Cornell CS ED vs Brown CS ED

[ivory radish]

Schools: Cornell vs. Brown
Demographic: international chinese male
Intended major: Computer Science, and maybe courses related to data science, business/investing, or even video games
Similarities: High cost, Good CS job recruiting after graduation, ivy reputation

Cornell Pros

• Campus is beautiful, at least during fall and parts of spring

• Higher CS ranking

• Better international reputation (in Asia), maybe better for employment going back to China

• Student body is huge, there must be some way to fit in with the community

• Better food than Brown

• Higher acceptance rate for CN students

• Better for dating??? lol

Cornell Cons

• More stressful than Brown, some people say students are cutthroat and uncollaborative

• Location. As a person who won't be driving, it is probably impossible to go to other cities on weekends for Speedcubing competitions.

• No driving could also make it hard to navigate the huge campus? But it seems like bikes would solve this issue

• Winter seems hard to get used to

Brown Pros

• Known for good student life with little stress. More laid back and chill, which fits me more: I probably won't be frat partying

• Collaborative, accepting community. Not cutthroat

• Open curriculum, no need to do reading I don't enjoy, and some people complain about a lot of reading at Cornell?

• Nearer to big cities like Boston, NYC

• Professors seem nicer, and has more officer hours

Brown Cons

• Smaller class size means lower acceptance rate, especially for international; this would result in wasting ED

• People don't really know this school in my home country

• Campus seems old and a bit mundane

Tiebreaker Considerations
I think I value student life the most. Having not enjoyed high school so far, I really want to enjoy the next 4 years in college. Never tried greek life so I'm not sure about that, but I do want to make good friends (and even date) and feel I belong in a community. Less stress and cutthroat culture in academics would be preferred. At the same time I do want to have a good chance at either grad school or good CS jobs (not sure which). Other than that, I would prefer it to be easier to get out of campus without needing to drive, to pursue Speedcubing competitions or have fun in the city.

[tight imp]

I’d say brown

I heard it’s a lot more chill

[inland breach]

im just curious, why do you think cornell is better for dating?

[ivory radish]

idk, I guess Ithaca is more tight-knit and more students = higher chance 💀💀💀

but brown's community is good too

[inland breach]

hmmm i suppose, i was under the impression brown had a more conventionally attractive student body tho 💀 but idk

[ivory radish]

Lol

dating is not the main factor

I'm just worried if cornell is too stressful compared to other T20s

as @tight imp pointed out Brown is generally pretty chill, but I don't want to waste ED and not get in, if I could have gotten into cornell ED

would cornell RD be significantly harder than ED for intl CS?

[inland breach]

cornell is not more stressful than other T20s but brown is less stressful than other T20s, imo

[inland breach]

isnt cornell ED harder than brown ED for intl CS?

[inland breach]

yes, imo RD is always much harder than ED particularly for intls

[ivory radish]

I dont actually know.. but in general cornell accepts much more internationals right? Or is this not true

would not EDing anywhere be a stupid move for intl

cuz the UCs look pretty good too

[inland breach]

not necessarily, i didnt ED anywhere

[ivory radish]

🤔

interesting

I know a friend who didn't either

[inland breach]

you are CS right?

CMU ED2

[ivory radish]

yes

[inland breach]

is a good option

[ivory radish]

aha

[tight imp]

If u know u would go to a school and want to boost your odds and moneys not an issue

Then ED is great

[ivory radish]

I don't have an absolute dream school so a little hesitant on that

but then, I should also play it safe and get into a good enough school with ED

as an intl

[inland breach]

you have to weigh your regrets of not aiming higher if u do get in vs of aiming too high if rejected, and also consider ED2 seriously, ED2 is what saved me when deciding what to do -intl in CS

[ivory radish]

how does ED2 help in finding this balance?

so I can shoot higher in ED1?

[glass stag]

If you do any sort of ED:

• you should be 100% sure about the school
• you should be 100% willing to pay what the NPC claims you’ll be paying, possibly more

[inland breach]

yeah

that was my thought process atleast, that i would aim high (caltech EA) and not do ED1, because i could do CMU ED2, which has almost the same acceptance rate as CMU ED1

[ivory radish]

but in this case aren't you shooting just as high in ED2 as caltech EA :P

[inland breach]

uhh pretty high in ED2, but not comparable no; caltech takes like 0-5 kids from my country, CMU much more
but i was a stubborn clown who would've felt bad doing anything less ambitious than CMU ED, so that was what i did
ofc, you should look to see if there are ED2 options that fit where your thought process is at

[ivory radish]

I see, I'll look into ED2, thanks

btw just saw that you're in yygs too 💀

[inland breach]

small world 💀

[ivory radish]

yale young global scholars

summer program

💀

intl yale acceptance rate is a joke

dont know

if I could

:)

:D

ok yale is now top choice

prob much lower

especially for china

us college apps in china is a shitshow too

let me try to find the post

<3

ranking um

only tsinghua and beijing universities are well known

and then there's like a T20 too, called "985"

indeed

actually Im not too sure why it's named that 💀

https://www.reddit.com/r/ApplyingToCollege/comments/fr4hru/a_message_to_future_international_stem_applicants/

I'm in a us high school rn, so will apply to almost all us schools

maybe add in UofT or waterloo

I dont have full list yet lol

haven't decided

apparently yes..

but some say it's better than applying straight from china

[summer sapphire]

It’s 4% now

Brown is 5% overall

Yes

No

Now it’s 3.11%

Columbia and Stanford are also in the 3% range

Cornell was 8% last year

The data for this year is not out yet

Schools like Vanderbilt and Duke and Northwestern are 5-6%

Well I did not so I don’t understand them

I still discourage shotgunning

Every school where I didn’t have reasons for applying to other than their academic prowess I did not get into, and I am sure they could tell

[novel pulsar]

one thing to consider that might give Brown another pro? idk how it is at Cornell but the Chinese international student community at Brown is very tight knit

I'm Chinese-American technically but I lived in China for a little while before coming to Brown!

I'm graduating next month haha but I'm sure you will make friends!!

[summer sapphire]

What’s your best piece of advice for college freshman going to any college?

[novel pulsar]

know the climate and have appropriate clothes/shoes (and you can wait to buy there because the local stores will have better selection/prices)
... I would expand on this list but my other stuff is lowkey Brown-specific haha

like maximizing shopping period, activities fair, housing lottery etc

[summer sapphire]

Good point

Thank you

[novel pulsar]

tbh I barely remember my freshman year, it seems so far away

[ivory radish]

very pog, thanks for chiming in as a Brown student

[inland breach]

Caltech at 2.5% now 💀

[inland breach]

i mean this is all true we are very screwed but it’s still not impossible and you don’t have to ED somewhere as an intl indian(or chinese) male in CS, this post is obviously coming from 1 perspective but there are people who have managed to get good acceptances even despite these things

[summer sapphire]

Do you have a source?

I can’t find one publicly but maybe you’d have one

[inland breach]

432 acceptances is public information, for the applicant numbers caltech sent out 2 emails to the counsellors of various high schools with the number of applicants in EA and RD rounds, i just did the math from there

the applicant numbers are not exactly public but not exactly a secret either i suppose

it was ~17k total tho I don’t remember exactly, but the math gave ~2.5% acceptance rate

[summer sapphire]

😳

[inland breach]

oh and to make matters worse, out of the 235 class size of caltech, they filled out ~35 spots from questbridge

[ivory radish]

yes.. I'll do more research and see if I like brown

seems like brown isn't significantly harder than cornell ED for CS?

[inland breach]

it isn’t, as someone who was considering EDing Cornell for CS, I was under the impression it was harder than brown ED for CS, though I may be wrong

[ivory radish]

the fact that people can't tell suggest theyre similar

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[inland breach]

yeah true good point

[novel pulsar]

idk about cornell but from the emails they sent us it seems brown's overall accept rate is skewed towards ED; the RD rate is also like 2 point something percent

but we don't admit by major/concentration

[inland breach]

hh a lot of colleges say this but they also say they look to make a balanced overall incoming class, both are not possible simultaneously, sus

[novel pulsar]

I believe it more for Brown bc no one even declares until sophomore year and there are no caps

[inland breach]

that's a lot of colleges isnt it? like caltech, princeton, MIT, stanford etc

[novel pulsar]

and it seems like everyone's doing CS anyway lmao

[inland breach]

💀

[novel pulsar]

there's like 400 people in deep learning alone

[inland breach]

CS is the most popular major at basically every college now

[inland breach]

i still dont buy it tho
then again, i already got in, i'll take it, whatever happened worked out