<p>Is calc brutal at Cornell? I’ve dropped calculus in high school… twice</p>
<p>Engineering math in general isn’t that bad if you have some ability in math. My experience was that Linear Algebra was the hardest; Differential Equations was the easiest engineering math class, though not really by much. Seeing as you’ve already been exposed to multivariable calculus, your math background is probably stronger than most incoming engineers. If you’re going to look down on everyone, you probably won’t be happy at Cornell.</p>
<p>Linear algebra is probably the easiest math class I’ve taken, but maybe it’s different at Cornell.</p>
<p>Judging by the other kids who got admitted to Cornell from my school and alumni staff, I would say Cornellians aren’t especially bright.</p>
<p>Linear Algebra is definitely very hard… especially the abstract parts of it.
I found Multivariable Calc to be a lot easier.</p>
<p>Actually, I found Multivariable to be easier than AP Calc BC… but that’s probably just stupid me being crappy at math and understanding double integrals better than single integrals -___-.</p>
<p>BING the only reaosn I can think of picking Williams over Cornell is if you want a few more years of “hand holding” </p>
<p>i heard med school is very jockish and competitive…</p>
<p>^ Lol, what?
I thought we were talking about how awful math is…</p>
<p>@ Cayuga: I’ve already ruled out anesthesiology as a possible career option, haha. So no worries. I’m actually thinking about psychiatry, since I’m really interested in mental disorders. However, the job description isn’t super appealing (“How do you feel about that?”)
So we’ll see. :)</p>
<p>DiffEq is very easy. I’m taking it right now (granted, through dual-enrollment at a school that’s not nearly as good as Cornell…but math is math), and all you have to do is apply methods. Once you learn a particular method, you can pretty much apply the method universally.</p>
<p>Linear Algebra is a little bit harder; while solving for solutions is usually simple, subspaces and superspaces and stuff can get confusing, especially when your book explains everything in an abstract manner with very few examples.</p>
<p>The Calc series: AB is really simple; half of the class is on BS stuff that doesn’t actually matter (limits & continuity). The rest, once you learn how to do it, is straightforward. BC, I’ll admit, is very annoying. Rotational volumes are easy if you approach them appropriately, but sequences and series (especially power series) are the invention of the devil. There are a million tests to remember and it sucks. Multivariable calculus is both easy and difficult. A lot of it is just the same techniques from before (multiple integrals), but line integrals and vectors and stuff are lame. And for both BC and Multi, working in parametric and polar is annoying.</p>
<p>/mathrantover</p>
<p>^ I wouldn’t know anything about DiffEq, but you are spot on about Linear Algebra.
Gauss-Jordan elimination, solving, etc. is fine, but we have this test after break on subspaces, nullspaces, row spaces, etc etc etc and my brain’s about to EXPLODE! Especially since the book describes it all in terms of abstract concepts like spanning instead of actual problems.
That’s why I despise Linear Algebra: I’m not a math person, and I’m completely disenchanted by the abstractness of it. I just don’t like math enough!</p>
<p>Yeah, Multivariable is okay… a lot of memorization, and yes, line integrals are the devil’s spawn. </p>
<p>Gah @ Mathematics!
I’m so glad I’ll just have to take Calc 1 and Calc 2 in college for pre-med… after that, there’s nooooo way I’m taking Multi or Lin Alg again. And definitely not taking DiffEq.</p>
<p>Visiting Cornell, I didn’t notice any special sense of special intellectualism or any difference with other non-Ivy colleges. My high school always talked about being “the best” even though most people there seemed kind of dumb (to me). At Cornell, can students rightly be considered “the best?”</p>
<p>There are more students at Cornell with over a 1500 SAT Math and Verbal than the total number of students at a school like Dartmouth. Similarly, there are more students with less than a 1300 SAT Math and Verbal. There are a large number of hard working and bright students at Cornell getting a very good education. I’m not certain what being ‘the best’ has to do with your abillity to obtain an education.</p>
<p>The concepts of knowledge and intelligence are too often interchanged and equated. Knowledge comes from information, opinion, and fact. Intellect comes from the mind. I can give you an example in my high school. There are a few folks in my main subject classes (all honors/AP) that achieve high grades. However, most, if not all of them, are simply diligent students who know the material. Some of them took the SAT in January and didn’t do so well; most scoring under 1500. Now of course, the SAT isn’t the immaculate measure of one’s intelligence, but it has some worth in that regard. Secondly, my school isn’t that great in aiding people with higher goals or giving strong SAT advice (only thing is prep classes). Many of the uninformed juniors are feeling the effects of those bad inadequacies this school year; but going back to the point, true intellect is not as widespread in the classroom.</p>
<p>I don’t think Cornellians as a whole are that “intellectual.” There seems to be a pretty wide range of intelligences in the student body; you’re likely to meet people who are not particularly talented by Ivy standards. On the other hand, it is also not that difficult to find HYP/MIT-caliber students here either (in my experience, especially in hard sciences and engineering). I think most of the students are hard-working and/or smart but not exceptional. They may also have outstanding personal qualities to offer (I think this is true namely in colleges like Hotel and ILR, where personal skills are important). So, I think the overall atmosphere in Cornell is more practical than intellectual, perhaps owing to Cornell’s philosophy and it’s specialized/practical undergraduate programs (Ag, ILR, Hotel, HumEc, etc).</p>
<p>I think the main difference is the norm of being an “intellectual” requires you to study comparative literature and to debate Proust and politics.</p>
<p>Cornell students as an average, due to the land-grant style of the university, are very much vested in the practical subjects. Students tend to be more real world, more down to earth, and less concerned with cigars, snifters of brandy, and sweater vests. If you are one of those types of students, you can definitely find like minded people. But on the whole, I have found smart, dedicated, and practical minded students to be the majority.</p>
<p>Why would you ever want people who can spew out random facts? Those are the people that don’t know the worth of an education. An education is supposed to a) give you a broader or a different perspective on each subject matter, whether it be math or literature AND b) teach you how to apply that knowledge to the world. If I wanted to know random facts, I wouldn’t be going to college, I would be going to Wikipedia and reading random articles. I bet Wikipedia could teach me more random facts than any college could. And it’s FREE AND INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNIZED. :)</p>
<p>I don’t think the OP meant if Cornellians could walk up to you and say “Did you know x ears of corn were grown in Iowa last year?” I think he meant that, if you walked up to a Cornellian and said “Quick! Who was the last colonial governor of Chile?” he would be much, much more likely than the average person to be able to answer something like “I think a group in my class 7th grade mentioned that in a presentation. I think it was Count Z-something…Count Zambrano.”</p>
<p>The latter is indicative of high levels of intelligence – “crystallized intelligence” is a component of g, the general intelligence factor.</p>
<p>Isn’t that also a random fact?</p>
<p>Just because it has to do with politics and history and not with corn doesn’t make it any less trivial, and thus “trivia.”</p>
<p>Try asking a Cornellian about something that actually matters to them.</p>
<p>I know I didn’t really phrase the question the way I meant it. I was just thinking how most people in my school have no idea where thailand is or that there is a country called kazakhstan (unless they saw borat). I know that knowing things and having intelligence are very different.</p>
<p>
I was thinking more of the lines of “How would you apply price discrimination when pricing health insurance and why?” (this is pretty rudimentary question for econ majors, but whatever). The person has to have both the knowledge of price discrimination and the knowledge of how to apply it to a real world situation like this. I think that Cornellians, in general, have this practical edge over other Ivies.</p>
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<p>By geography and lifestyle habits only, please. Everything else is really a question of moral philosophy – and there is something quite perverse about charging somebody higher for ‘insurance’ due to things out of their control, like age or an inherited chronic disease.</p>
<p>The bigger question is how to define your risk pools.</p>
<p>CayugaRed2005, what’s your major? Are you AEM, Econ, or another major?
I think this question shows a true practical and intellectual insight, which was why I brought it up. What is risky, and what is not? What are the target risk pools? How do you maximize profits without ruining your reputation? How high should your price discrimination be compared to your competition and to the market? How should the pricing be to distinguish itself from the competition? Should there be incentives for those who do not have health insurance? Does price discrimination reduce the amount of possible customers, and by how much? What is the elasticity of each risk pool? How likely would the people with insurance be more likely to induce moral hazards onto themselves? I can go on and on, but I won’t.
These are the questions only a “practical intellect” can answer. :)</p>