<p>Regarding Cornell, though there is an administrative conduit in Day Hall, admissions are handled by each college separately.</p>
<p>A few years ago I offered to write an unsolicited recommendation letter for a candidate of the College of Arts & Sciences. As it was late in the game, I was referred to an office at Goldwyn Smith Hall- the College of Arts & Sciences- where they were actually making the decisions on this candidate.</p>
<p>The colleges are run pretty autonomously in most other respects as well. The colleges of the university that are located in Ithaca share dorms though. And they do avail themselves of other economies of co-location, like tours. Though they do, for all intents, have individual distinct “campuses”, or quads, buildings as the case may be. And students of a particular college tend to choose to live in housing convenient to their quad.</p>
<p>However there are colleges of the university that do not share dorms, are not even located in Ithaca- the medical college, which issues undergraduate nursing degrees I believe, and also issues medical degrees. Though these students do not share dorms or campuses with students in the rest of the university they are still considered to attend colleges of the university and receive degrees issued by Cornell.</p>
<p>Regarding Columbia, I am less informed there but I seem to recall that undergraduate students in its College of General Studies do not share dorms with other Columbia Students either. Don’t know about its nursing students.</p>