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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DC was accepted to Cornell CS last year. We went to the admitted students day. What an absolute miserable experience. It was by far the worse admitted students day we went to. For being an Ivy, Cornell was not impressive at all.

We started with an open house with the CS/Engineering dept. And by open house, I mean a few students standing by some tables. No tour of the buildings/dept, no chairman of the CS dept speech selling you on how great the program is, etc. The CS student we could find said intro classes could be as large as 600 students. Also said very few students get internships after freshman year. Compare that to other top CS programs.

We went next to a general discussion about life Cornell put on by admissions. It was a student panel discussion. After that we had a walking tour of the campus. It was an assigned time slot and the check in point was overrun with people also trying to checkin. We waited 30 mins to just checkin. The tour guide was awful. She talked while standing on the sidewalks in front of building. This, the group could only be about 2 people wide. No one could hear. Compare to other schools that either have the student guides microphones to be heard or only talked at gathering points where the whole group could gather around. Several people dropped out of the tour. We at a late lunch/early dinner at the dining hall and headed home.

Based on our experience with the students, the culture seemed very cut throat. Students were studying early Saturday morning and throughout the day - more students studying than we noticed on other campuses.

I’m glad we did the visit as it really helped solidify DCs decision to go elsewhere. DC doesn’t wonder what he was missing out on.
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The audio quality of a campus tour affected his decision? Yeah - probably not a good fit for him. None of the negative aspects of his admitted students day translate to negative experiences as a student.

And studying on a Saturday doesn't make a school "cutthroat". 
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Negatives of a "not quality tour" for admitted students day would make a huge difference for my kid.  We toured Cornell Summer of 2021.  No organized tours available (yeah it's covid, but everywhere else we went in NY/MA were doing tours with masks---all were taking you into buildings (maybe not dorms, but into bldgs) and giving small organized tours.  Cornell told you to stop by the visitor center and find a map---2 students at a table handed us a map and returned to their computers immediately.  No desire to give anyone a tour or answer any questions.

For me, admitted students day (and any tour) should be to SELL the school to the students.  Cornell doesn't really care to do this.  To me, that indicates that it will be a "sink or swim" mentality once you matriculate and there will not be much assistance or guidance.  IMO, there are many other better choices that for my kids (and most kids).  I want my kid to be somewhere that gives a shit about them and their college career and wants to help make it the best it can be.  If they can't even give a decent tour, then it says (to me) they don't really care and are so full of themselves that they don't think they need to care, that the name will carry it all for them.  So we moved on and didn't even bother applying.  [/quote]

It’s funny, but I graduated decades ago and yea, even back then it was “sink or swim”.  In hindsight I’d have been better off at a smaller school where they paid more attention to undergraduates.  My mother died my freshman year and I was really on my own to navigate that in conjunction with school.  Not one person in the administration reached out to me.  I had to speak to my professors on my own, negotiate my time away and making up work and so on.  Most were okay, one was great (he had lost his own dad the year prior and was sympathetic) and one was awful.  In hindsight, that guy was probably on the spectrum and just not capable of dealing with a blubbering 18yo girl who had just lost her mother.  But his first question was did I want the homework assignments I missed and I bluntly told him no.

So pp, a long-winded way of saying I think your assessment was correct and if you and your child wanted a different environment, you were wise to move on.   [/quote]

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