<p>The graduate(cross-listed with seniors) course grades were inflated when I attended, too. It came as a surprise to me,.
But that was in contrast to the grading that I experienced as an undergrad, prior to that, at the same school, in the lower level classes. That’s one of the ways that the undergrad vs grad experiences were different. As an M Eng student I had zero intimate contact with underclassmen courses, to know what went on there, I knew it because I’d gone there undergrad and took those courses…</p>
<p>Faculty conduct of classes is virtually entirely up to the individual professors, at everyplace I’ve ever studied.
.It sounds like you unfortunately hit a string of relatively poor professors.In the what, six courses you’ve taken there, total, all graduate and senior level ? [Plus design project, but that’s different].In my M Eng program I had courses that were straight lectures, but others that had labs, one that had a year-long simulation project associated with it. It depends what you take, I did indeed have some boring professors, but also great ones and everything in between. I actually learned the most from the most boring one. But my guess is level of faculty course engagement has a bell curve distribution, and your dice unfortunately rolled you onto a tail.Unless one can find some systematic reason why they would actually be different, institutionally. Like if you can show me tenure policies that put different weighting on teaching or something. </p>
<p>Engineering students were not as you described when I attended, though that was eons ago. More of a “all in it together” mentality, studied together. If that’s really different now that would be sad. But interested parties should investigate, and talk to a number of actual undergrads there about this, before they just accept it.</p>
<p>Besides,the OP is studying liberal arts. My D2 recently graduated from Cornell CAS and had very good instruction there, overall, is the report I got. And did not report experiencing any of these other issues either.</p>
<p>Interested parties should investigate, but personally I doubt that it’s difficult to do study abroad there.
If it’s actually true that a smaller proportion of Cornell (& other Ivy, as you cited) students are studying abroad, consider that it’s not necessarily because the schools make it hard to do, but rather because proportionally more of the students prefer not to leave their schools. Our friend’s son recently graduated, his parents had wanted him to do study abroad, but he didn’t want to go. He said he would miss too much at Cornell, and didn’t want to miss out on any of his college experience there. Meanwhile my son attends a state U and is studying abroad as we speak. He had no trouble pulling himself away from his school. I have often seen various LACs touting how much their students do study abroad. And I think to myself it’s no wonder, because their students are probably sick of their boring little campuses after the first year.
Alternatively (or additionally), maybe they do study abroad plenty, but they tend to do different programs than the one you went on. They may have their own.
I would imagine it’s less common for enginers to study abroad though,not from Cornell specifically but in general, due to possible curriculum differences, vs ABET, different units systems (yecchh), etc.</p>
<p>I think the food around there is decent, actually, for a college town of it’s size. It’s certainly not the bay area, in that respect, but students don’t have the money to go to most of those places. I like the Ithaca area, a lot. It is best enjoyed with a car though.</p>
<p>There are plenty of student groups, eg:
<a href=“http://os_extranet_files_test.s3.amazonaws.com/24965_50179_Organizations_2012_13.pdf”>http://os_extranet_files_test.s3.amazonaws.com/24965_50179_Organizations_2012_13.pdf</a>
the problem is more not having the time to do everything you want to do.
Whether they display themselves exactly the same way at both campuses is another matter; likely weather-associated. But not sure why that’s a big deal. </p>
<p>Suggest you go to a few hockey games, they’re a lot of fun there. But I guess you’re too late?
But anyway sports-minded students typically wind up adopting hockey, whether or not they were into it before, and get their fix from that, Lacrosse is fun too, you should check it out. I never saw it played before I attended Cornell. There are also lots of intramural sports leagues, IIRC.</p>