<p>@ engineerbill,</p>
<p>If you are an engineer by profession as your name suggests one of the first principles of engineering design is focus on the subsystem that you are interested in. In our case, Engineering program is our area of focus because that is where my kid is in. And according to your almighty USNWR ranking it does say Cornell is #1 in Ivy Engineering. So, I am ok and you are ok as well to paraphrase Dr. Harris.</p>
<p>that’s great Islander! I consider your post a ringing endorsement of Cornell…very glad to hear it.</p>
<p>@engineerbill “…her dream school.” </p>
<p>Not what I wrote: it’s <em>my</em> dream school…which is probably part of the entire problem. I see the too-heavy presence of parents, generally, in this process. She doesn’t have a dream school. She threw her credentials out to the universe and is curious to see where they stick.</p>
<p>“…breadth of offerings…”: indeed</p>
<p>@ 2coll, post #252: Cornell also ranks 10th in the current USN&WR graduate engineering rankings, whereas Princeton trails behind at 18th.</p>
<p>…and yo have we missed discussing TBoone’s ranks of water slides? Thank you for posting!</p>
<p>My kid is sophomore Biological Engineering maintaining a 3.8 against a school average of 2.9. It is not hard to transfer to CALS if one chooses to and meets the departmental requirements. As a Presidential Research Scholar, my kid is in this project [Project</a> 1 : Research : Cornell Center for the Microenvironment and Metastasis](<a href=“http://www.cmm.cornell.edu/project1.html]Project”>http://www.cmm.cornell.edu/project1.html). Goal at this time is med school although it might change.</p>
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</p>
<p>@EngineerBill: You’re really missing the point, kid. You’re obsessed with subjective rankings and the whole point of this thread is the opposite. It’s about simply saying that you can’t get as high quality an education in as many disciplines anywhere in the Ivies but Cornell. So, based on that limited metric, the answer to your question is yes. </p>
<p>Why is that such a horrible thing to say? Why does that threaten your view of the world so much?</p>
<p>
[quote=engineerbill]
…what disciplines would that be?</p>
<p>Agriculture and Architecture?<a href=“RE:%20Cornell’s%20top%20ranked%20programs.”>/quote</a></p>
<p>And Engineering.
And Veterinary Medicine.
And Hotel Administration.
And Industrial and Labor Relations.
(And quite a few others that I can’t think of offhand.)</p>
<p>But the top disciplines above really don’t get to the heart of applejack’s argument, which was that a tremendous amount of Cornell’s wide variety majors are of high quality, as in top 10 - 30 or so. He makes an excellent point in my opinion.</p>
<p>@engineerbill, post #251</p>
<p>You quoted NRC rankings. Two problems with it,</p>
<ol>
<li><p>[Assessment</a> of Research-Doctorate Programs](<a href=“http://sites.nationalacademies.org/pga/Resdoc/index.htm]Assessment”>http://sites.nationalacademies.org/pga/Resdoc/index.htm) . Essentially, means oops we screwed up. Wait for a new report in April. As if someone is holding their breath.</p></li>
<li><p>NRC rankings is for graduate programs only. I am interested in undergraduate engineering programs.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Focus on the subsystem. Will make you a great design engineer.</p>
<p>@Colm,</p>
<p>You forgot the medical school. Great output from there to improve quality of life through advances in medicine.</p>
<p>@ulcerita,</p>
<p>For Goat herding unfortunately you will have to move to Abu Dabhi. In all seriousness, it is not the farmer who makes the money. Its the guys up the value chain. Its guys like Danon and Kelloggs and such.</p>
<p>Anyway, I hope your daughter gets into Cornell. They have a strong rowing team. She would really love it. The practice starts at 5:30am though. My friend’s son is on the team.</p>
<p>^ 2coll - RE: your post #263, I also missed Cornell’s:</p>
<p>[Charles</a> H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management](<a href=“http://dyson.cornell.edu/][b]Charles”>http://dyson.cornell.edu/)</p>
<p>It is currently ranked at 5th in Bloomberg Businessweek’s 2011 list of best undergraduate business schools.</p>
<p>thank you 2coll,</p>
<p>yes we’ve talked to the Cornell coaches (they’re great!)…and she’s already on the Potomac at 5:10 am with her own crew…and again in the evening until 7 pm. Cornell has a great rowing program, it’s true…and perhaps the best women’s coach in the US: but she’s not interested. </p>
<p>She wants to go to a school for its educational match with her interests…and she doesn’t care about rankings.</p>
<p>@ulcerita,</p>
<p>It is too bad. At Cornell, you have so many options to study. People are friendly and so are the faculty. Faculty even invite undergraduate to their homes for dinner on certain occasions. As far as I can tell, I am unable to spot snobbery of any kind. If that is what she is worried about then she should dismiss that thought from her mind. In fact, if I am not mistaken Cornell within the first 10 years of operation, the university admitted women and underrepresented minority students and provided financial aid for many students, using a combination of grant, loan and work-study opportunities. This would be circa 1875. It is a real testament to commitment for the greater good when many other top universities were actively excluding females and other minorities well into 1930s. Also, the first woman engineering PhD might have graduated from Cornell although I am not 100% sure on that.</p>
<p>And then the variety of coursework you can take is quite large. As an example, my kid as an Engineering major is taking a comparative literature class that is absolutely delightful. The class even had a Pulitzer prize winner and conduct a special workshop.</p>
<p>Forget the ranking, despite that Cornell is a wonderful and tranquil place. And it has an excellent rowing team.</p>
<p>With all that, she should go where ever her heart is set. But, the decision should be based on her thinking that she would encounter snobbery at Cornell. This I can guarantee will not be the case.</p>
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</p>
<p>Yes, they might mention one or more of those programs, of course, depending on the prospective students they were addressing. I noted that you edited out Cornell Engineering from my list that you quoted above (before you edited it back in), which ranks higher than Princeton in the USNWR rankings (both undergrad and grad).</p>
<p>Also, the Cornell officials might mention AEM, the #5 undergrad business program mentioned in post #265. As well as the previously mentioned Architectural program. And many, many others. For example Engineering Physics where Cornell stands at 3rd in USNWR:</p>
<p>[USNWR</a> Engineering Science/Engineering Physics Rankings](<a href=“http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate-science-physics][b]USNWR”>http://colleges.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-colleges/rankings/engineering-doctorate-science-physics)</p>
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</p>
<p>Still, you miss the point. You post a link to some rankings of Arts and Science. What’s that have to do with anything? Nobody says Cornell’s top ranked in every field. That’s not at all the point of this thread. If you were more educated about the institution, you would know that the breadth of disciplines goes far, far beyond the traditional liberal arts, agriculture, and architecture. </p>
<p>You keep avoiding my question, so I will ask it again: why are you threatened by someone suggesting that a school might be considered the best by some specifically because it provides a consistently high quality of education across the widest array of disciplines of its peers and makes that education open to a broad socioeconomic range? </p>
<p>I studied at Harvard after Cornell, and that’s when I realized how incredible Cornell actually is. Not because every field is ranked higher, but because of the opportunities I had to learn a wide array of subjects from leaders in their fields.</p>
<p>I just don’t get why that’s such a threat to you. Schools are about fit, not rank. Some people don’t fit into a single discipline like “engineering”. Cornell is a good fit for such people.</p>
<p>engineerbill, why do you care so much about this thread. Why do you feel so attatched/ personally insulted by this thread and what do you have to gain by spending so much time arguing? it’s pretty much a joke/feel good thread. All the ranking tables are already posted up multiple times. It’s not the best, it’s not the worst, but it’s considerably up there even in ivy terms. It’s the best ivy for cornell students for reasons of their own, and they have provided you with some pretty good arguments. Do you have such an inflated ego that you can’t let cornell students feel happy and proud about their school (Which they obviously and rightfully should)? Will you give it a rest so this pointless thread can finally die?</p>
<p>Thank you.</p>
<p>What do you need us to validate within your own life choices? Answer the question of why you are so threatened rather than smugly deflecting to easily disprovable stances. </p>
<p>If you did your homework, you would see for yourself which school has more choices. That’s the premise of this thread. It’s a simple numbers game of diverse disciplines that are all at or near the tops of their fields. All the Ivies are incredible institutions in their own way. Cornell simply offers more fields of study:</p>
<p>[Cornell</a> University - Academics - Academic Departments](<a href=“http://www.cornell.edu/academics/departments.cfm]Cornell”>Academic Departments | Cornell University)
[Schools</a>, Departments & Committees | Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences](<a href=“http://www.fas.harvard.edu/home/content/schools-departments-committees]Schools”>http://www.fas.harvard.edu/home/content/schools-departments-committees)
[Princeton</a> University - Departments & Programs](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/main/academics/departments/]Princeton”>Areas of Study | Princeton University)
[Departments</a> & Degree Programs | Brown University](<a href=“http://www.brown.edu/academics/degree-granting]Departments”>http://www.brown.edu/academics/degree-granting)
[Dartmouth</a> - Academics - Undergraduate Departments & Programs](<a href=“Departments and Programs | Dartmouth”>Departments and Programs | Dartmouth)
[Departments</a> | Columbia University in the City of New York](<a href=“http://www.columbia.edu/content/departments-and-divisions.html]Departments”>List of Departments | Columbia University in the City of New York)
[Academic</a> programs | Departments and programs | Yale](<a href=“http://www.yale.edu/departments/index.html]Academic”>Departments & Programs | Yale University)
Penn comes the closest: [Penn:</a> Academics](<a href=“http://www.upenn.edu/programs/]Penn:”>http://www.upenn.edu/programs/)</p>
<p>Perhaps you want to study textiles or hotel management as well as labor relations for the business you intend to run, then link it to an analysis of bee colonies. I certainly couldn’t have studied what I did - across multiple colleges in Cornell - at any other Ivy or comparable school. Some programs just don’t exist elsewhere, and the ability to move between programs at will makes the ability to draw connections between seemingly unrelated fields that much easier.</p>
<p>The arguments have been made to refute your rankings obsession. Whether you choose to accept them or continue to call anybody who sees the unique value of Cornell “crazy” is up to you.</p>
<p>I just proved, by listing all the departments in all the Ivies, that Cornell does, under all circumstances, “provide a consistently high quality of education across the widest array of disciplines and makes that education open to a broad socioeconomic range”.</p>
<p>You clearly have never matriculated at Cornell. If you had, you would know firsthand that you find yourself in class with children of janitors and children of tycoons.</p>
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</p>
<p>It’s always been about </p>
<ol>
<li> Number of fields of study</li>
<li> Quality of the education within those fields.</li>
</ol>
<p>Put the two together, and it stands alone - especially within the Ivy. </p>
<p>Seriously, I’m done. When you grow up and experience college and the real world, this will all make sense. Your arguments are paper thin and decidedly not to the caliber of a Cornell student. :)</p>
<p>
I see what this is all about now. You’re just obsessed with prestige. Okay. Cornell’s greatness lies in the simple fact that it does provide the breadth of a state school with the quality of an Ivy. </p>
<p>Cornell doesn’t shy away from that. It’s the land grant university for New York (MIT is the only other private land grant in the nation) and has several colleges funded in part to support industries for New York State. As has been stated many times, Cornell was founded to be a mixture of liberal arts and technical trades. This is a point of pride for the school, not shame.</p>