Thank you SO much!!
How is the food? Are there good healthy options on campus?
@cbc6800
I’m glad I could help!
Hi! The food isn’t too terrible. I definitely miss my mom’s cooking at times, but I don’t dislike the food at school. Any complaints I’ve had about food at school have more to do with me getting tired of it than they have to do with the overall quality of the food.
If you find yourself missing the taste of homemade food and you’d like to prepare a few dishes for yourself, that’s definitely possible, as all of the residence halls have kitchens equipped with an oven, a refrigerator, and a microwave. Be aware that you do need to bring your own pots/pans/etc.
There are a variety of healthy foods on campus! All of the dining halls have foods that are safe for all dietary restrictions (gluten-free, dairy-free, etc.) In addition to that, there are a wide range of vegetarian and vegan foods available. Information as to whether the food is vegetarian/vegan or not is clearly labeled above all of the foods on the buffet, and Campus Center dining hall has a section that serves exclusively vegan foods.
Food in the dining halls is marked with various pieces of nutritional information, like what constitutes a serving, calories per serving, ingredients used to make the dish, etc., so you have the ability to be very aware of what is in the food and decide whether or not its something you want to eat.
Ithaca definitely makes it as easy as they can to continue eating healthy while in college!
Thanks!
Do you remember if regular decisions came out on a particular day or in waves? The website just says by April 15 at latest.
I have no idea if they changed things this year, but last year I’m pretty sure they released decisions in waves. I personally applied EA in like September, and I received my decisions in the first wave of acceptances (mid-November).
Thanks for starting this thread! I got into the Journalism program at the Park School which I’m pretty excited about. How is the weather like? I follow Ithaca’s instagram and there are always photos of campus covered in snow. Is it rough to move around campus on days where it is snowy? Might sound like a stupid question but I’m actually from Hawaii so 60 degree weather is actually freezing for us lol. Also, how is the diversity on campus?
Hi! Congratulations on your acceptance!
In regards to the weather, we like to say it ‘ithacates’. Pretty much, that means the weather is pretty weird, which is typical for upstate New York. The coming week is a prime example of this. The high today is 22 degrees, tomorrow is supposed to have a high of 41, Saturday is supposed to be a high of 46, and Sunday is supposed to have a high of 38. Of course, next Tuesday we’re supposed to be back down to 19 degrees, because it’s Ithaca, and we can’t have nice weather all of the time in January.
We do get a decent amount of snow, but mobility doesn’t tend to be too hard if you live on campus. Maintenance does a good job of shoveling and salting the sidewalks, so it’s usually fine. You’ll definitely want a pair of high quality boots (a LOT of students wear LL Bean), a warm coat, gloves, etc. to make walking around more comfortable though.
Ithaca College is a predominantly white campus (I’ve seen figures that say about 70% of the campus is white). I’m actually a student from a underrepresented minority group myself, and I can say I’ve never felt uncomfortable on campus. Ithaca is a really progressive town, and the campus represents that. The little comments I got at home (“you’re so articulate!” “can I touch your hair?”, etc) don’t really happen here, which is really, really nice. Also, there are a wide variety of clubs on campus that revolve around giving minority students a safe place, which is really nice too. I made a lot of friends that way.
Let me know if you have any other questions! I hope you choose Ithaca!
My S has been accepted to the film program. We have not yet visited. But how big does Ithaca “feel” to you. Not asking about # of students, just the feel of it to you as a student.
Thanks!
Great question! I had to kind of think about this one for a while.
To me, Ithaca College as a whole feels pretty mid-sized. I don’t think it’s small because I don’t recognize every single person I see when walking across campus, but I don’t think it’s huge because I can’t walk across campus without seeing someone I know or at least recognize.
Park, on the other hand, feels much smaller, which I think is pretty typical when students divide out into their primary academic buildings. I recognize a lot of people there, including professors. Most of my classes in Park are about 30 people, but I’m a freshman taking intro level classes, so that number will continue to get smaller. For comparison, most of my high school classes were 35-40 people, and I didn’t go to a large high school.
I hope this helped, and let me know if you have any other questions! Good luck to your son, and I hope to see him on campus next year!
It did. Thanks!
S19 is not certain what he wants to major in, but he is very interested and talented in photography. If he decides not to apply to Park as a freshman, would he be able to change majors easily later on if he decided to go into film/photography? What would he need to do?
What’s up with the student portal on the Ithaca website? Students who are seeking admission are encouraged to post on it. My son was deferred from Early Action, and one of the routes to demonstrate continued interest in the school was to engage on that website. I looked at some of the posts and they were very basic, such as “My name is X, I’m from Y, and I would like to study Z.” I don’t know how this very superficial level of engagement will demonstrate anything to their admissions office. It also seems a bit odd to encourage kids to get on a public platform as a means of demonstrating continued interest. Is Ithaca alone in this? Between my son and his twin sister, this is the only school that encourages engagement on an internal social media site that I’ve come across. Is this usual? Then again, when I went to college, we were still using typewriters.
@megan12 Sorry for the delayed response, I was swamped with school all week and then ended up sick, go figure.
If your son doesn’t apply to Park as a freshman, it is definitely still possible to transfer in, but it will be harder to transfer into Park than it would be to change from one communications major to another.
There’s an application process to transfer into Park from another academic building at the college. They don’t really say much about the internal transfer process, but they do say it is based primarily on GPA. Participating in ICTV or other relevant organizations definitely couldn’t hurt, either. I will say that some majors in Park are harder to transfer into than others, and unfortunately both film majors tend to be pretty competitive.
I hope this helped, and let me know if you have any other questions!
@Frogify Hello!
I’m not an official representatives of the Office of Admissions, so I unfortunately don’t have any insider perspective on what they want to see prospective students posting, but I can tell you how I used the portal/saw it used by others.
The portal (I believe you are referring to IC Peers, but please correct me if I’m wrong) does seem to be pretty unique to Ithaca. I don’t think any other school I applied/was accepted to had anything like it, and if they did, I was never made aware of it.
I noticed at the beginning the conversation did seem very superficial, but as time went on and people started to kind of get to “know” each other, things became more in-depth and less awkward. I would encourage your son to start more in-depth conversations on the portal. Commenting on people’s posts, making posts of his own (asking questions about campus/life at IC, posting about clubs on campus he may be interested in participating in, etc) are all good ways to potentially go about this. Remember, there are admissions officers on IC Peers, so posts are definitely noticed.
I think with IC Peers the Office of Admissions is trying to get a sense on the personalities of potential students, especially if they haven’t been admitted yet. The College definitely cares about the sense of community on campus, so this is a way to foster relationships between freshman before they even step foot on campus. It may seem weird and even mildly creepy, but I actually metrics’s a lot of my friends on IC Peers, so it can be good for that if nothing else.
Sorry if I didn’t really answer your question. Like I said, I really have no clue with what goes on in the Office of Admissions. Good luck to you and your son!
Just got an answer to my earlier question - looks like RD decisions may be rolling out. I have not gotten anything in the mail but just logged into portal to see if they had gotten my midyear report and it said I was accepted. Very excited!
@jpm1234 CONGRATULATIONS!!! It’s a wonderful day to be a Bomber! Do you think you will be enrolling at IC?
Thanks for starting this thread. IC does not get a lot of posts on CC.
My daughter is interested in applying and would be an athlete. I’m wondering what the culture is like for athletes. Some college students seem to feel like athletes are admitted with lower stats, and unfairly gain admission. At another school we heard someone say “We don’t have fraternities/sororities, but have sports teams” (meaning that they were the obnoxious partiers on campus, and maybe keep to themselves a bit). At yet another school, we saw lots of respect/comraderie with athletes and lots of students wearing college gear.
What’s it like at Ithaca?
@Acersaccharum Hi!
Ithaca is a D3 school, so because of this, I haven’t noticed anyone saying athletes were admitted unfairly or have lower stats than anyone else.
Athletes do tend to kind of keep to themselves sometimes, but college athletics are a huge time commitment. It’s only natural they’ll be close with their teammates. These kids are together for hours daily. That being said, I have several friends that are college athletes, and they manage to have friendships outside of their sports.
I don’t think athletes have a reputation for being obnoxious partiers, but a lot of the off campus parties do tend to be hosted by athletic houses. We don’t have college-condoned greek life, so a lot of parties tend to be hosted by unaffiliated fraternities/sororities or athletes. I personally don’t party, but a lot of my friends appreciate the parties hosted by athletics teams because they feel safer there. They figure its better to be in a house a bunch of students from our school live in than at Cornell frats or random townies houses. It’s not even every team that has a reputation for parties, most of them don’t.
Ithaca definitely has a lot of school spirit, and there are always tons of students wearing IC gear on campus or in the Commons. Athletes here definitely aren’t disrespected, but at the same time we don’t have a hugely sports-oriented culture either (until Cortaca, that is). I think the best way to wrap up what I’ve noticed about student athletes is that they’re just treated like “one of us…” no better, and no worse.
Sorry if that didn’t answer your question! Let me know if there is anything I can clarify for you.
Hi got a few questions! I applied and got into Ithaca as an undecided. When it comes to choosing where to live is there a better place to be? (since I won’t probably know where most of my classes will be). With the honors program do you get special housing? or is there an advantage besides being able to register early? and finally, do you have to pick a roommate or can you do a random selection; like filling out a form online? thanks!
@yayitsrachel Hi!
Freshman can choose to live in lower/upper quads or Towers. Personally, I think the upper quads is the best choice for Exploratory/undeclared majors! The upper quads include Holmes, Hood, Hilliard, Rowland, Talcott, and Boothroyd. They’re in a pretty central location on campus, so the walk won’t be too awful no matter where your classes are. Lower quads (Landon, Bogart, Clarke, Eastman, Lyon) shouldn’t be too awful either, although the lower quads are situated much closer to the communications school than any other academic building. Towers would be ok, but kind of a long walk to most of the academic buildings. The towers do have the nicest rooms though.
There is an Honors building on campus! Lyon Hall (which is a lower quad) has a specialty living community for Honors students. You don’t have to live there, though. Advantages of the Honors program includes preferential registration, the option of living in Lyon, free printing, special Honors-student only classes, and some events throughout the semester. Honestly, my friends in the program have said the registration benefit alone is worth it, but as an exploratory student, you’ll have the registration benefit anyway.
At Ithaca, freshman can either find their own roommate or do the “random” selection. ICPeers, FaceBook, etc can all be great tools for finding a roommate. I personally met my roommate at orientation, and we get along great! I’d recommend choosing your own roommate if at all possible. There is an online form you fill out, regardless of whether or not you select your own roommate. If you don’t end up selecting your own roommate, you go into housing selection as an “unattached individual” (I completely just made that phrase up). Pretty much, you select a room you’d like to stay in, and your profile becomes attached to that room. Then, during further rounds of housing section, people can look at your profile and decide if they’d want to live with you or not based on the profile. You can also choose a room someone else is already living in based on their profile. That system is…not great. I’ve seen roommate partnerships that used the random system work out really well, I’ve seen roommate partnerships work out OK, and I’ve seen roommate partnerships that were terrible (most of the time this was due to lack of communication, and not necessarily the “random” aspect of their pairing). I’d highly, HIGHLY recommend finding your own roommate if you can.
Let me know if you have any other questions! Hope to see you on campus in the fall!