I was Cornell COE CS (late 90s).
I always felt it was hard enough, but not over the top . The project courses were amazing. Professors were/are amazing. Schneider, Van Loan … they are awesome. Emin Gün Sirer - one of the BEST ppl in distributed systems.
Also with the amount of money that’s falling on Cornell CIS, the department is only getting better. I highly recommend to become part of it 