<p>I’ve heard that Cornell has a notorious reputation for competition among undergraduates. I sincerely hope this is not true.</p>
<p>I’ve also heard that other Ivy graduates have it easier once admitted, especially Brown. So would anyone care to confirm these rumors?</p>
<p>I know Cornell has a reputation for being the hardest Ivy to graduate from.</p>
<p>Agh, why? Because of the number of people? Or grade deflation…?</p>
<p>Cornell is the easiest to get in to and the hardest to graduate from. It’s internally competitive, and I assume they have a hard grading system.</p>
<p>Yeah, I concur with the others, Cornell is the most difficult compared to the other ivies in terms of graduating.</p>
<p>Penn has a reputation for grade competition, at least within my Ds circle of friends who are now sophmores at at top colleges. Dartmouth and Brown not so much.</p>
<p>It’s difficult to get A’s at any of the ivy’s, but easy to get B’s and C’s and again, you need to try to fail in order to get D’s or F’s. Any of the big research ivy’s–Cornell, Harvard, Yale, Columbia etc., will be challenging for even the smartest students…remember who you’re competing against.</p>
<p>Cheers,
CUgrad</p>
<p>I applied ED to Cornell. I’m pretty confident that I’ll either get rejected or deferred. The best that can happen is getting accepted on the waitlist. If, however, I do become admitted, I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep up with the competition. And I really want to graduate in 4 years. Cornell’s always been my first choice, but I now I’m kinda nervous. CU grad, how hard was it for you to graduate?</p>
<p>I graduated in four years no sweat, and I did an honors thesis in the college. The best advice I can give is to get basic course requirements out of the way early. Don’t kill yourself your first semester–take maybe one elective in another college, go out on weekends and meet new people etc… Adjusting to college life is hard enough without killing yourself with coursework. Use the first semester to adjust, then really hunker down and work your butt off your second semester and all through your sophomore year. I don’t think I took less than about 16 credits (roughly four classes) during my freshman and sophomore years and most of that coursework were major requirements (the tough ones with big classes and unforgiving grading policies). By the time I was a junior, I only had physics to get rid of and then upper-division bio courses, which are fun and really intimate (small courses, maybe 15 students and a professor). I was able to get everything done with by the first semester of my senior year and spent my last semester writing my thesis and taking really cool electives in other departments. The absolute worst thing is to save an important course for your major until your senior year. There were senior biology students really sweating auto-tutorial physics in the spring semester, when they should have been enjoying their last semester at Cornell.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about not being able to cut it. If you’re accepted, it’s because the admissions office knows you can do the work. There’s no way to profile those who drop out for academic reasons, but they’re the exception to the rule.</p>
<p>Anyway, good luck with your application.</p>
<p>CUgrad</p>
<p>Ah, how kind of you. Your response, hopefully, will become of use to me (that is to say if I’m admitted). What nearby colleges did you go to for electives? I don’t mean to ask you to generalize yourself, but would you consider yourself a representative Cornellian student? Do you classify yourself with the majority? I’m assuming the majority of Cornellians aren’t procrastinators. Are there a good number of people who did not graduate in 4 years?</p>
<p>Brown is probably the most chill.</p>
<p>I didn’t meet a single person who didn’t graduate on time. In fact, I knew a number of folks who graduated early (with AP credits). There were a number of transfer students who, after two years at another school, took three years to finish, but that’s only because they wanted to take their time, not because they couldn’t have finished if they had wanted to. I considered myself a fair representation of a Cornell student. Part of the beauty of going to a “big, impersonable,researach” school like Cornell is the myriad of course offerings, fantastic professors, eclectic students from diverse backgrounds, and fantastic research opportunities. Sure, some of the classes were larger than what I would have experienced had I matriculated at a place like Pomona, Amherst or Stanford. But, remarkably, for every giant class I had, there was at least one course where there were fewer than 15 people. For people who are ready to dive into the deep in and take advantage of what a big research school has to offer, I can’t recommend a place like Cornell enough–especially coming from the west coast. For you east-coasters who want the “get the hell away from home” experience at a big, fantastic research school…apply to Berkeley, UCLA and Stanford.</p>
<p>Some of my favorite courses were electives (I can’t remember the course names, but I sure remember the professors!). One was an anthropology course on meso-america with Professor John Henderson. We basically studied the maya, azteca, and olmec cultures…a great course. Also, a relegious studies course titled, “Jews, Christians, Muslims” with Ross Bramm. It was a fantastic course filled with conservative christians, muslims and orthodox jews. I basically sat back while everyone engaged in really passionate arguments (I like to think we were all friends at the end of the day). I also took intro business management (an AEM course) which has proven extremely useful now that I’m developing my own stock portfolio (there’s a huge project where you analyze a company and determine if you should buy its stock). Lastly, my research advisor, Harry Greene, teaches herpetology–a fantastic bio course on reptiles and amphibians. Professor Greene is easily one the most likable people you will ever meet. When he was at Berkeley, he won the distinguished teaching award. His wife is also a biology professor at Cornell.</p>
<p>Hope that helps…</p>
<p>CUgrad</p>
<p>That’s great to hear! I really appreciate all of your posts. I have a reputation for being “slow” but finishing my work thoroughly. I hope that doesn’t get in the way. I wish I was better at time management :(</p>
<p>Cornell is probably one of the most difficult</p>
<p>in terms of how competitive the student body is with each other, there are legitimate differences between the schools</p>
<p>in terms of how hard it is to graduate, none of them are particularly hard if you don’t want it to be. it’s ultimately up to what classes you take, how many you take per term (and what other activities you are doing) and how well you aim to do in them. the whole “cornell is the hardest to graduate from” is nothing more than a rumor.</p>
<p>aren’t they all hard to graduate out of? particularly princeton, harvard, and cornell.</p>
<p>i’m currently at Cornell - </p>
<p>how would you define competitive? And to whom?</p>
<p>So far, I havn’t notice any of the cut-throat “may the best one win” competition between the students. In fact, we typically form work groups so we can (hopefully) ace the tests. </p>
<p>I think that the competition is between the student and the professors. Although I have an incredible amount of admiration for all of my professors - it’s become my mission at Cornell to beat them with it comes to exams. They only time I’ve ever had an ‘easy’ test is if i’ve studied my butt off for days before hand. It’s tough, but soooo worth it in the end. Just remember that an intense workload doesn’t necessarily mean student-to-student competition. </p>
<p>The phrases i’ve heard regarding cornell being the “easiest ivy to get into, the hardest to get out of” … i dont think it’s in reference to graduating on time. I believe the 4-year graduation rate is around 80% (somebody correct me if i’m wrong), where at a school like SUNY Oswego, the graduation rate is in the 30’s. I think that the phrase is in reference to compared to other ivy league schools, Cornell is the most challenging, and will require significantly more work to graduate from. Due to the sheer amount of effort you’ll have to put into a Cornell degree, this school is the hardest to graduate from.</p>
<p>And yeah, i believe it.</p>
<p>The graduation rate at Cornell is 92%. The highest in the Ivies is Harvard at 98%. Not a huge difference. In Cornell Engineering, the graduation rate is about 95%, and engineering is very demanding. </p>
<p>The grading is tough but fair. I have known students who have received D and F grades. But, the average grade is maybe about B-, roughly. There is no grade inflation at Cornell although I have heard about alumni commenets that grading is easier now at Cornell than it was in the 50s and 60s. </p>
<p>In engineering, there are a lot of collaborative projects in addition to the exams, labs, and problem sets. Psets, psets, psets that take hours of work. Students get along fine and help one another. Definitely not cut-throat. One student I know who left Cornell did so because he decided he didn’t want to spend his life designing circuits, not because he couldn’t do the work. He had an identity crisis. I don’t know why he didn’t just transfer to another department at Cornell. Cornell has quite a menu of majors. There is a certain percent of freshmen who change majors after they are here. Nothing wrong with that. The first two years are a good time to sample.</p>
<p>ahhh, those numbers are higher than i originally thought they were! And the 95% in engineering surprises me! Of all the schools in cornell, i would have figured that engineering would be the lowest. </p>
<p>I’m in ILR, and it’s sooo easy to graduate on time, you only need to take like 15 credits a semester to graduate on time. It seems like people that don’t graduate on time are either double majoring, or pursuiting research or study abroad opportunities. I have yet to encounter somebody who needs to spend another semester here because they need more passing grades. Thankfully, everybody here is very motivated, so it’s never really a problem.</p>
<p>Well, the 95% graduation rate in Engineering is graduation from CORNELL. The graduation rate for students who start in engineering AND graduate from Engineering is about 88% I think. This would mean about 4-5% of engineering students transfer out of engineering and then graduate from a different major at Cornell.</p>