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Cornell is big, not quite Ann Arbor big, but big enough to have a range of stereotypes. From an outsiders perspective, Cornell, like most all the Ivies looks pretentious, full of privileged snobs who wear a lot of Patagonia and Burberry. There are those people, they may be legacies, and their parents may be google-able but as my mother said upon our first family college visit to Cornell, it's the "Common Man's" Ivy. Go to Princeton and the surrounding town drips money. You can't even go into a library without a student ID. In contrast, Cornell is surrounding by gorges, cows, and incredibly quirky Ithaca.

Once you get to Cornell you realize that most stereotypes are tied to the seven undergraduates colleges. According to the stereotypes, CALS (the College of Agriculture and Life Science) is full of animal sci majors who don't shower, Architecture students all wear black by senior year to reflect the depressing amount of work they do, ILRies (Industrial and Labor Relations students) like me, are all headed to law school, and the Engineers are so overwhelmed they never leave their rooms. Stereotypes tend to have a little nugget of truth, but I'm not going to law school and my best friend in Mechanical Engineering parties harder than any hotelie (School of Hotel Administration student) I know.

Cornell offers the quintessential college experience. On the Arts Quad you see students throwing frisbees, down in collegetown there are houses full of students with couches on the porches. When looking for colleges, I was really interested in going to a big state university- Cornell was in fact one of the smaller schools I applied to, so I love the size. By dividing the University up into seven undergraduate colleges, Cornell makes sure that many communities are created. Some people fear that they might miss being near a city while at Cornell- I've always felt like I'll have the rest of my life to love a city- college is the only time you'll ever get to love a campus. Cornell's campus is large- has it's own zipcode- and with 13,000 undergrads there are always things going on, so students rarely leave campus on the weekends.

I came to Cornell not being absolutely positive what I was going to do with my intended major in Industrial and Labor Relations. I won't pretend that I've got my life oath completely figured out now as a junior, but I have benfited immensely, emphasis, immensely, from the wonderful student services in Cornell's School of Industrial Labor Relations. From what I have gathered from my friends at other colleges, the big advantage to a small school is real attention from advisors, counselors, professors etc. In ILR I get that, and my advisors have the resources and backing of a powerhouse like Cornell. I constantly get emails from the Career Services Department or the Office of Student Services about new opportunities and events that I may find interesting. Never think that you can't get real attention at a large university. Cornell's seven college structure effectively creates small communities. I know, I know, every college says it, but Cornell really is a large college, with a small college feel- when you are in one of the smaller of the 7 undergraduate colleges.

Athletics, greek life, a capella groups and clubs pretty much make up most students extracurricular activities. About 30% of students are greek, most people are only heavily involved in greek life their sophomore year when they live in a house and then they attend less events as upperclassmen.