Cornell VS. Northwestern for BME and Engineering in General

aquapt
Tue, 01 May 2018 06:33:03 +0000

Agree, Cornell is not more prestigious - they are equivalent in prestige/reputation. (Northwestern’s USNWR ranking is one notch higher, if you care about that sort of thing.) I think your parents are just experiencing “familiarity breeds contempt” syndrome. Families who live near Cornell probably think Northwestern is more prestigious.

Going far from home for college can be broadening, but if you want to end up working in your home region after graduation, a far-flung school can make that much harder. (My own kid is currently working in another region, when she would rather have returned home after graduation, for exactly this reason.) If you go to Northwestern, you’ll likely get internships in the area that will in turn lead to employment prospects. If you’re certain you want to go to grad school or settle in another part of the country after graduation, then this isn’t such an issue.

Also, many students underestimate how much of a change of scene it will be to attend even a nearby university. It’s one thing if you go to the same college with a whole mob of your classmates; that can make it harder to reinvent yourself in college. But Northwestern would bring the world to you; even though you’d be near home, you’d make friends from all over the country and the world. How connected you’d remain to home during that experience would be totally up to you.

As I understand it, the teaching in lower-division STEM classes at Cornell can be pretty impersonal and hands-off. I don’t know how Northwestern compares, but that would be a good factor to look at.

If you were IN LOVE with Cornell after your visit, I would absolutely say GO FOR IT! Or if you sounded stir-crazy and yearning for a change of scene, I’d say to go with that too. But you seem like you’re mostly trying to talk yourself into Cornell because you feel like you should. There’s no reason you should unless you truly prefer it. The travel will be grueling and, in winter, prone to weather delays on both ends. The associated expenses could well cancel out the small difference in cost. If you had absolutely no preference, I would say to err on the side of convenience. There are times when being near home is incredibly handy. You can always get your change of scene by studying abroad. (Northwestern’s overall rate of studying abroad is higher than Cornell’s, and it appears that they make an effort to make this possible for engineers. who often have the most difficulty fitting study abroad into their academic programs https://www.northwestern.edu/studyabroad/prospective-students/choosing-a-study-abroad-program/subjects-and-disciplines/engineering.html ) As I said, if you truly prefer Cornell, go there! But if you’ve visited and liked it, but not more than Northwestern, don’t in any way feel that Northwestern is an inferior or less daring choice.