Cornell University

Private · Elite · NY

Photo: Notyourbroom (CC BY 3.0)

School data & stats

TypePrivate

LocationNY · Northeast

SettingUrban

Undergrads15,995

Student:faculty9:1

Outcomes

4-yr grad rate86.9%

6-yr grad rate95.4%

Drop-out rate1.6%

Study abroad—

Cost

In-state tuition$69k

Out-of-state tuition$69k

Application fee—

Community

Racial diversity69%

Gender diversity54.6%

International9.6%

Identity—

Overview

Cornell, in Ithaca, New York, is unusual among Ivy League schools for combining private colleges with several state-supported ones, so it houses everything from classics to hotel administration, engineering, and agriculture at real depth rather than treating some fields as afterthoughts. The campus sits on a hill above Cayuga Lake, threaded with gorges and waterfalls that define its physical character, and Cornell's founding promise, "any person, any study," still describes its breadth today.

Academics

Cornell's college structure means a student applies to a specific school — Arts and Sciences, Engineering, the ILR School, Agriculture and Life Sciences (a partly state-supported college), Hotel Administration, and others — each with its own culture, faculty, and requirements. This gives Cornell genuine strength across an unusually wide range of fields, from engineering and computer science to labor relations and hospitality management, more than most universities its size attempt to cover well at once.

Campus & student life

Ithaca's gorges and waterfalls are a defining physical feature of the campus, popular for swimming in warmer months and for the hiking trails that wind through them, and the region's long, snowy winters are a real part of student life that new students should expect. The combination of Greek life, a full Division I athletics program, and distinct college identities gives Cornell a wider range of social scenes than a single unified undergraduate culture would suggest.

Getting in

Because admission is to a specific college within Cornell, applicants need to show genuine fit with that college's focus, not just general academic strength — an engineering applicant and a hotel-administration applicant are evaluated somewhat differently and write different supplemental essays. This college-specific structure means research into which school actually fits a student's interests matters more at Cornell than at most universities.

After graduation

Graduates move into an unusually broad range of fields given Cornell's college structure, from finance and consulting to agriculture, hospitality, and engineering, with an alumni network that is large and geographically spread out. Hotel Administration graduates in particular have an unusually strong, specific pipeline into hospitality and real estate leadership.

Worth knowing

Applying to Cornell means choosing one of its several undergraduate colleges up front, and transferring between colleges internally is possible but not automatic, so the choice at application time carries real weight. The state-supported colleges have different tuition and residency considerations than the endowed private colleges within the same university.

cornell.edu ↗

Admissions

Acceptance rate8.8%

Enrolled mid-50%SAT 1500–1570 · ACT 33–35

Test policyoptional

Rec letters3

Deadlines (2026–27 cycle)

Early decisionNov 1

Regular decisionJan 2

Verified from the school’s admissions page ↗

Applying (2026-27 cycle)

Apply through Common App or QuestBridge.

Financial aid formsFeb 15

Cornell's Early Decision plan is binding: admitted applicants must withdraw all other college applications and enroll at Cornell.

Verified from the school’s admissions pages ↗