At my state school the freshman are given low priority and the morning classes and the upperclassmen get afternoon. Is Cornell like this?
Granted it’s been a while, but when I went to Cornell pretty much EVERYONE had morning classes.
While it is true that freshmen enroll last (if you’re entering this fall, all other students have already enrolled for the fall), whether you have morning classes or not depends more on what classes you plan to take. In engineering, most classes are taken by only students in certain years, so it doesn’t matter that you’re enrolling after upperclassmen if they’re not planning to take the class anyway. Most large lectures do meet in the morning, but there are some that meet in the afternoon. If you’re curious when classes you think you’ll take will meet, this is the roster of courses for the fall:
Thank you. When do Freshman register?
A bit of a warning: When you get an internship and later a career job, they will expect you to work mornings.
For first semester, freshmen pre-enroll for classes in early-mid July, but every other semester, there is a period where each class has a three-day period when they enroll, starting with graduate students and ending with freshmen. This period takes place after the drop deadline, either in early November or early April.
Also keep in mind that morning classes aren’t awful! I am definitely NOT a morning person, but I actually enjoy having my classes all in the mornings and being done by noon. Then I get the rest of the day to do whatever I want basically. I do a lot more of my work in the afternoons. If I had all my classes in the afternoon, I would probably just sleep in until class started and never get any of my work done. So just remember that morning classes may actually be beneficial!
Are most classes based on tests and papers? Are there any projects or homework? are tests timed?
If you have an idea of what classes you are likely to take, here’s the roster of classes for Fall 2015:
https://classes.cornell.edu/browse/roster/FA15
Of course, some of the classes are full already so keep that in mind.
@lisaol it depends on the class, but yes most classes have exams, papers, and assignments/projects. I’ve had classes where your grade is just based on a few big exams and some classes where your grade is based on exams, quizzes, assignments, projects, and papers. So it depends. And yes, tests are timed. Sometimes they will be in-class in which case they will last usually either 50 or 75 minutes. Sometimes they are outside of class in the evening in which case they can be whatever length of time the professor wants (2 or 3 hours from my experience)
@2018dad Why does it say courses of study will be available mid-June? Is that something else?
@lisaol It means that next year’s course descriptions aren’t officially up yet, though you can look at this year’s. Most don’t change much.
The difference between college and high school is in college homework and class participation are not going to count as much. Your prelims (1-2 a semester) and finals are going to be more heavily weighted, which means each of those tests could make you or break you.