<p>Wellesley has a party affiliation with the MIT fraternities. There aren’t any guys on campus for class, but there will be guys on campus to meet girls (and guys trying to get the girls off-campus). It always struck me as a weird dynamic.</p>
<p>All classes at Cornell, with the exception of some writing seminars, are taught by professors. The economics department is large, and frankly, a bit over-enrolled at Cornell, but the chemistry and math departments at Cornell are absolutely wonderful with tight-knit student groups developing within the departments. Both maybe have 30 or so graduates a year.</p>
<p>My senior year I lived with a chemistry major and a math major. Both had been doing research for professors since their sophomore year and both went on to top PhD programs in their field. Their class sizes were small after freshman year (and even my third and fourth semester calculus classes didn’t have more than 25 students in them). You can get a sense for class sizes by looking through the numbers here:</p>
<p><a href=“http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Grades/MedianGradeSP09.pdf[/url]”>http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Grades/MedianGradeSP09.pdf</a></p>
<p>The honors chemistry sequence (which most majors take) has only around 30-40 students in it.</p>
<p>I don’t think that undergraduate research opportunities at Cornell are dampened by the presence of graduate students. (Dampened is a great word, by the way.) If you look at the ratios, Cornell has a lot more undergraduates than graduate students. This is very different from places like Harvard or Penn or Michigan, where there are more graduate students. This actually gives undergrads more opportunities to get involved with professorial research.</p>
<p>I think at the end of the day you need to decide if you want to attend a small LAC or a large comprehensive research university. Both have stellar academics. If you come to Cornell, you will probably have to put a little bit more work and initiative into your education, but you will also probably have a broader array of options to explore, in terms of types of people, things to do, etc. Plus, do you really want to have to ride a 45 minute bus to go out to a party every Saturday night?</p>