<p>First, I applaud you for considering your options and not yielding to the “Harvard effect” as seen by Byerly’s previous post.</p>
<p>The difference in academic prestige is negligable compared to the importance of choosing a school that’s a fit for you. You seem more comfortable outside of a large city, which is one of the reasons I personally chose cornell. We also have an awesome outing club, one of my best friends went white water kayaking with them and had a blast (not that you should base your decision on the outing club, lol).</p>
<p>The huge range of majors at Cornell is an advantage, and you’d have both a strong poli sci and environmental studies department. As far as career opportunities and networking, there is a huge network, especially since Cornell is the biggest in the ivy league.</p>
<p>As far as becoming a Rhodes Scholar. I don’t think the school has anything to do with it. The thing I really liked about Cornell is the professors are really, really approachable, whether it be just talking about their research or if your looking to assist in research. </p>
<p>My perception of Harvard is probably unfair, it’s funny how little things influance how you think about a school. In high school, I was working on a three year research project. There were several teams working on similar projects, at universities and research centers in the US and the UK. Every single professor or researcher got back to me eventually…except the Harvard team. I didn’t even get a polite one liner (I emailed three of them). The Cornell professor got back to me within 24 hours with a lengthy email answering all my questions, along with the emails of a research team in at Walter Reed Army Institute of Resarch Silver Spring, MD who was working on a similar project. The researcher he helped me contact allowed me to tour the labs, access to hard to find scientific journals, and offered me a summer internship (I couldn’t accept then, but she said the offer is open to me in the future). I know this probably is not representative of the entire faculty, especially since I was emailing them as a high school student…but it did influance my perception on how approachable the faculty is.</p>
<p>Harvard is a fantastic school. But as you can probably tell by my post, I didn’t think it was a fit for me. When I was applying to college a lot of people put a lot of pressure on me to apply to there, but I didn’t. I was afraid that if I did, and got in, I would end up basing my decision off prestige and not where I would be happiest. I’m very happy with the way things worked out. </p>
<p>It’s really hard to pass Harvard up, but I know a couple people here who did. Harvard is a wonderful school. It might be a wonderful fit for you, then again, it might not be. Same thing goes for Cornell…some people absolutley love it, others, may not.</p>
<p>You seem like a very driven person. Go where you think you will thrive. You’ll be sucessful no matter where you go.</p>