<p>When I attended, Cornell CAS was widely considered to have outstanding programs in diverse areas including: Classics, Philosopy, English, History, Physics, Chemistry, Biology.
These programs were not merely “nice and all”, they were in fact considered “something special”. And the rest was not chopped liver either.</p>
<p>Where this stands now, or in comparison to certain other shools, I don’t know.</p>
<p>Look, I know Cornell CAS is amazing, you can get an amazing liberal arts education at any top 20 school, that’s why I’m applying there - but it is not what sets Cornell apart. “nothing special” was a poor choice of words - what I meant is, I’m surprised Cornell Miscellany - Hospitality, Labor Relations etc was at the bottom of the list, when those program are generally ranked in the top 5, if not #1 or #2, consistently. But I guess people tend to forget those programs since they’re not mainstream majors.</p>
<p>I think US News ranked Cornell Applied and Engineering Physics #1 but that is in the Engineering College, not A&S. But, I agree. Cornell Physics seems like it should rank higher. Gourman Report had it ranked #3.</p>
<p>Why don’t people just give their personal opinion to rank the Ivies for THEM personally and give reasons why they rank them as such.</p>
<p>My Rank:</p>
<p>1.Yale (amazing research, small engineering program, AMAZING financial aid, pretty campus)
2. Princeton (see above, but its location hurts it slightly)
3. Harvard (see above, but the campus is not as nice IMO)
4. Penn (urban location, good career resources, Wharton)
5. Cornell (amazing engineering and VERY pretty campus, but rural location is a minus)
6.Columbia (the liberalism and NYC detract from the really good education offered IMO)
7. Dartmouth (too small and in a rural location)
8. Brown (No top professional programs and super liberalism and bad relative financial aid makes Brown on the bottom of the barrel on my list)</p>
<p>President Bush really was not that bad of a president, he just got derided alot because he was not an effective speaker. The exageration about his presidency is something that I definitely am glad is going to be over. I was really getting tired of people complaining and insulting the president, but when asked about why they would respond about the general “the war in Iraq”, but ask them which aspect of the war and many people of our generation would not have a clue. </p>
<p>I am a republican and can tell when our leadership made the wrong choices and the right ones, but I think many people in our generation tend to believe the overwhelming hype about how bad a president Bush was without ever critically thinking about why. Not to say that you are one of them Ilovebagels, but that it seems many people who criticize him don’t understand why. Anyway, I think that Dick Cheney was the one who basically ran the country these last years, as every position of the Bush administration was an extension of Cheney politics. I think Bush was more of a front man.</p>
<p>Iraq?
Trouble in Afghanistan?
Wire tapping and terrorism?
Economic Crisis?
Failure to comprehend or address Global Warming?
Lack of effective health care or education reform?
Gigantic Budget Deficits?</p>
<p>Dbate you really have no clue what your talking about, I would be hard pressed to find anything he did that was good.</p>
<p>First don’t insult people, ad hominem is really just immature.</p>
<p>To address your list:</p>
<p>Iraq? Stragetic misteps that I will concede to, but after those misteps the surge effectively work to mitigate alot of the conflict to the point that Iraq has a functional government that is actually asking us to leave, so in the long run not bad.</p>
<p>Trouble in Afghanistan? I admit I do not have extensive knowledge on the terrorist networks within Afghanistan, I do know however that the terrorist cells are often transient between countries and therefore are a moving target and are alot harder to address.</p>
<p>Wire tapping and terrorism? I 100% agree with wiretapping, bc I believe pragmatism must be utilized when neccessity calls for it. When the patriot act was enacted it was during an epoch of uncertainty within our country, so the President broke some rights oh well. Look up what Abraham Lincoln did during the civil war, in times of neccessity I believe it is perfectly right for a leader to suspend ideals and take the actions neccessary to protect citizens, even if that means that the rights of some are trampled. </p>
<p>Economic Crisis? This is one of the biggest mischaracterizations, the financial crisis was actually a result of the deregulation that occured under Alan Greeenspan during the Clinton years. And if you recall the deregulation allowed banks to merger and therefore increased investment and lead to more jobs. What we are seeing now are not the results of the Bush policies, but rather the inevitable consequences when there is little regulation.
Oh and in case you don’t remember, Franklin Raines (one of Obama’s economic supporters) was the head of Fannie Mae (or maybe it was Freedie Mac), and their failure was a major contributing factor to the economic crisis.</p>
<p>Failure to comprehend or address Global Warming? Easy, global warming was not that important when there were terrorist threatening our country. Also there is not ubiquitious concord on how to effective address global warming. </p>
<p>Lack of effective health care or education reform? This is something that I personally know is wrong, No Child Left Behind was a great initative bc it was the first time that the federal government held schools accountable. I live in Texas (the state where the program first started, bc GWB was our governor) so I can personally attest to the merits of the program. It causes schools to be accountable for thier actions and when schools perennnial fail, the state of Texas fires the administration and reconfigures the school to actually provide a quality education to students. </p>
<p>Gigantic Budget Deficits? Budget defecits are an inevitable consequence of war.</p>
<p>Face it, the Bush presidency was not the end of the world as many people seem to attest. He was not the best president, but he certainly was not the worst. Think James Buchanan.</p>
<p>I’m not going to comment on the Bush presidency-- it’s off-topic and unnecessary.</p>
<p>I will say that the whole “liberal” Brown thing is hilarious to me, as someone who is here. Sure, most people have generally the same leanings, but we far from agree with each other, we’re far from homogenous, and so many people on campus are decidedly apolitical that the fact that we may end up voting similarly at the end of the day ends up not having much of an effect on daily relations between any students.</p>
<p>But no, we don’t have particularly distinguished professional schools (although you’ll see that our medical school students almost universally can get into the top residencies/internships; we’re not well known because we’re small and we’re generally closed to admissions through the normal channels). This is all by design-- Brown’s mission is not as a professional training school, not for undergraduates or graduates. There is significant resistance amongst the faculty and students to change and become more professional. So if that’s something that’s attractive to you, I imagine you would rank Brown lower personally.</p>