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I'm flying out from California. Just wondering who from the forum I might see there.
Cornell Open House November--anyone going?
- Thread starter JustCats
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I'm thinging about it but haven't decided yet, also from CA. Any idea how worthwhile the open house is? Are you also applying to Davis? If so I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the comparison of the two.
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I did apply to Davis as well. Cornell is my top choice though because I am a problem-based learner. I've visited the university once before, years ago. I love Ithaca!
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Yes, please come! 🙂 I'm sure it will be nice for you to get a feel for the school and see the area. Looking forward to meeting you guys!
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I just went on Nov 7th! Did anyone else end up going?
To be honest...I was expecting more from Cornell. I'm not sure why, but I wasn't really impressed. I had been thinking that Cornell would probably be my number 1 choice but now I'm not sure I'll apply.
To be honest...I was expecting more from Cornell. I'm not sure why, but I wasn't really impressed. I had been thinking that Cornell would probably be my number 1 choice but now I'm not sure I'll apply.
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Can you tell me more of your thoughts please? Why didn't you like it? I wasn't able to make it to the open house, but I've applied, and would love to hear the thoughts of those who have been there.
Thanks
Thanks
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Absolutely!
Ok these are my thoughts, so far, I've only been to one other vet school's open house (Tufts) so basically I only have that experience and the Cornell experience to go off of.
I think that my experience kind of started off bad and I'm not sure how I would have liked the school if my initial impressions had been more positive. I arrived at Cornell about an hour early and my fiance and I decided to park and walk around campus a bit. So we went to one of the information/parking gates on campus and asked where we should park for the Vet school's open house. The guy at the booth was very rude, he told us where to park just fine, but when I asked for a campus map he was like "You're applying to the vet school and you need a campus map to drive 10 feet down the road?" I was like "No I would like the campus map so I can walk around campus..." Needless to say, I wasn't too happy about that interaction.
When we arrived at the lecture hall for the initial presentation they had various pamphlets out on a table about taking the GREs, things to do in/around Ithaca, and information about the vet school. Inside a movie was playing showing veterinarians and students performing different procedures. The director of admissions gave an hour long presentation about how to get accepted to cornell. This was the other thing that really kind of turned me off though, she seemed very unprepared for the seminar. It was obvious that she had given it before (probably previous open houses) but hadn't looked at it since then. Because of that she was unable to give a very smooth cohesive presentation and it came across as very scattered. I guess I was expecting more of an Ivy league school like Cornell. The director of admissions covered a lot of things that are kind of obvious, starting all the way from what you should do if you are a high school student. In fact, a good part of the lecture was about how to try to get into the best college that you could. Kind of silly especially since she asked the audience before hand where they were in the application process and only one person there was in high school, everyone else was already in or out of undergrad.
A second year vet student sat up front while the director of admissions gave the seminar and basically the two of them would talk to each other. The admissions lady would put up a list of all the different activities/clubs one could get involved in and the second year student would jump in and say that she was involved in all of them, and president of 4 of them. There was a slide about pre-requisites and I asked if there was a math requirement, I was told there is not but the admissions director mentioned a course in statistics would be helpful, at which point the student agreed and pointed out that she was an economics major in college, so she didn't need any extra statistics courses but that several of her fellow students defininitely needed the help.
When the presentation (1hour) was finished, we split into three groups to go on the tour of the small animal hospital. Our leader seemed very nice she talked about the problem based learning system, we saw a room where they have all different types of stations to review/learn material. The stations range from parisitology (preserved specimens of heartworm, tape worm etc) to anatomy of different animals (I saw a dogs head cut in half to show the various parts of the brain etc). Each station has a notebook with the things you should look for and things to review right there. That seemed pretty cool. We saw an anatomy lab where they were doing dissections of pigs (although the pigs were covered when we went in there), the room was large, cold, and dark, I had a fellowship at the University of Cambridge Vet School one summer doing research and I worked in their anatomy labs sometimes, the one at cornell was not very nice in comparison, but I have no other US based Vet schools to compare it to, so maybe that is normal. We saw the library and that was nice, I believe they tols us it is open until 10pm. We saw a student sleeping on some couches pushed together which was funny. THe nice thing about the library is they have organized basically any text you might need during your core course requirements into one section, making it easy to find. There were not too many computers in the library but across the hall is another room that has maybe 30 or more computers and microscopes, it is used as a classroom and I guess you can use it for personal use when a class is not in session.
Then we saw the hospital. Which had everything a vet hospital would have. The students start working as techs I believe assisting other vet students with patients. All examination rooms are recorded at all times. To be honest, I don't remember too much of the hospital, we saw a small exotics ward, (thats what I'm interested in so I took note of that) but it seemed to be a lot of hallways we kept turning down.
Our tour guide was asked what she disliked about Cornell and she kind of danced around the issue, finally saying that students are under a lot of pressure but she tried to stress that the pressure is self-imposed. SHe said a lot of students are over-achievers and everyone wants to be involved in everything and it gave me and my fiance the same impression-that students are competitive with each other. I have a girl I work with right now who went to cornell and she told me that students can be "JA'd" (get in trouble with judicial administrators) if they say something bad to potential students while they are on a tour.
I'm not sure if students are very competitive at all vet schools, but there definitely seemed to be some feelings of superiority amongst at least two of the students we came in contact with. Again I'm not sure if thats just something I'm going to have to deal with where ever I go, but to me, it was off putting.
So that was my experience, things that I did like about Cornell was that the vet school is right on campus. I like that a lot, because then you can grab food at regular places on campus, walk around and interact with non-vet students once in awhile etc. THe Tufts campus for their vet school is completely seperate and its own entity in the middle of nowhere, so that was nice. They have a little place right by the vet school called The Dairy Bar where they make fresh ice cream and that seemed very popular. There is also a very very cute little town right basically connected to the campus (this little town is basically just for the university I think, it itself was very cute, the surrounding area of ithaca (not this town) looks very run down, obviously not much money, not that its bad, just that it looks like the University and its seperate little town connected to it is basically the only place you'll really be able to go for entertainment/things to do.) It looks like it is basically a town just for the university and there are houses - they looked like frat houses - students were playing beer pong and flip cup on tables right on the front lawns - and pizza shops, chinese food, etc. When I saw the little town I thought that was pretty cool and I tried to become more positive about my overall impression of Cornell, but I dunno.
Anyways that was my impression of the open house. I'm sure for some people they would really like it, and maybe I just had a bad first impression, but for me I felt as if student there were there for the name and prestige of coming from Cornell and not so much enjoying what they were doing.
I hope that helps at all.
oh. also students get free pet food from various pet companies. That was pretty cool.
Ok these are my thoughts, so far, I've only been to one other vet school's open house (Tufts) so basically I only have that experience and the Cornell experience to go off of.
I think that my experience kind of started off bad and I'm not sure how I would have liked the school if my initial impressions had been more positive. I arrived at Cornell about an hour early and my fiance and I decided to park and walk around campus a bit. So we went to one of the information/parking gates on campus and asked where we should park for the Vet school's open house. The guy at the booth was very rude, he told us where to park just fine, but when I asked for a campus map he was like "You're applying to the vet school and you need a campus map to drive 10 feet down the road?" I was like "No I would like the campus map so I can walk around campus..." Needless to say, I wasn't too happy about that interaction.
When we arrived at the lecture hall for the initial presentation they had various pamphlets out on a table about taking the GREs, things to do in/around Ithaca, and information about the vet school. Inside a movie was playing showing veterinarians and students performing different procedures. The director of admissions gave an hour long presentation about how to get accepted to cornell. This was the other thing that really kind of turned me off though, she seemed very unprepared for the seminar. It was obvious that she had given it before (probably previous open houses) but hadn't looked at it since then. Because of that she was unable to give a very smooth cohesive presentation and it came across as very scattered. I guess I was expecting more of an Ivy league school like Cornell. The director of admissions covered a lot of things that are kind of obvious, starting all the way from what you should do if you are a high school student. In fact, a good part of the lecture was about how to try to get into the best college that you could. Kind of silly especially since she asked the audience before hand where they were in the application process and only one person there was in high school, everyone else was already in or out of undergrad.
A second year vet student sat up front while the director of admissions gave the seminar and basically the two of them would talk to each other. The admissions lady would put up a list of all the different activities/clubs one could get involved in and the second year student would jump in and say that she was involved in all of them, and president of 4 of them. There was a slide about pre-requisites and I asked if there was a math requirement, I was told there is not but the admissions director mentioned a course in statistics would be helpful, at which point the student agreed and pointed out that she was an economics major in college, so she didn't need any extra statistics courses but that several of her fellow students defininitely needed the help.
When the presentation (1hour) was finished, we split into three groups to go on the tour of the small animal hospital. Our leader seemed very nice she talked about the problem based learning system, we saw a room where they have all different types of stations to review/learn material. The stations range from parisitology (preserved specimens of heartworm, tape worm etc) to anatomy of different animals (I saw a dogs head cut in half to show the various parts of the brain etc). Each station has a notebook with the things you should look for and things to review right there. That seemed pretty cool. We saw an anatomy lab where they were doing dissections of pigs (although the pigs were covered when we went in there), the room was large, cold, and dark, I had a fellowship at the University of Cambridge Vet School one summer doing research and I worked in their anatomy labs sometimes, the one at cornell was not very nice in comparison, but I have no other US based Vet schools to compare it to, so maybe that is normal. We saw the library and that was nice, I believe they tols us it is open until 10pm. We saw a student sleeping on some couches pushed together which was funny. THe nice thing about the library is they have organized basically any text you might need during your core course requirements into one section, making it easy to find. There were not too many computers in the library but across the hall is another room that has maybe 30 or more computers and microscopes, it is used as a classroom and I guess you can use it for personal use when a class is not in session.
Then we saw the hospital. Which had everything a vet hospital would have. The students start working as techs I believe assisting other vet students with patients. All examination rooms are recorded at all times. To be honest, I don't remember too much of the hospital, we saw a small exotics ward, (thats what I'm interested in so I took note of that) but it seemed to be a lot of hallways we kept turning down.
Our tour guide was asked what she disliked about Cornell and she kind of danced around the issue, finally saying that students are under a lot of pressure but she tried to stress that the pressure is self-imposed. SHe said a lot of students are over-achievers and everyone wants to be involved in everything and it gave me and my fiance the same impression-that students are competitive with each other. I have a girl I work with right now who went to cornell and she told me that students can be "JA'd" (get in trouble with judicial administrators) if they say something bad to potential students while they are on a tour.
I'm not sure if students are very competitive at all vet schools, but there definitely seemed to be some feelings of superiority amongst at least two of the students we came in contact with. Again I'm not sure if thats just something I'm going to have to deal with where ever I go, but to me, it was off putting.
So that was my experience, things that I did like about Cornell was that the vet school is right on campus. I like that a lot, because then you can grab food at regular places on campus, walk around and interact with non-vet students once in awhile etc. THe Tufts campus for their vet school is completely seperate and its own entity in the middle of nowhere, so that was nice. They have a little place right by the vet school called The Dairy Bar where they make fresh ice cream and that seemed very popular. There is also a very very cute little town right basically connected to the campus (this little town is basically just for the university I think, it itself was very cute, the surrounding area of ithaca (not this town) looks very run down, obviously not much money, not that its bad, just that it looks like the University and its seperate little town connected to it is basically the only place you'll really be able to go for entertainment/things to do.) It looks like it is basically a town just for the university and there are houses - they looked like frat houses - students were playing beer pong and flip cup on tables right on the front lawns - and pizza shops, chinese food, etc. When I saw the little town I thought that was pretty cool and I tried to become more positive about my overall impression of Cornell, but I dunno.
Anyways that was my impression of the open house. I'm sure for some people they would really like it, and maybe I just had a bad first impression, but for me I felt as if student there were there for the name and prestige of coming from Cornell and not so much enjoying what they were doing.
I hope that helps at all.
oh. also students get free pet food from various pet companies. That was pretty cool.
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Only in college towns is beer pong on the front lawn a common site. Actually, I saw a group on homecoming with a sign out there that said, "You honk, we drink." I'd like to see what they do if a cop turned on his sirens/flashers at them instead...
Most vet schools have some sort of free pet food situation.
I thikn you should just make sure to visit some other vet schools for comparison, and keep in mind that all you have so far is a first impression, some of which is no doubt legitimate, but...
It sounds like the students giving tours and participating in the seminar were mostly the hey-I'm-perfect types, which is a shame. I prefer the hey-I'm-just-here-to-learn-what-I-need-to-know types.
Most vet schools have some sort of free pet food situation.
I thikn you should just make sure to visit some other vet schools for comparison, and keep in mind that all you have so far is a first impression, some of which is no doubt legitimate, but...
It sounds like the students giving tours and participating in the seminar were mostly the hey-I'm-perfect types, which is a shame. I prefer the hey-I'm-just-here-to-learn-what-I-need-to-know types.
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I know what you're saying and I do agree. This was my first impression and like I said, I've only visited two schools so far. I plan on checking out UPenn next summer (they don't give tours while school is in session), and while I've physically been to UNC, I've never talked to students/admissions/professors, etc. I have no doubt that Cornell is a good school, it must be listed as #1 in the country for a reason, but I'm not positive that just because they are a top school that they are the best school for me. It is something I will have to consider as I get closer to applying. For me its slightly more complicated because it is not just myself I have to think about, but also my fiance and where he can work/go to school in an area as well. As of now I don't think Cornell fits those requirements for me, but I'm sure you can get an excellent education there.
