Calling all Cornell (Johnson) Fall 2009 applicants!

I booked Statler! w00t!

Sounded a little so-so, at least from your short description (perhaps it's just how I read through it, though). Did the visit make you MORE interested in attending??? Or same or less interest after the visit?

Overall - more interested. Also, check out my response to solaris on the social scene a couple posts below the one you quoted. I really had a great time. I had a better time here than at any other visit. I also was impressed with the recruitng there. Every single student I met had landed an impressive job or internship. The staff was also amazing and everyone seemed pretty happy. It was just a great place, I didnt want to leave. And for an IM guy, the Parker Center was awesome (though a little 80s looking). One thing I will say is that I visited Columbia, Cornell and Tuck during the same week and I would say there was a noticeable dropoff in the quality of the students at Cornell compared to the other 2 schools I visited (in terms of apparent intelligence, ability, etc). Basically, the students were less impressive. Columbia and Tuck were very equal, I was extremely impressed with the students at both schools. However, to be fair to Cornell I have to say that I was sitting in on a very boring lecture based finance class that even I would have sat back during looking bored and not participating. So someone may have had the same thoughts about me. At Columbia and Tuck I sat in on case discussions that were very interesting and where students were forced to be engaged (cold calling by the professor and such). So, in reality I really don't think it's a fair comparison. But, nonetheless that was the impression I had. But.... it didn't stop me from having a strong impression of the school overall. I really did like the students, the staff, Ithaca. I think I would have fun there. And the recruiting looked strong so I think I would land a good job afterwards. Those are my 2 most important criteria. Fun during. Great job after.

Thanks for the detailed update. Glad you had a good time on your East Coast trip.

Solaris,

I've been able to use the student search function and my username/password from the app works so I'm not sure what your difficulty would be... sorry.

I'll also be there on the 15th. I have a friend that lives in Binghamton which is about an hour south of Ithaca so I'll be staying with her so I'm not too sure about any of the hotels.

Oh, good cereal255. Maybe we can meet in the afternoon on the 15th? I'll head back to New York early morning on the 16th.

I'm looking forward to going back to the area. I went to school in Binghamton and spent quite a few weekends up in Ithaca since it's a much much nicer town... it's beautiful and I really want to spend some more time there. Just a beautiful environment to study/live in. Plus I won't have to give up Wegmans (which is the greatest supermarket in the world in case anyone was wondering)

What time slot is your class visit scheduled for? I have to get back to Buffalo that evening so mine is the 8:30 am one but I'll be staying for the 1:30 information session.

Yes, I'll be there for the 1:30pm session myself. My class is at 11:45am.

And I'll raise my Trader Joe's to your Wegman's.

One more application question - do we really have to fill out that confounded Excel template? Johnson isn't taking PDF transcripts like virtually every other reasonable school?

I just filled out the Excel spreadsheets. Luckily I had all of my transcripts in a file so I just had to pull them out and copy all the data. (It's slow at work right now so I have lots of time on my hands to do such things as well as freak out about the essays) I don't think that they're accepting PDFs though but I'd call the admissions office and ask since they seem to be happy to help with those sorts of questions.

Are you guys sending official GMAT scores from GMAC to Johnson as part of your application? Or does Johnson only require unofficial scores until an offer of admission is made? The website doesn't seem to be very clear on this and it seems to be taking 4-5 days for the admissions office to respond to e-mail queries.

Any Cornell applicants going to the Parker Series Event in Washington DC tonite?

I was talking with the admissions officers last week, and they were gearing up for their long traveling season. Good luck to all of you who will be meeting them, they are all incredibly nice, and I think I learned more about what they want out of applicants in 15 minutes of talking with them than I did spending hours on the website.

Care to share?

RF

I believe that, but more because the website is really a piece of junk. They've got to improve the quality and the content in the website.

Well, through the experience with all the schools, I always learned more through in person discussion than I did through reading a website. It was never the quality of the website or information, but only that by meeting admissions officers, you get an idea of the personality of the school.

At every school I applied to, getting to talk to admissions officers and visiting the school was consistently more helpful than reading the website. Visiting was a stretch because all the schools I was applying to were across the country, but phone conversations were the biggest help out of everything for me.

By the way folks, I checked with the admissions committee and you can indeed upload PDF transcripts instead of that awful Excel template using the online application system. That's a huge relief.

I will be visiting Johnson on Monday, and will post my experience here soon after.

hi, i know "essay" 3 was covered a little but im still a little unsure--are we supposed to literally just provide a table of contents, ie--no essay? or is there supposed to be an essay?