I love Cornell to death. I'm back home and all I want to do is go back. The best thing about Cornell is the campus itself- it's BEAUTIFUL!! You will never in the world find a more pretty campus- especially when the spring comes and all of a sudden everything blooms together so the entire campus comes alive- and not just with the plants. Once spring hits, the campus goes from kind of a ghost town because it's too damn cold to be outside to a playground with kids playing frisbee, soccer, football, whatever, everywhere you turn.
Cornell's campus is really big- you're going to walk A LOT. If you have to get from the Arts Quad to the Plant Science buildings in 15 minutes, RUN! Haha no you don't have to run, just walk fast. (But don't worry, unless you're taking really, really, really random classes, you won't have to do that often at all. Most of your classes are near each other based on your major and school.)
Here at Cornell we always laugh that we live in the "Cornell bubble". Cornell is in Ithaca, NY- ya, I didn't know where that was either when I first applied. But Cornell has just about everything you need to keep you busy: we've got a pretty decent mall about 10 minutes north, Ithaca Commons at the bottom of the hill about 10 minutes away, and then we've got Collegetown right at the western edge of campus. Collegetown is really awesome if you want food that you've never had before. There is just about every type of ethnic restaurant you could think of: Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Mediterranean, American (pizza, grilled food, etc), there's a Starbucks... you name it, we got it. The only problem with Collegetown is that apart from the Starbucks, there really isn't any big chain food places like Panera or Qudoba. BUT there is this really, really, really awesome bagel/coffee/ice cream place called Collegetown Bagels and they will make you any kind of bagel sandwich you could think of. They also have really, really good baked goods (cookies, pastries, etc) and it's not really overpriced.
My biggest beef with Cornell is the administration, especially the Bursar Office, and Gannett Health Care services. Cornell is not known for very friendly help when it comes to helping people out, especially when it comes to the bill for Cornell. As you probably know, Cornell is freaking ridiculously expensive, and I swear to God they find every last way to squeeze money out of you. One of their biggest incomes I'm sure is from Gannett Health Services- and they SUCK! You go in there with a cold that may be a sinus infection and the minute you step in they make you wear this hideous mask to "protect others from your germs". Then you wait a freaking long-ass time and when you finally see someone, they ask you at least 3 or 4 times if you're pregnant, even after the nurse before the doctor wrote it down! NO I'M NOT PREGNANT, I JUST NEED SOME DAMN ANTIBIOTICS!!! Anyways, once you finally get out of there (with them performing a hundred extra tests "to help you"... that naturally cost extra) you go to get your prescription and you realize they don't take your health insurance. Now you can pay for the one Cornell provides and it's all easy, but if you have one that isn't one of the 10 or 15 that they work with, you get to pay for the whole damn thing and then take your receipt and send it in to get a rebate/cash back from your own insurance company. And 9 times out of 10, they gave you the wrong prescription or none at all and you're forced to suffer out your cold/infection.