<p>he could come back on here to defend himself, after all this elapesed time, but my guess is he’s too busy finishing med school, or doing his residency, so…</p>
<p>UGH why does it matter? Its just another thread turned “Cornell students are not as strong as those from [insert college here]” talk. Great. These experiences are applicable to maybe 1% of the 1% who care.</p>
<p>I know several kids with mediocre GPAs, awful SATs/ACTs, and no extraordinary activities get into Stanford, Yale, and Brown who certainly would not have gotten in had they not been hooked. I know a recent and extremely qualified valedictorian who choose to go to UConn. To generalize about the overall academic abilities of University student bodies is to create stereotypes about people based on where they went to college. </p>
<p>The College Board is changing the SAT once again. They just announced it.</p>
<p>The evidence that norcalguy has posted is pretty convincing: Cornell does not grade deflate. I think people, especially Cornell students, tend to ignore the evidence for several reasons (to impress people that they go to such a “hard” school, to validate their poor GPAs, just to complain, etc.), but the truth is that doing well at Cornell is not that difficult. I’m not even close to being the smartest person at Cornell, but I worked hard, did very well, and also ended up in a medical school where most of classmates went to Ivies or other top schools. I’m not saying this to brag at all; it doesn’t have much to do with my ability. I simply worked hard. Most of my friends who also worked hard didn’t have problems doing well either.</p>
<p>Edit: And I should add that I still had a healthy social life. You don’t need to bury your head in a book 24/7 to do well.</p>
<p>I started to read norcalguy’s postings when my son was in high school, and found them very helpful. I never felt he was bragging. I appreciated his time in helping people. Willing to help people is definitely a quality a doctor should have. I believe he is a good doctor, even though I don’t know who he is.
Now my son has been a Cornell student for two years, majors in bio, and I realized all I had learned from norcalguy were pretty accurate/objective. My son is doing well, averaging slightly above 4.0, and not a super smart kid. He just liked bio a lot. He is curious about the stuff he is learning, so he studies hard.
For the grading, just like norcalguy had said, they curve the grades. e.g. Orgo lab final was hard, my son said he could only do less than 50% of the stuff. Yet his final grade for Orgo lab was an A-.
I think engineering maybe a different story. If someone have experience of Cornell engineering’s grading please let us know. Thanks. My daughter just got a likely letter yesterday, excited but worried about CoE being too hard for her. </p>
<p>Cornell is a target school. Period. I’m doing pretty well, working hard, but also having a lot of fun. The connections here are invaluable, and that’s something you won’t get at a non-Ivy. Bottom line, I’m a non-business major (Government) in the College of Arts and Sciences and am now headed to Wall Street. My employment process was super easy and natural, and I attribute that ease to Cornell’s reputation and Ivy status. Send your child wherever, I’ll be sending mine to the Hill. </p>
<p>“C-O-R-N-E-double-L, Win the game and then ring the bell. What’s the big intrigue? We’re the best in the Ivy League!”</p>