Admission to cornell ED

[collegemom3717]

OP, are you the student or the parent? Other posts identify you as a parent, but here it sound as if you are the applicant.

@gpat1097

For example, Cornell has a big initiative to help farmers. Now, you may not at all be interested in farming, but in your essay you can still talk about how will extend your engineering knowledge by developing technologies to help farmers. Cornell might like something like this because farming is very important to them and now you are showing that you can fit into their community.

Please do not follow this advice.

Farming is important to the Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. It is not especially important to the Cornell University College of Engineering. Pretending to be interested in something you are not is a poor approach to anything in life.

DO learn more about the various groups within Cornell Engineering and see how they fit with your genuine interests. DO learn more about Cornell CoE as a place to study- it really does not suit everybody. The approach and style are completely different than at GaTech, which is different than Purdue, which is different than NU- all peer schools. Engineering is a tough, intense course. The career potential from any of the big names is entirely comparable. It makes sense to figure out both the culture and the areas of specific expertise that work best you (your student if you are the parent). For example, the CoE at Cornell is considered a serious leader in nanotechnology- which is great, but if you are into bioengineering JHU might suit you better.