdie!

^wow, yeah you should have definitely asked that teacher for an A+

norcalguy

That would've been too much of a premed thing to do.

biggyboy

lol im sensing an implication but i can't quite figure it out...

posterX

MIT had the highest suicide rate in the country in a recent study by the Boston Globe. Over a period of a few years, there were several high profile suicides including one student who committed suicide by setting her entire dormitory on fire, and it's a pretty small school. Its suicide "rate" was off the charts. I think I recall that the two other schools with unusually high suicide rates were Duke and Harvard. At Harvard, a student murdered her roommate and then hung herself in her dorm room.

Cornell was mentioned since it did have three or four suicides over a period of some years, but the gorge-jumpings people refer to have actually mostly been non-students jumping. It is just a convenient place to choose if you want to kill yourself. But if you consider that a suicide at Cornell, it would kind of be like counting random people jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge towards the suicide rate for Columbia.

However, I'd definitely question the sample size and accuracy of that study. It's hard to say a school has a very high suicide rate based on 5 or 10 students who killed themselves, even if many other universities had no suicides, and it is even harder to make a connection between the characteristics of that school and the students' choice to die.

Another school with high-profile suicides recently is NYU - several students have jumped eight stories off the library in Washington Square over the past few years, killing themselves. Those were especially gorey because the students jumped into an area at the base of the library that had large crowds. However, NYU has 36,000 students so a suicide once per year is about what you would expect, unfortunately.

ihslax

just to let you guys know cornell university is the 3rd largest landowner in NY state, right behind NY state and the catholic church

mrsopresident

what about the land that new york city owns? i'm sure the city owns more land than cornell.

Determind15

"lol im sensing an implication but i can't quite figure it out..."

Lol premed students have a lot to lose...they have to get high grades in college to go to a GOOD med-school, regardless of that they are in competition against so many other students (GAZILLION TRILLIAM MILLION). So not getting an A is like death. Cant wait till I experience it...lmao

blazinyan300

I agree with Determind because it seems to me that it is nearly impossible to pull off an A avg and still have time for ECs, like research and physician shadowing. Do a lot of students get into med school after the strenuous courseload? I hope so because my dreams are on the line here.

norcalguy

Med schools are looking for students who can pull off A's without having to study day and night. They know you didn't have to study day and night because you will have EC's (10+ hours/wk is preferable).

mrsopresident

"But if you consider that a suicide at Cornell, it would kind of be like counting random people jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge towards the suicide rate for Columbia."

i don't know about this analogy. i could see if the Brooklyn Bridge was on Columbia's campus (these gorges and waterfalls are all located on Cornell's campus), but this bridge is well over 100 city blocks from Columbia. Now it would be different if people counted suicides via a gorge off Cornell's campus as a Cornell suicide, but that's not what's being reported.

gomestar

Pretend the Brooklyn Bridge is on Columbia's campus. Or that people like to jump off a particular building at Columbia, whether they're students or not.

surfandturf89

Question about Admissions:

Does anyone know how the colleges at Cornell which start rolling notification in February tell the student the decision? Do they only tell the admitted students in February and wait for the denied students till March/April?

mrsopresident

no. i none people who've been accepted to hotel and CALS on the same day as the CAS, ENG, and AAP applicants.