College Spotlight – Cornell University

College Spotlight: Cornell University

College Expert at Exploring Educational Excellence

Radisson Blu Minneapolis Downtown
June 1, 2015

Cornell University

For the equestrian at heart, you may bring your car and horse to campus, quipped Reba McCutcheon of Cornell’s Undergraduate Admissions Office. Cornell is an Ivy League and a federal land-grant institution rolled into one. It boasts a beautiful college campus. There are over 100 waterfalls in the surrounding area of Ithaca, New York. According to the 2015 Princeton Review, Cornell is the #6 ranked green college in the country. The city of Ithaca is known to be one of the top 100 places to live, a top 10 recreation city, a best green place to live, and one of the “foodiest” towns in America.

There are over 14,000 undergraduates on campus. Diversity and multiculturalism are nothing new to Cornell. It’s been a defining focus for over 140 years. Almost 26% of applicants for the class of 2018 identified themselves as underrepresented minority.

Cornell offers 80 majors through seven undergraduate colleges. Cornell undergraduates have until the end of their sophomore year to declare a major. The faculty-to-student ratio is 9:1, and there are 4,000  course offerings. The only U.S. undergraduate program in industrial and labor relations is available at Cornell. The School of Hotel Administration is viewed as a world leader. In the past couple of months, Cornell’s College of Architecture, Art and Planning regained the #1 undergraduate spot in the nation, as ranked by DesignIntelligence.

A much-anticipated rite of spring on campus is Dragon Day. In mid-March — a tradition that goes back more than 100 years — first-year architecture students parade an enormous dragon across campus. Accompanied by other Architecture Art Planning (AAP) students in outrageous costumes, the dragon lumbers to the Arts Quad to do battle with a phoenix created by rival engineering students.

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