Ithaca, NY
Distance from home: 1250 miles NE
Private 4-year University
Admission Difficulty: Medium
School Size: Big for an Ivy, small for a state school
Tuition: About $36,000/year
Who goes there: Smart kids who didn’t get into Harvard; guys who like wear popped collars with plaid shorts even though they know it has gone out of style; anyone from New York state who is bright enough to have done real work in high school but lived in such a rural hick town that they had never heard of Columbia.
Known for producing: Liberal bias (Keith Olbermann); saucy Republicans who constantly feel persecuted (Ann Coulter); marriages, since everyone here marries someone else from Cornell; hotel managers who say things like “After ten years in the industry I might look into some investments.”
Pros: Lots of great scenery, even though all the smart and interesting people hide inside little holes on campus to study; great business, hotel, and biology programs; being able to cheat off of anyone in any of your classes; fancy schmancy laboratories and equipment.
Cons: Weather alternates between a humid 92 degrees and a blistering -45, sometimes in one week; Cornell is afraid of grade inflation so they make every class difficult and soon you will find yourself studying in one of those dark little holes; all the engineers, architects, and premeds argue about whose program of study is more brutal while business and hotel students nap.
Scene: I don’t know I study … just kidding; college town boasts more bars filled with freshmen than I can count; crazy rush parties at frat houses; sporadic meetings of hippies or social protesters or “Free Tibet” types on Ho plaza which don’t make any difference except to “make a statement.”
Sports: Everyone here roots for the hockey team. I don’t understand hockey at all.
Campus and city: There are “Cornell Plantations” and magnificent countryside if the weather will let you enjoy it; the Ithaca Commons is interesting to visit once or twice on a shopping excursion; Ithaca is twice as liberal and three times as hick as you would expect New York to be.
Added plus: We’re still in the Ivy League!
Added minus: Your grandmother won’t be proud because no one knows we’re in the Ivy League!
Reviewed by:Gregory Horn is a student at Cornell.