Cornell University, USA

Founded in 1865, this Ivy League university has established a global reputation as one of the world’s premier teaching and research institutions

Numbered among the elite Ivy League universities of the US, Cornell (estb. 1865) is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s premier teaching and research universities, particularly in engineering and the sciences. In the world university rankings 2008 of the Shanghai Jia Tong University, Cornell was ranked 12th, and 15th in the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings 2008. Its seven undergraduate colleges and six graduate and professional schools offer a range of study programmes across the faculties of arts and science, engineering, agriculture, human ecology, and medicine.

“We are known far and wide as a powerhouse of science and technology, with major commitments to new life and physical sciences,” says David J. Skorton, president of Cornell University. “At the same time, Cornell recognises the centrality of the humanities, the arts, and the social sciences: disciplines that nurture our creative instincts, keep and convey our cultural heritage, and help us explore what it means to be human.”

Sprawled across a scenic 745 acre campus in Ithaca, in upstate New York, Cornell has an aggregate enrolment of 20,000 students representing every US state and 120 countries around the world. It offers 4,000 courses in 12 undergraduate, graduate, and professi-onal schools and two satellite medical campuses, one in New York City and the other in Education City, Qatar. It also hosts American’s pioneer professional colleges, specialising in  hotel adminis-tration, industrial and labour relations, and veterinary medicine.

Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White as a co-educational, non-sectarian institution which admits students irrespective of religion or race, Cornell was inaugurated shortly after the start of the American Civil War. Its founders intended the new university to make contributions in all fields of knowledge, from the classics to the sciences and from the theoretical to applied. In keeping with this institutional objective Cornell offers study programmes in traditional liberal arts studies and in fields as diverse as engineering, agriculture, hotel administration, and city and regional planning.

Ithaca. Situated at the tip of Cayuga Lake in the Finger Lakes region of central New York, Ithaca is famed for its rugged natural beauty. Its numerous water-falls cascade over 400-million-year-old rocks lining deep gorges. Four state natural parks are within a 10 miles circumfe-rence of Cornell’s campus. Popular outdoor activities include biking, hiking, sailing, wind surfing, swimming, golfing, and skiing.

For a small town Ithaca (pop.100,000) offers a wide array of bookshops, movie houses, specialty stores, and night-spots. There are numerous options for shopping; malls, nationwide retailers, boutiques and craft stores. Ithaca is also a great place for dining, with more restaurants per capita than New York City. Within an hour’s drive of the city is Syracuse, the Finger Lakes wine district, the Watkins Glen auto racing circuit, and several centres for the performing arts. New York City and Toronto are less than five hours by road.

Though Ithaca has a reputation for being wet and rainy, with long, harsh winters, it also enjoys stretches of dry, clear weather. Summertime temperatures can rise to 30oC plus, while in winter the barometer can drop to single digits. Ithaca does not suffer lake-effect snow, unlike the neighbouring cities of Syracuse and Rochester, but does usually receive several substantial snowfalls each winter.

Campus facilities. Sited at the apex of a hilltop overlooking the 40-mile-long, 400-foot-deep Cayuga Lake, the Cornell University campus was once the family farm of the university’s co-founder, Ezra Cornell. Two sides of the campus are bound by gorges, cut over 12,000 years. Creeks and waterfalls fill the gorges, and no matter where they are on campus, students are never far from inspiring vistas and the sound of cascading water. Yet perhaps the most remarkable feature of the Cornell campus is the seamless interconnection of nature and man-made environment. Cornell Plantations, curator of the university’s natural areas, maintains trails, arboretums and gardens that intertwine and blend with the university’s graceful quads and architecture.

Some 260 university buildings are divided between the Central and North campuses on the plateau of the Hill, West campus on its slope, and Collegetown to the south. Central campus hosts laboratories, adminis-trative buildings, and almost all of the university’s academic buildings, athletic facilities, auditoria, and museums. North campus contains freshman and graduate student housing, themed houses, and 29 fraternity and sorority houses. West campus has upper class residential colleges and an additional 25 fraternity and sorority houses. College-town houses the Schwartz Performing Arts Center and two upper class residence halls, amid a neighborhood of apart-ments, eateries, and businesses.

One of the 10 largest academic research libraries in the United States, the Cornell University Library offers a collection of 8 million printed volumes, over 360,000 e-books and about 88,000 print and electronic journals. Moreover the university campus offers a wide range of sports facilities, cafes, restaurants, and membership of over 750 clubs and student organisations.

In addition to its Ithaca campus Cornell also operates the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, and the Weill Cornell Medical College in Doha, Qatar.

Admission. Admission to Cornell is highly selective. Typically, more than 30,000 students apply for 3,000 places in the undergraduate first-year programme. The minimum eligibility criterion for admission is successful completion of Plus Two (class XII). Moreover all first-year applicants are required to submit official results of either the SAT Reasoning Test or ACT. International students also need to submit results of either the TOEFL or IELTS. Cornell’s recommended minimum TOEFL score is 100 (internet-based) or 600 (paper-based), and the minimum IELTS score is 7.

The deadline for admission applications (fee: $70) is January 2 for term beginning September, and Cornell University follows a need-blind admission policy. For further information contact Undergraduate Admissions Office, Cornell University, 410 Thurston Avenue, Ithaca, NY 14850. Tel: +1 607 255-5241, Fax: +1 607 254-5175, e-mail: admissions@cornell.edu, website: www.cornell.edu.

Accommodation. First-year  under-graduate students live in residen-tial communities on the university’s North campus, close to two community centres, three dining halls, two athletic facilities, and academic buildings on the Central campus. Singles, doubles, triples, and quads are available in most residence halls.  Each hall has shared bathrooms, laundry facilities, kitchen-ettes, and common areas, plus internet access, basic campus phone service, and optional cable television. Sopho-mores (second year) students and seniors live in residential halls on the West campus.

Additionally, Cornell has several housing areas for graduate and professional students located either on the outer border of campuses, on university-owned land or off-campus.

Degree programmes. Cornell University’s colleges, schools, and other academic departments offer more than 4,000 courses, 70 undergraduate majors, 93 graduate fields of study, undergraduate and advanced degrees, and continuing education and outreach programmes (see box).

 Summiya Yasmeen