Question about Cornell Life

norcalguy
Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:13:44 +0000

Cornell has tremendous resources for academic help. I agree that many students simply don’t take advantage of it, either out of laziness or pride. In my 4 years at Cornell, I’ve only found 1 professor to be unapproachable. All of the others made themselves available via office hours and usually very few students actually attended office hours. There are also learning centers, tutors, TA’s, 00 courses for those who need extra help.



People seem to think that they’ve worked hard in high school (many, not all) and plan on intense careers (medicine, engineering) but that college should be a world of easy achievement and balance. Why? The rest of life isn’t like that, trust me.



I don’t understand it either. If you plan on being a top student in law school or if you just want to pass med school, you’re going to work a lot harder than you did in college. To me, if Cornell gets any easier, it’s really doing its students a disservice in terms of preparation for post-grad life. 1000 students start out as premeds each year. 470 will end up applying to med school (1/2 as seniors and 1/2 as alumni). About 70% of those will actually get into med school. To me, this is perfect since I don’t think Cornell has over 300 students who can realistically pass med school, muchless succeed in med school.