Cornell

I've long had a strange infatuation with Cornell. In fact, when I was still a Linguistics student at U-Mass, I started looking into graduate programs... Cornell topped my list then (along with Berkeley, UCSD and U-Penn). I talked to my "mentor" professor at the time, asking him what he thought of their programs. He told me to go to Berkeley, period. In fact, he specifically steered me away from Cornell, saying that their linguistics program was "in really bad shape". But that made me want to go there even more: I like to fix things. (But looking at it now, there's little there to interest me: just a small "Phonetics Group".)

What drew me to Cornell? The beauty, of course. The size (it's big). The prestige: it's not a Harvard/Yale/Princeton/Stanford class school, but it's well-respected. A lot of research comes out of Cornell. But, I think more than anything else, it's the epitome of a "college town".

I would love to study animal behavior. ("Chemical Ecology"? I'm there.)

The Art department has a nice website, and they have a concentration in "Electronic Imaging", as well as photography and sculpture... best of all, they allow a "dual-degree": basically a double-major with an adviser. I'd do that.

They have a relatively small music program. Bummer.

Biochem at Cornell appears to be graduate-only, but their research includes signal transduction, cell motility, and a whole lot more in that area. I could dig that (eventually). They also have Cell Biology (and Genetics), but nothing there stirred me.

Their CS department seems decent (I worked with a programmer who studied here; she was quite good). "Electives in artificial intelligence, computer graphics, computer vision, databases, [and] multimedia ... are also possible." I could dig it.

Overall, I think I still like Cornell, but I'm somewhat less wowed by it than I have been of other universities. That said, I think it's a microcosm I could really enjoy, if I were there.