<p>Hi robotmom1414, </p>
<p>Regarding Cornell, I think that completely depends on what your son wants. Is he okay with the ruralness of Cornell? While CS at Cornell is among the top 5, there is a bit of a larger gap between the top 4 and Cornell than there is between #1 and #2; that’s because Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, and to a slightly lesser extent CMU are just behemoths when it comes to CS, and even schools ranked immediately afterward see a steep dropoff in many measures of quality (such as faculty quality, course variety, facilities, etc.). For example, see this:</p>
<p>[Top</a> organizations in Computer Science](<a href=“http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=7&topDomainID=2&subDomainID=0&last=0&start=1&end=100]Top”>http://academic.research.microsoft.com/RankList?entitytype=7&topDomainID=2&subDomainID=0&last=0&start=1&end=100)</p>
<p>Notice that the top 4 are pretty neck-and-neck (CMU’s H-index is a bit lower, mostly because it’s less-cited than the other three despite publishing a huge volume of papers). And then there’s a pretty steep dropoff after that.</p>
<p>There are many other problems with Cornell - much larger student body (more than 2-3x the # undergrads), larger classes, higher student:faculty ratio, and much less funding: its budget is 1/3 less than Yale’s, despite having 2x the total number of students and more schools (such as hotel management) than Yale. Personally, I don’t think that its advantage in CS is enough to overcome these, but of course it’s always up to the individual; many of these may be irrelevant to your son. This is not to say that Cornell isn’t great, which it most certainly is; but it’s just no match for HYPSM, in my opinion.</p>
<p>As others said, be wary of Cornell’s offer to match. If Stanford’s financial aid isn’t up to par, contact them - I know of many instances where the financial aid office upped the grant money for an admitted student to compete with other schools’ offers. I’d do the same for MIT.</p>
<p>Regarding MIT, it’s really unfortunate that there have been more deaths of late. This isn’t very common and previous studies of the suicide rate at MIT found that it’s no different than at other universities. I don’t think it’s the environment that leads students to commit suicide; there are depressed, suicidal people everywhere, and having to deal with the difficulties of stress can push them over the edge. But they’d have been pushed over the edge no matter where they went. If there is any link to MIT itself, then I think that’s mostly because MIT attracts very intense individuals. The ones who commit suicide have probably been under extreme pressure for far longer than their college careers. So my answer is that the reputation for suicide is overblown (and usually unsubstantiated until bouts like now occur), but the stress of the environment isn’t. Likewise, the stress of the environment in any STEM discipline at any school (including Yale and Stanford) isn’t overblown. That’s just the nature of the fields themselves, although a lot of the stress in these fields *can *be self-imposed. At MIT, also, there’s a lot of infrastructure in place to help students, such as the staff members and housemasters you live with, the graduate resident tutors who keep an eye on you, the many mental health resources, counseling, and so on.</p>
<p>It’s important to note that other universities deal with this as well - periods of time when there seem to be a higher number of deaths or suicides. Harvard, Yale, Cornell, etc. all deal with this. Even Stanford, with its happy/laid-back environment, has suicides.</p>
<p>Regarding the food situation, I can’t speak to the undergrad situation, so you might post a thread on the MIT forum.</p>
<p>One note: eventually it would be a very, very good idea to have your son live in a situation where he has to make his own food. Far too many college students, including those at elite schools, leave college not knowing anything about taking care of a household: washing clothes (Davidson College even has a laundry service!), cooking, cleaning, paying bills, signing leases, and so on. It’s a good idea to get this down in college before you have to go into the real world.</p>