<p>I really loved Cornell when I visited. My mother attended and with this legacy, I could have a great advantage in applying ED. How do I know that I’ll love Cornell enough to apply ED? I don’t really know anyone to stay with for a day or two and I feel like visiting again is not going to be so beneficial. I want to know this school is my #1 choice!</p>
<p>Well, for a start, ask yourself, “What does Cornell have to offer?”</p>
<p>You can visit with the red carpet society! You can stay with someone using that!</p>
<p>Visit as many schools as you can, if you keep on coming back to using Cornell as the benchmark, then you would know it is your first choice. My daughter visited Yale, Princeton, Brown and Williams on one of her college tours. She just kept on coming back to, “X college is great, but if it was more like Cornell…” I had to ask her why not Cornell. She said, “because my older sister went there.” It is hard to be a younger sister.</p>
<p>To be honest, there’s no such thing, and you can’t know. “Match” is overrated. All the colleges say you should “match”, but you CAN"T know if you “match” just because you like x and y and the college is good at x and y. Even if you feel the “social environment” of the college fits your need, it’s not a match. </p>
<p>Most of the higher end colleges are the same. You’ll get the same education. It all depends on you on how you spend your 4 years. Ok, maybe college X is ranked “higher” than college Y, but those rankings are artificial and extremely overrated.</p>
<p>Also, people will tell you when you visit college, the one that “feels right” is the one. Think about it, how much of the college did you see? 5%? How much time did you spend? 1 day? You can’t base anything about the college on such superficial and insufficient data. Perhaps you just happen to meet people there you really like, so you think “oh, this much be the right college for me! All students are gonna be like me here, and I’ll get along with everyone. It’s a match!”</p>
<p>Bottom line: college is what you make of it. It’s the same everywhere. Colleges are all diverse, as they want different people in it. There’s no such thing as a “match”.</p>
<p>I strongly believe what capatrick said, but I’m slightly less pessimistic. When you visit schools, there will be some that you know you definitely wouldn’t want to attend, but all the ones you think are “pretty alright” are better are worth considering. No matter where you go, you’ll find your niche, but I think Cornell is really good when it comes to that. There are so many different kinds of people and so many different clubs and activities that it’s almost impossible not to make it a super-awesomely great experience. And even though it’s a big school, it’s small enough so that you don’t feel insignificant or lost. It’s really the greatest school IN THE WORLD, or at least that’s what I think. And pretty much everybody else that attends. If I were you, I wouldn’t worry about making a bad decision applying ED to Cornell at all! =)</p>