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PAMELA TAN: Good morning, everyone. Thank you. My name is Pamela Tan. I use she/her/hers pronouns, and I'm the deputy director of admissions here at Cornell. Thank you so much for being here.
I'm also proud to share that I'm both a Cornell alum as well as an administrator here right now, and I'm delighted to welcome you here today. So let's be honest. This was a really epic year for us in terms of Cornell admissions. We received a truly staggering 71,000 applications for a class of 3,400 students in the class of 2026.
And I'll say that many of you in your applications wrote about the disruptions that have happened over the past couple of years to your education, to your activities, to your family, and to your communities. And yet-- and yet, you persisted, and you've shown through in your applications. And here you are today. Congratulations.
Oh, and friends, I must tell you that this is the first time we've been able to welcome admitted families to campus since 2019. So my heart is full right now seeing those of you who are here on campus today. And because we couldn't welcome everyone to campus-- not everyone could get here today-- I'm delighted for those of you who are joining us via live stream and by recording later on. Thank you so much for taking the time to watch this. You may not be here in body, but boy, I could feel your spirit.
So before we kick off today's program, I just wanted to share that Cornell continues to be a really special place for me. I spent most of my childhood in what was then a rural part of South Florida, and I could still remember both the joy and the disbelief that I felt when I realized I got into Cornell, right?
And so when I finally got here and I was standing on top of Libe Slope and looking down on West Campus, and you could see Cayuga Lake in the distance, and the clock towers were chiming, I was like, holy moly. My life has led up to this point, and I belong here.
So I am the first in my family to go to college in the US, and for my immigrant parents, the model of success was like, Pamela, there are three jobs. You've got to be a nurse, a doctor, or an accountant. It's like great, OK. I think I could do that at Cornell.
But this wonderful place really opened my eyes up to possibilities I didn't know existed, both academically and in terms of career. Who knew that that little girl barefoot in South Florida would be the deputy director of admissions at Cornell? Thank you, Cornell.
But I'll share with you, and I think perhaps you'll hear it over and over today, what I loved here when I was a student, what I love now as an alum, and what I continue to love as administrator here is our community, is our people. Back when I was a student, I love the fact that I could explore the world without ever leaving campus. And that's because I became friends with people who were from Maine, from Arizona, from Colorado, from New Mexico, from Singapore.
And I love that they were studying totally different things than what I was studying and had radically different viewpoints. But we are all kind of living and learning together. So I feel like we learn just as much outside of the classroom as we did in the classroom, and I'm so happy and almost brought to tears by the fact that in a few short months, I'll be hugging those close friends during my 25th reunion at Cornell in June. So, so much goodness happening at this point.
So I want you to join us in terms of this awesome community, the fact that this is a place of growth and discovery where you are going to transform Cornell as much as we hope to transform you as well. So let's just get into it. Before we jump into the program, I want to acknowledge a few things.
One, I want to acknowledge that Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogoho:no, the Cayuga Nation. The Gayogoho:no are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign nations with a historic and contemporary presence on this land. The Confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell, of New York state, and the United States of America. And we at Cornell acknowledge the painful history of the Gayogoho:no dispossession and honor the ongoing connection of Gayogoho:no people, both past and present, to these waters and these lands.
Please note that our restrooms right outside this auditorium. This is a two hour program, and I promise, it's 100% OK if you need to get up and step out. Look for an ambassador if you need directions to where the restrooms are here.
Please also, if you could, silence your cell phones at this point. If you need to take a call, again, no worries. It's a long program. I just really encourage you to leave the auditorium should you do so.
And then in the case of an emergency, the exits are toward the back here. There's also an exit toward the side should that become necessary. So this is what's going to go on for today's event.
We're going to start with a video welcome from Cornell's President Martha Pollack. Then Jonathan Burdick, the vice provost for enrollment, will offer remarks before we get to the main event, which is our student panel that's here. And when we close, I know there's a number of you who are signed up for the tour right after this program.
No worries. We're going to dismiss you first and be able to guide you over to the Tang Welcome Center so you can kick off your tour at that point, and we'll also be able to point you to the various places where the college meet and greets will be. And so without further ado, here's a welcome video from the 14th president of Cornell and professor of computer science, information science, and linguistics, Martha Pollack.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
MARTHA POLLACK: Hello to all of our new students and families, and welcome to Cornell. Whether you're here on campus or joining us from home, I want to congratulate all of you on your Cornell acceptances and to tell you how very glad we are to have you here. As we get started with today's program, I want to take a few minutes to tell you three things that I want all of you to know as you look ahead to your time at Cornell.
The first thing and the most important is that you belong here. Our admissions officers are extremely good at what they do, and each of you is here today because the admissions committee in your college looked at you, at your strengths, at your potential, and said, this is someone who can thrive at Cornell and who will make the most of what Cornell has to offer. At Cornell, we encourage our students to question just about everything, but there's one thing I don't want you ever to question, and that is whether the admissions Committee made the right decision when they invited you to become a Cornellian. They did.
The second thing I want to say to you is that Cornell has a purpose, which makes it distinctive in important ways. By now, most of that Cornell was founded to be an institution where any person could find instruction in any study. That was the vision of our founder Ezra Cornell, and that is our motto today.
Now today, that phrase sounds incredibly ambitious. But in 1865 when Cornell was founded, it was revolutionary because Cornell was chartered just a few weeks after the Civil War ended, and it was founded on the truly radical principle that diversity was critical in education-- diversity in what's studied and diversity in those who study. That commitment to openness and diversity is still at the heart of who we are today-- a University for any person and any study where knowledge has a public purpose.
We're urban and rural, land grant and Ivy League-- a world class university with exceptional teaching and research and a foundational commitment to equity and inclusion. We combine a phenomenal breadth and depth of expertise with an institutional openness to cross-disciplinary collaboration, and we apply our rigorous approach to seeking knowledge not just to the research of our faculty but to the teaching that happens inside and outside of our classrooms, where we deploy innovative, evidence-based approaches to learning.
Cornell is a place that not only educates global citizens and prepares them for an unknown future but also provides our world with the leadership and expertise to tackle complex, multidisciplinary challenges, like Food Security, our changing climate, and the future of public health while also appreciating history and the arts and the humanities, those disciplines that so enrich our lives.
At Cornell, you'll live on a truly diverse campus, with students from across the country and around the world who bring a remarkable range of talent and perspectives. You'll become part of this community and part of its purpose, and you'll make your own contributions that will enrich Cornell and the communities that you'll go on to live in and serve. Now the third and last thing I want to tell you is that Cornell is rigorous, and your work here will be challenging.
And you know what? That's OK. Students who choose Cornell don't come here because they're looking for easy A's. They choose Cornell because they want and value the challenges of a Cornell education.
And I want all of our students, current and future, to embrace that decision and even let it liberate them. Take courses in new subjects. Venture into the interesting and unknown, and stretch your minds in new ways.
Don't be afraid of new things. And just as important, don't be afraid of what you don't know or don't understand. Ask for help. Go to office hours. Take advantage of the incredible resources that are here to help you.
A Cornell education is something that can and should change your lives. It will help you develop not only a capable intellect but a mature conscience. It will prepare you not only for your career but for your lives as citizens of your nation and the world. And as much as you will be shaped by Cornell, Cornell will be shaped by you, by the unique contributions that each of you will bring to our academic community. We are so glad to have you. Welcome, all of you, to Cornell.
[END PLAYBACK]
PAMELA TAN: Now I have the pleasure of introducing Cornell's vice provost for enrollment, John Burdick, who oversees admissions in the registrar as well as the financial aid and student employment office. Come to Cornell, and you'll absolutely see John walking around in blizzards, in rain storms, in hot sun, biking around with and without his dogs. So he's definitely a presence. Please give it up for John Burdick.
JOHN BURDICK: Thank you, Pamela, and thank you everyone for being here in the room. And those of you that are watching us in a live stream, it's a wonderful opportunity for me today. This is my first day that I've ever had the opportunity to greet admitted Cornellians, and I'm a little intimidated because you're all pretty smart, and I'm very excited because this is the kind of work that I've been doing my entire adult life at three different universities.
And one of the things I want to make sure you understand because I've had the-- in the 2 and 1/2 years I've been at Cornell, I've never had this opportunity. I have had the opportunity to try to write and craft the words for our president, Martha Pollack. And I will tell you, she is very exacting in saying exactly what she wants to say and making it work right. I've gone back and forth with her over seven or eight edits at times.
And an element that I found true for her-- she's my seventh president in the three universities where [INAUDIBLE] work-- is that everything she says, she means. That is not always the case in some circumstances. So you can take it to heart then when she says that she cares about belonging and about challenge and about shaping Cornell, that's exactly what she intends and wants all of you to do. So please take that to heart.
I figure I'm talking to people who have been admitted. Congratulations. That's incredible, not something that was easy by any means. And you've been working for this. I think sometimes even prenatally. You've been working on the way to get yourself into a place and an opportunity like this.
So congratulations to your parents as well. And then some of you, because we know we've gotten some deposits already-- let me ask for a big show of hands of anybody that, although you've been admitted regular decision, so you didn't have to do this yet, you've already committed? You are coming to Cornell in this August. Raise your hand high.
All right, neighbors. Look at them. Look how happy and relaxed they look compared to you.
This could be by the end of the day. We stand at the precipice. You heard from us with my name at the bottom of a PDF that you opened up 16 days ago exactly.
You have exactly 16 days to get it right. So get busy. And being here today or being on the screen is one of the ways to do that.
I think my obligation is to give you some sense, some understanding, of why Cornell versus the other 14 places you applied to and got admitted to. Shame on you. There are certain outcomes you seek when you're trying to go to college, and I'd say they break down into three major categories of outcomes that you would want to achieve.
One, which you're going to hear a lot about over the course of this program, primarily from the people who are in it right now, in the thick of it, is the experience of being on a campus like this and the experience of acquiring an education in this circumstance every day for most of four years, all day long, 24-7, and in some ways, even though summers are different, 365. That experience at Cornell is uncommon in at least a couple of big structural ways. One is this is a relentlessly medium sized university.
There are places two and three times our size. There are places far, far smaller. We are sort of right in the middle in terms of offering a huge breadth of experience but also-- and you'll hear this, I think, from some of our student panelists-- some individuality and some community that is accessible and that you can reach.
But we're also in a small city, and most of the places that people look at when they also look at Cornell are in much bigger places. And so when Pamela says I'm out there in all weathers with my dogs, she's right. I truly believe that the human race is sort of on the precipice of rediscovering the value of rural spaces, wide open spaces, and communing in nature.
There's true psychological research going on that explains this. And Cornell has always been there. We've never left this idea that getting out and seeing some green or some whites in some of the months is a reasonable way to live and important for your experience.
Another outcome and certainly the one that was animating you and motivating you most of the way through is you get that degree. You get that piece of paper-- well, I suppose now it's a whatever, an NFT or something. But you get that thing that demonstrates that you have actually achieved and earned being here and the things you had to do to get through in four years in education. You get that degree.
And that is a tremendous ticket to go forward. What's fantastic about Cornell's particular way of granting that degree is you've now become part of one of the largest families of degree holders among any of the world's most prestigious research universities. It's just kind of the way Cornell rolls that they aim very hard at that excellence in research, that tremendous quality of the faculty and the facilities and the labs. We are often recognized as being among the top few in all of that range of experiences related to that.
But we're also relatively big among the places that do that-- in some cases two and three times as places that run that sort of elite kind of shop. So the Cornell community with that degree is a breadth that you have. And then the thing that sort of ties that together is education, and education is not a degree. An education is not just a set of experiences as you go.
It is something that you acquire that should suffuse those things and also expand and move beyond them. Education is the thing that will still be there when you are at your own 57-year-old dotage like me, and you're trying to think about what's mattered. It's those things you acquired as part of an education both within and without the actual academy and the classes that's going to stay with you and bow you up.
Now what do experience and degree and education all have in common? You earn them. None of them are given to you. None of them are handed to you on a platter.
We will not have a bunch of people at Cornell ready to make your experience for you. We will not hand you a degree without the work that's involved in getting to it, and you will not just get an education by passively accepting what's presented to you in a class or what's available to you in a library book or what appears when you do the experiment in the lab. You have to go out and accumulate and acquire and grasp.
That's true whether you are introverted or extroverted or however you choose to approach your life circumstances. You're going to have to be a bit of a grabber. Even after arriving at a place like Cornell with all the things there are to get, you're going to have to reach for them.
And I want to mention some things that I think are supported by this idea and framed in Cornell's core value statement, which is available on the website. It's something that you can lean into. I try to lean into it when I'm talking with people in admissions and financial aid and registrar about our priorities.
It's nice to have these shared value sets. And I'm not going to read them to you because you do that for yourself. But I do want to highlight some themes that I think emerge from them because I think it applies a lot to how to think about why you'd be in this place and what you do when you get here. Number one, there's a tremendous conveyance about the fact that Cornell recognizes there are big problems to solve.
As you heard in the president's remarks, we started in 1865. What was 1865? The country had torn itself apart.
600,000 people had died. We were just on the cusp of fully embracing for the first time even the idea of a multi-ethnic, multiracial democracy, an idea that was not perfected even today and had to go through a whole other revolution 100 years later. That was an interesting environment in which to create a secular, welcoming university for all people. It was a vision that was there, and it was solving the big problems of that day.
Cornell has continued to push on the big problem. So I want you to think, as I'm speaking, about the big problem that you're going to solve. It doesn't matter which college or program or major you're admitted to. There may be something, some arena of concern, that animates you that you think at the point when I'm beyond my career, I want to know that things got better with my efforts in that particular problem.
And then when you think about the tools you need as [INAUDIBLE] to how to solve those, I think there's some things that are personal behaviors that I think are really important. And I mention these because they're different than what's true in high school. The reality for most of us in our high schools is we're going to high school with people who are typically from almost all the same socioeconomic spectrum.
They often share the same racial and ethnic background. They have a lot the same political ideas. There's a lot about high school that is a comfort zone that keeps you there and pushes you through in that way. And when you come to college, you will finally meet people in many circumstances who come from very, very different backgrounds and were very deliberate about assembling that kind of an environment at Cornell.
So here are two elements to that truth that I would invite you to consider. It's really important to come in to Cornell or a place like Cornell that has assembled all that diversity ready to disagree. And I mean very ready to disagree, ready to consider what your opinions and ideas are, and use those animated ideas about what your opinions are and express them well and convey them and argue for them and advance them as much as you can.
I don't mean everybody should join the Cornell debate team, although that's not a bad thing to do. But I mean that everybody should be prepared to defend and understand their point of view and articulate with others. That's what makes a place like this work really well.
But here, and this is just as important and, I think if we look at what's going on in the world, often seems forgotten. You have to be ready to welcome disagreement from others. No one in this room is always right. No one in here has perfect expertise that is unshakable and unchallenged.
That's even true for our illustrious Cornell faculty. Please don't tell them I said that. Thank you. But there is no such thing as perfect knowledge, and it's actually only in the willingness to disagree and the willingness to embrace disagreement coming from others that actually change and progress happens. That is where the magic happens to solve these big problems.
A couple other things that I think are elements that are in Cornell's statement of core values and that are kind of valuable for you to think about as you orient yourself towards a career here is all questions matter. Some of us approach questions from the bottom up. We solve the details, and we assume that all the things in solving those details is the way an engineer is supposed to think, right?
You set up a chain, a value chain, of questions that you answer in problems that you. Solve and in the end, if all that works the way it's supposed to, the problem gets solved too. You work it through.
Other people come at it completely the other way. They see a vision straight through to what they think should be ideal or what they think should become real, and they push all the little problems along the way into meeting and getting closer to that clear vision that they have. Both kinds of thinking are important.
Big picture questions and little, small questions are both very important. You need both kinds of people to do that work. And wherever you fit in that spectrum or however you access that, you want to bring your A-game to those kinds of approaches.
And then uniquely at Cornell, and it's one of the things that I have valued the most about coming here, is we have a public responsibility. Cornell, believe it or not, during the pandemic, during these weird two years, actually grew in its number of colleges and schools. We grew by two.
So we went from, by my count, 14 to 16 different-- well, let me put it this way. I've got 16 different deans I need to try to please all the time. So they're out there.
And the two that came along, the [? NS ?] Bauer School of Computing and Information Sciences and the Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, I think they represent two really important features of what's going on forward. But those are not just research domains. Those are not just ways to make $86 billion and be as much of a jerk as you want to be.
They are things that inform and guide our whole society. So we need to understand our relationship to technology, and the computing and information sciences are doing that in a big, big way. And we need to understand the levers of government, whether it's an autarkic government or an autocracy government or a purely and great democratic government in any way.
Those tools matter, and we have learned, one way or another through the operations of the CDC and the FDA and the various state governments in all the nations and all their responses to what we've all been through collectively, we've learned that governments matter in a fresh, new way that we have to be responsive and learn about. And those are things that Cornell is ready to study in a big way. OK, if you're ready, think about the big problem I asked you to think about.
I'm going to give you a few that I thought of, and then you can add to those as you go through your day and talk with each other. Climate change-- kind of a problem, an issue that we want to resolve and work on. And some of the people in this room are undoubtedly going to be part of some of the big solutions for that. That's a big priority at Cornell. Finding, once again, our shared values-- we hear and understand so much about opposition, social opposition, minoritizing some people either based on their gender or their race or their ethnic identity or their language background or their education level or their socioeconomic status.
And any time we find ourselves isolating and separating, differentiating people on the basis of these not critical elements of what it means to be a human being, we are squeezing and reducing the value of what we can all get from the collective human experience. We need to understand and better embrace those broad human values.
Alongside with that, equal opportunities-- I think anybody who's got an eye open to the world recognizes that not everybody is being given the same chance to achieve the same amount, and we all lose when that human potential is denied. It is better, we are better, when people have the health and the safety and the education and the access that they need to get themselves forward to the next level and make their unique contribution.
So how do you sum all this up? There's just two things I'd invite you to do because I don't think most of you did them so far. Some of you did, and it was exceptional. And we read about it, and we're thrilled that you're coming, and we want you to keep doing it. Some of you, it's not really the way that you were understood that you had to do to get to admission to Cornell or any place like it. Two things, and they go strongly together.
One is you have to be willing and ready to fail, and I mean really fail. One of my favorite people, a student I knew from now 35 years ago at the University of Southern California, where I was working and where I went to school, was on his way to being a brilliant neurosurgeon, still practicing today and still famous for what he does. He took tennis every semester of college because he sucked at tennis.
And he thought it was really important to have that humbling experience where he was reminding himself that he didn't know how to do everything no matter how great and how famous he was going to be and the things he was going to do and the dedication he had to that. You need to find your point of failure. It might be something you love doing and it just doesn't matter that you're not very good at it.
It might be something that you really are terribly embarrassed to see anybody do. For me, it's dance. So I make myself dance in public every time I get a chance so that people will laugh at me and I will feel OK about that.
Find those points of failure, and I don't think very many people in high school or your family told you to aim for the failure. But that's exactly what you need to do because that goes hand in hand with the other thing that you cannot miss if you're going to take this place seriously. If you're going to make that tuition worthwhile, if you're going to graduate from here not just with a degree and not just with a set of experiences but also with an education that will last your whole lifetime, you have to take risks.
You have to write the essay that shows who you are in all its real, raw, red flesh and wounds and not the safe, vanilla essay that you think will keep you from being denied admission. Most of you did this. Most of you made your best efforts.
Most of you showed us something of who you really are. In every case, we have the opportunity to respond to that invitation, that interest from you, by saying, yes, we think so. We think you're right.
We think that Cornell is a good match. We think that you and all the other students that are coming with you are going to be part of a great experience and a great education for you going forward. Thank you for all the work you've done to get here to be here today, and thank you very much for including Cornell and your choices.
SEAN FELTON: Hello, everyone. I know the folks that are watching this via live stream can't respond so that I can hear them. But you could at home.
And those that are watching the recording we'll do it after the fact. But for those of you that are here, hello. Excellent. My name is Sean Felton. I am the University's executive director of Undergraduate Admissions.
My pronouns are he, him, and his. It's my pleasure to also welcome you to congratulate the students that are in this room. Give yourselves a hand, please. Yes.
Wonderful. I want to thank Vice Provost Burdick and also President Pollack, who couldn't be with us today in person, for their inspiring words and messages. As I think about the 19 years that I've been at Cornell, a lot of what they have said as Cornell leaders is really what has kept me here.
Also too, you've heard that the people really make this place very special. And so our faculty and our staff, they really sort of make this place-- along with our students make this place really extraordinary and another reason that I've stayed for so long. I also want to thank the undergraduate college admission committees just because this was probably the most challenging year that I can recall in selection and review at this University and many others too.
But I felt it here. And I want to thank our undergraduate college committees because they did they did have a very challenging task this particular year with more applications and not necessarily more space for more extraordinary people. But they did their very best.
President Pollack said it best, and we have you all here as a result of those efforts. And it's really important, the shaping of the class, the students that are a part of this community. Again that's the reason I'm still here. That's the reason I still do what I do and why I don't think of doing anything else even though this wasn't my first my first job or plan for a job.
But the students at Cornell-- I get asked this all the time. So I'm just going to tell everybody at the same time so you all hear it. I get asked all the time. Tell me the one thing that describes every single student at this University.
And I'm pretty sure you guys know the answer to this-- that there is no answer, right? But I actually have an answer. Every Cornell student is supremely adaptable.
You know why? You have to be. This is a big place. There are a lot of choices.
This school feels to me-- it's always reimagining itself. It's always growing. It's ever changing.
You have to be someone as a student here, as a community member here, who thrives on adjusting, shifting, who's really comfortable being, you heard, disrupted. That's like, that's a great word. Disruption includes failure.
It includes all the things that you've heard mentioned. But you've got to be adaptable and be ready for the unexpected. We've had something unexpected happen with this program that we're adapting to right now.
So it's really important. And the Cornell students that I know, that I have met, the graduates, they are all adaptable. They're all here with a purpose.
They're here to study what they want to study. Many of them are here to-- they want to change the world. They want to make things better.
They want to save lives. They want to build the things we need built so that our lives can be better. And it's a really extraordinary privilege to be here and to sort of see them grow and develop as I've had the pleasure of doing.
Before I invite our student panel up to the stage, I also want to thank-- or our current student panel. I also want to thank the supporters and the family members and the teachers and the counselors and the aunts and the uncles, the drivers, people writing checks, people pulling out credit cards, finding forms, filling out the CSS profile. You know who you are. Let's give you round of applause as well. Yeah.
I know that all the admitted students in the room and those supporters and advocates know that this would not have been possible without the support of those adults, those figures, those mentors, those important people who are a part of this process and this success as well. All right, friends, come on up. We have an extraordinary panel that you are going to get a chance to listen to.
You heard President Pollack. You heard Vice Provost Burdick. You heard deputy director Tan mention that this moment coming to University is about being open to being changed but also coming here to enact your own special, kind version type of change, impacts.
And we're going to hear about how the university is impacting current students and also how our current students at Cornell are impacting the university and certainly beyond. So I've got a bunch of questions that I'm going to ask, and these are actually not my questions.
These are actually questions that were submitted by applicants, by students, by admitted students that we've collected this year. And I think they get at the heart of what it is you want to know most at this point as many of you are considering your options. You guys ready? You guys awake?
SPEAKER 1: Yes.
SEAN FELTON: Excellent. All right. What I'm going to have you all do is we're going to go down the line twice, and then we're going to sort of confuse them a little bit.
And so different people are going to answer different questions but not every question. And then we'll go back down the line at the end. You guys got that?
So we don't want to confuse you. OK, right. So please do us the honor, the privilege, of introducing yourself. Let us know your hometown, your state. I should have mentioned this-- your country, your nation if that is applicable, where you're from, your year at Cornell, your college, your major, and one or two of your outside of the classroom involvements or activities. We're going to start with my friend at the far end here.
SPEAKER 2: Hello, everyone. My name is Austin [INAUDIBLE], and I'm a senior here at the Nolan School of Hotel Administration. I come from Dayton, Ohio in the Midwest, for those of you that aren't as familiar. And involvement outside of my classes at the Hotel School include working at the Statler Hotel in the hotel leadership development program as well as Hotel Ezra Cornell, a student run conference here within the Hotel School.
SPEAKER 1: That's awesome. First, I just want to start by congratulating you all for getting here. I know personally, because we all went through this, how much work it took for you guys to get to this point. So hopefully, you guys are excited and not just nervous about seeing Cornell.
But I'm Bella. I am a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. I am double majoring in biology and history. So I like to joke that I'm the ampersand in Arts and Sciences.
My involvements outside of the classroom include research, undergraduate research in the [? Vitousek ?] Lab. And also, I am on the Nordic ski team here at Cornell
SEAN FELTON: Hmm.
SPEAKER 2: Yep.
SOPHIE HARRIS: Hi, everyone. My name is Sophie Harris. I am a junior in the College of Agriculture and Life Science.
I study environment and sustainability. I am from Ossining, New York, which is in Westchester. And outside of classes, I'm a resident advisor. So I live with first year students on North Campus and advise them as they transition to Cornell, which I hope you all will be doing soon. And I also work at the Cornell Botanic Gardens.
JENNIFER FLORES: Good morning, everybody. My name is Jennifer Flores. I'm a senior in the ILR school. So that stands for Industrial and Labor Relations.
So I was actually originally born in Ecuador, and I moved here when I was around five years old. But I grew up in the South Bronx. Outside of all things academic, I am part of a salsa club.
So I love salsa dancing. I also am part of an investment club called Black John Capital. And I'm an ILR ambassador, which is why I'm here today. So--
SPEAKER 3: Hi, everyone. My name is [INAUDIBLE]. I'm a senior in the Dyson School.
I was born in Malaysia but moved to Westchester, New York at the age of five. Outside of school, I am involved with a social impact consulting club, also helped found an impact investing club focused on food and agriculture. And I'm also doing research and am a Dyson ambassador.
SPEAKER 4: Hello, everyone. My name is Gabriela [INAUDIBLE], and I represent the College of AAP today.
I'm a second year architecture major from sunny Los Angeles, California. Outside of the, classroom I do a lot of AP involved things like queer students of AAP, but I'm also involved in a lot else, like Cornell Concert Commission and the Dungeons and Dragons Club. And I'm also a ballroom TA. So if you like dancing, come find me.
SPEAKER 5: Good morning, everyone. I'm [INAUDIBLE]. I am a senior in the College of Human Ecology studying global and public health Sciences on the pre-med track. I'm Nigerian, and I'm from South Plainfield, New Jersey. Some things outside of the classroom that I do-- I'm in Black Biomedical and Technical Association, Scholars in Our Society and Africa, and I'm in undergraduate research in a biomedical engineering lab.
SPEAKER 6: Hi, everyone. Good morning. My name is Ali [INAUDIBLE].
I was born in New York City, but I currently live in Columbus, Ohio. I am a junior, studying computer science in the College of Engineering, minoring in business. I am the co-president of Women In Computing at Cornell, called WIC. I also TA for a computer science class called functional programming and data structures, and I am also part of Christian Fellowship on campus called [INAUDIBLE].
SEAN FELTON: Awesome. Great. Thank you guys for being here. So Austin, we're going to start with you again, and again, this is the second time down the line.
Do me a favor, each of you. Repeat your name just so that they can hear it again because they may want to talk to you afterwards. But in your own words, describe your undergraduate college here at Cornell. [INAUDIBLE].
SPEAKER 2: So my name is Austin, to repeat that again. The Nolan School is full of Hotelies. We call ourselves Hotelies, and that's something we do so proudly.
What's different about the Nolan School versus a typical business school, which I imagine many of you might be considering the choice between, is we learn business with an emphasis on people and the relationships that we build.
This started freshman year with the courses you take and the different students you meet all the way to senior year, where I'm currently learning about top down management and business but also about the connections and the networking that you'll be doing throughout your career. It's been one of my favorite memories of meeting all the different students as well as alumni that come back and again retaining that close Hotelie network.
SPEAKER 1: Hi, everyone. OK, I'm Bella again. Again, my college is the College of Arts and Sciences, and I'm going to start with a quote which I'm sure many of you heard the first part of but not the second part, which is a jack of all trades is a master of none.
And the second part is really important. Jack of all trades is a master of none but oftentimes better than a master of one. And I think that describes the students in the College of Arts and Sciences, which is where you're going to get your typical liberal arts education. So if you're a student who doesn't really feel like you fit into one box or you have a lot of interest and passions in different parts-- and just for example, I'm interested in both biology, history, but also anthropology and different areas like performing arts and stuff like that. That's the kind of students. You'll find in the College of Arts and Sciences.
SOPHIE HARRIS: Hi, everyone. Again, my name is Sophie, and I'm representing CALS. And I know the prompt was describe it in your own words, but I'm actually not going to do that.
CALS' motto is life changing, and that has truly been my experience in CALS. When I came to Cornell, I had a general interest of what I wanted to do. But what it was for me in CALS was the experiences we had in the field doing what we were studying.
We weren't just sitting in classrooms. We were getting in the buses and driving 40 minutes to [INAUDIBLE] to sample in the streams there. And in doing that, in having those very hands-on, real experiences, that's where my life was changed by CALS, and how I figured out what I want to do with the rest of my life. So when CALS says life changing, I would definitely agree, and that comes from the real life experiences that you getting inside and outside of the classroom.
JENNIFER FLORES: So again, my name is Jennifer, and I'm in the ILR school, so Industrial and Labor Relations. So our major is mainly one major, endless possibilities, and that is kind of how it's advertised as. However, I genuinely do think that.
I have friends who are going into, like, investment banking. I'm going into human resources. But I also have friends who apply to medical school, and you can genuinely tailor your education to whatever it is that you're interested in.
I also would like to highlight that because the ILR school is very small-- we have about 200 students per year-- like, you will make friends with literally everybody there. You will run into the same people. And it's really, really nice, especially because Cornell is so large, to just have that base at home in the ILR school. So I think endless possibilities is true, and community is also very true within the ILR school.
SPEAKER 3: Hi, everyone. My name is [INAUDIBLE] again. I'm in the Dyson School.
And just to sum it up in, I guess, one line, I would say it's a collaborative community of individuals who are passionate about making an impact on the world through business. And just to break that down a little bit more, Dyson is very much a community that is built upon collaboration I've gotten the chance to get to know a lot of individuals through group projects, et cetera. But I think even more than that, even if we may be competing with each other over the same jobs or the same fields, it was my friends in Dyson who helped me get the jobs I was looking at.
So I'm very grateful for the Dyson community for that. But to break down the second part, I think Dyson is really unique in that it has a lens that focuses on social impact with business. So for example, I had the chance to travel internationally to look at food insecurity and how business could sort of be a vehicle to effect change in that area. And I think that that is the essence of Dyson, and that's what I think truly makes Dyson unique.
SPEAKER 4: Hi, again. My name is Gabriela, or Gabby for short, and I'm from the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. So as implied by the name, we have these three majors which include architecture, art, and urban and regional studies or city and regional planning.
And at AAP, it's a really great way to have a really small community that's so tight knit within your larger Cornell University community because we only have about 130 students per year, making us the smallest college at Cornell. And at AAP, we really teach design thinking. So even if you choose not to go into your field of study that you chose to come to Cornell for, you teach a way of learning because of our pedagogy. So it's a way of being open to the world.
It's a way of looking at the world and seeing what changes you can make and truly what small or large scale issues you really have a hand in. And we really just love each other as a family. We go by a first name basis. That's sort of my greatest pitch. You really get to know everyone. And it's such a fantastic way to get to people that you'll continue truly the rest of your life with.
SPEAKER 5: Hi, everyone. I'm [INAUDIBLE] again. I'm in the College of Human Ecology.
So Human Ecology really embodies the Cornell motto of any person, any study. It's an interdisciplinary school that looks at the interactions between human beings either socially, economically, behaviorally, or psychologically. We have different majors in human-centered design, fashion, policy analysis and management, global and public health.
And it's just a way to really understand how different aspects of the world come together and interact in a way that really gives back to the community. A lot of our classes deal with ways in which we can incorporate policy and analysis and different ways of interacting with human beings, and we have a lot of interactions with our faculty and staff members that really creates a nice knit cohort and a family and Human Ecology.
SPEAKER 6: So hi again. I'm Ali from the College of Engineering. So how I would describe the College of Engineering is that we're a very collaborative college of lots of different majors. But truly, we all bond together not through just our classes but through how we want to make the world a better place.
We really learn how to solve problems and just really start by trying to solve those problems even in classes. We focus a lot on having project teams. And so people are building things from autonomous robots to apps that all Cornellians use basically on a daily basis.
SEAN FELTON: So impressive. So impressive. So the question I have for you guys first is-- it's actually three questions, so choose the version or question you want to respond to.
What led you to Cornell? What about Cornell appeals to you most, or what do you like most about Cornell? And any one of you can start, and we'll just have a couple of you response. This is a negotiation that happens in real life. You're going to watch it here, as they're deciding who's going to go first.
JENNIFER FLORES: Yeah, so I can go first. So I think what led me to Cornell, and I mentioned this a little bit earlier, was really just how different it is from my personal background. So I grew up in the South Bronx, and that is very different to Ithaca.
And I truly wanted that. And when I visited campus, I think the main thing that I realized was how much peace I felt while I was on campus despite the weather. And we'll talk a little bit about that later, but it's not as bad as you think.
So I genuinely wanted something completely different. My family was kind of looking at me like I was crazy. They were like, why would you go to Ithaca? Like, why do you want to go there?
And I was like, well, because I feel like I belong, and I felt good while I was on campus. And I've visited multiple other campuses, and I did not feel that way. So I knew I was making the right decision for myself, and that's kind of what led me to Cornell, definitely the way it is and the way it just builds community within the schools but also how beautiful it is at times, you know?
Like, it's so nice to sit on the slope, and it's so nice to just have nature so close to you. And it truly does bring a sense of peace. And so that's why I decided Cornell was for me. And yeah, that's why I chose Cornell.
SPEAKER 1: I can go next. Yeah, I have to reiterate-- sunsets on the slope. Hopefully, you guys get to see one while you're here. But it's a little cloudy right now. They're really beautiful.
But what drew me to Cornell is actually our motto, which we shore into any person, any study. And I think of all the colleges I visited, that was what stuck out to me most about Cornell University. I was really struck by the fact that I talk to students who were majoring in Spanish but also pre-med or students who were like majoring in Africana Studies but also doing other-- like a whole host of other things, you know?
Like minoring in French or something like that. I really enjoyed the diversity of what was being taught on this campus. Most recently, I took a class called Magic and Witchcraft in Ancient Greek and Roman Times. And I have to tell you, I would not have taken a class like that in any other university I applied to.
So that's what drew me most. Beyond that, also the opportunity that Cornell has-- our alumni network is really fantastic. And I think that there are a lot of open doors that Cornell leads you to, and they allow you and teach you how to walk through them.
SPEAKER 4: I can hop in next. So first of all, I wanted to take that witchcraft class, but unfortunately, it did not fit in my schedule this semester. But as an architecture major, I really was looking for something quite specific, I think.
At a university scale, I was looking for a medium sized university, 10,000 to 15,000, which truly is what Cornell embodies. We have the capabilities of a large research University but the personality and personhood of a really small, more liberal arts community. And so I really found that here at Cornell.
Specifically when I go outside of my little AAP bubble and I see people in the Cornell Concert Commission, which is a 300 person club that's in charge of bringing music artists to campus, and I get to meet people from everywhere, where I feel like I'm truly at this larger university and reap the benefits of that. And I guess finally, I love the traditions that Cornell has. Specifically within AAP, we have Dragon Day where we basically parade a huge dragon around campus.
And we get a week off of classes to do that. And that's encouraged, and it's a big Cornell holiday and tradition in addition to things like hockey games, where we throw fish on the ice when Harvard comes to play because of our rivalry. So things like that that really make Cornell so unique-- and of course, the alumni network and the people that you meet.
In AAP, we bring in visiting critics from literally all over the world to come and teach you as undergraduate students. And it's such a privilege to get to learn from these people who are truly at the tops of your fields and go on field trips with them and explore the world together and study abroad in Rome, which is something I've never experienced especially in architecture and have that encourage. So it's truly an amazing place with so many opportunities.
SPEAKER 6: I can go next. A reason that I chose Cornell was looking at engineering schools, a lot of them seemed a little cutthroat to me. I heard engineering is really hard, you know, and then I was like-- then people are going to be competitive on top of that. I don't think I can handle this.
When I showed up to Cornell, I was like, I don't think I'm going to like it. I don't want to like it, you know? I don't know if I can get in.
And the minute I talked to someone in the College of Engineering, they were so welcoming and so nice. And the fact that they were trying so hard to have 50-50 of men and women in all engineering courses, which they have done now, is just fantastic. I had never really been in a class where I could, like, see someone who looked like me before.
And now I can confidently say that there are people in my class who look like me. But then I also get to meet people that I never knew I would from so many different areas of the world and just hear so many different perspectives. Yeah, so definitely the community, and then also, the nature is not something to overlook.
I literally get chills every time I walk out on the slope. I'm like, I get to go to school here? Like, this is where I am for four years? So yeah, definitely go out to the slope if you haven't yet.
SEAN FELTON: So let's talk about classes a little bit more. I saw the excitement when the class was mentioned here. Maybe you could talk about a class that you really enjoy that you've taken so far.
And if you can't choose one, then choose two. A couple of you could do that. Anybody that wants to go can.
SOPHIE HARRIS: I have a class that I am very passionate about, and I feel like this truly summarizes what I was talking about with why I love CALS. I'm currently enrolled in forest management and maple syrup production.
SPEAKER 4: My friend is in that one.
SOPHIE HARRIS: It is an amazing class. First, one of the things I love about it is it's not just environmental science students. There are a good number of environmental science students, but there are also food science students, computer science students.
And that was something I wasn't expecting because it's a higher level natural resources class. And I think that's just a testament to how you're not confined to just your major at Cornell. You can really study anything.
Yeah, I've gotten to meet a lot of people who I didn't know I would encounter. Yeah, this class has been a lot of fun. Like the name implies, half of it's forest management.
So half of it is going out looking at trees and deciding what should be done with the trees, basically. But it's also focused on an outreach aspect of that. So how would you advise someone who owns a forest about what they should do?
So there's a lot of hard science to it, but there's also a social science element of like, how do you talk to a person? And how do you give them good advice? And then my favorite part of the class is maple syrup production.
We learn from tree to sap in bottle, how that's all processed. If you go to the Cornell store and purchase some Cornell maple syrup, I can tell you all about how it was produced because I have been in their forest and then, like, processing center. Yeah, a skill set of knowledge I never thought I would be acquiring when coming to college, but it has been super interesting.
And we've also gotten to meet a lot of people who live in Ithaca and do maple syrup production as, like, their full time career. And that's been super rewarding because when you're at Cornell, you're interacting with a lot of college people, whether that's students or professors. You do spend a decent bit of time interacting with other people involved in academia.
And it has been super rewarding, and this is definitely not the only way to do that. But it's been super rewarding to just meet people who live in Ithaca and don't really relate to Cornell. That doesn't shape their lives as much as it shapes ours. But yeah, I also really value how we've gotten the chance to meet people who are just part of the Ithaca community.
SPEAKER 3: I can go next. So one of my favorite classes is probably Research and Strategy in Emerging Markets, which is super, super unique because it has an international component as a part of this program called the SMART program. So essentially, the premise is that Cornell sends students to emerging markets to conduct researchers' consulting projects. And for me, I had the opportunity to go to Beijing to conduct a study on how much Chinese consumers are willing to pay for the use of blockchain in the agrifood supply chain.
And it was really, really great not only from the learning components of the class. Like, I learned a lot about the use of technology in agriculture and the potential that technology has in making social change. But also, I think it was really, really great that Dyson in particular had the financial resources to be able to fund the entire trip.
They gave me a very hefty stipend, and I had the opportunity to go there free of charge. Everything was paid for, and I just learned a lot and made a lot of really great memories with individuals of international communities. And I loved that class so much that I took it the next year as well.
And I was supposed to go to Rwanda that year, but then unfortunately, COVID hit, and I couldn't go. But I still have the opportunity to work with a Rwandan social enterprise focused on food insecurity. So that was definitely something that helped me solidify my interest in social impact as well.
SPEAKER 5: My favorite class would be Intro to Global and Public Health. So in this class, we took like an interdisciplinary focus on health. So we were looking at health care systems around the world.
And we're seeing how the United States health care system can be compared to the health care systems in Germany, Russia, Nigeria, and South Africa. And in my major, we have an experiential learning objective where we would go to another part of the world-- either India, Kenya, or Uganda-- and we would do some health and medical outreach in that area. Unfortunately, because of COVID, I wasn't able to physically be there.
But we were able to do like a data analytics project with Kenyan and Ugandan women. And we were looking at, like, folic acid supplementation and just different ways on how a prenatal care can be affected in those areas and other areas around the world. And you don't have to be a global and public health major to do this if.
This is something that interests you, you can sign up for the class and be able to go on like a medical tourism event in one of the summers in your college experience. And lucky for you guys, it'll be in person because the pandemic is coming to an end. So--
SPEAKER 4: And I have one more experience to share. So though I am an architecture major, my pursued minor is completely different from that. So I'm actually pursuing a classics minor, more focusing on comparative literature.
And some of my favorite classes that I've taken-- of course, AP classes are all fantastic and phenomenal. But you'll hear more about that if you visit a specific events. But Greek mythology with Todd Clary was truly one of the best classes I've ever taken at Cornell, and it's a large lecture where you study Greek mythology and talk about the influence of these archetypal characters.
And it's a really large lecture, but he makes it feel like such a small class, and he's so approachable. And you can talk to him after class and just engage almost for hours outside of class about these topics. And parallel this semester, I'm actually taking a class called The Tragic Theater with Fred Ahl.
And going from a 200 person intro class to now a very specific six person seminar class really embodies the Cornell experience, where you have these larger lectures. And as you begin to focus, you get into some topics that are so niche to you and so interesting to you specifically that you can really have these in-depth conversations and get to know everyone really, really well in those classes.
So I highly recommend branching way outside of your major and trying something different, because had I not taken that Greek mythology class that tangentially related to me because I loved Percy Jackson growing up, right? I think that's how most people in that class start. I would have never discovered my now declared minor.
SEAN FELTON: That's terrific. So at the university level and certainly here, there's encouragement to get to know your teachers, your professors. And so just to broaden this question a little bit, if you are doing research or have done research or have a favorite professor, maybe you'd like to share with the group about that specific moment or the person maybe that-- and how they inspired you.
SPEAKER 2: I'll start with the favorite professor. So freshman year in the Hotel School, you are required to take a business writing class. And these are the basics of writing a resume, a cover letter.
And the professor I had, she was phenomenal. She opened my eyes up to a whole new world that I wasn't used to beyond just the academic setting. This was freshman year.
I come back junior year when Cornell welcomes back instruction semi in-person with some of the classes being offered in this building. And I'm walking down the halls of Statler Hall. And lo and behold, the professor I had freshman year fall semester smiles and says, Austin, how are you doing?
I would love to know what you've been up to and where are you planning on going. And after a quick conversation, I set up a time to meet with her. And that relationship has still been going strong through to senior year today. And it just shows that sense of connection that you get with professors in class and the connection that they foster outside of class that you can continue to talk with them and just have that relationship with them.
SPEAKER 3: I can speak to the research aspect just because I actually came into Cornell as a pre-med. And so I had both research within the pre-med realm as well as research in the business realm. As a freshman, I was able to get into research with the Laboratory for Rational Decision Making with Professor Raina in the College of Human Ecology.
And that was really, really cool because I had the opportunity to work with MRIs, which I've never really done any work with before and had no idea what they actually were. But just the experience of getting to know a professor and just getting to know her research, that was really, really great. And I really appreciate how open she was to having me join her lab despite me not having any sort of coding experiences or any prior research experience as well.
But currently, I'm in Professor Miguel Gomez's lab, and I'm doing a lot of research relating to local agricultural communities as well as the New York state policies that have helped in promoting sustainability in that realm.
So I think Dyson professors as well, it's a very small community. So people are more than willing to get to know students. And so as a result, it's very easy to get into a research position.
And professors are definitely really open to talking about their research as well. So I think the only thing is just to reach out and show your interest in the professor's research. And I think ultimately, both research experiences were very rewarding to me.
SPEAKER 6: I can also speak to the favorite Professor. So I don't fully know him personally, but his name is Professor Clarkson. He teaches two of the core classes for computer science.
So the first class I took with him was called Object Oriented Programming and Data Structures. And I was like, he's sitting next to this other professor named David-- Professor Gries. He is a legend in computer science, and half the time in his classes, he would come up and be like, you see that guy?
The guy who wrote that algorithm? Yeah, that's me next to him. And that was his part of the lecture.
He's just a fantastic person. I was like, who's this guy teaching next to him? But Professor Clarkson is one of the best professors I've ever had at Cornell.
He's just very personable even to like hundreds of students and really connects with a lot of them. During COVID, I took his other class, Functional Programming and Data Structures, and he ended up making a TikTok for us every week to tell us to keep going. And the language we learned was [INAUDIBLE].
So he had-- at the end of the week, he would-- so he'd send us videos for the whole week. At the end of the week, he had a puppet show with a bunch of other CS professors. And they all had different puppets.
And I took it the second semester during COVID. And so he sent us this Google Drive link, and he was like, here's the first season of the show. Watch that, and you'll get the next season. And I'm like, what is going on?
It was like, it's very intense, and I'm pretty sure it's still going. But yeah, you could just see how much care he had for his students and how much he wanted us to learn. And I can really say that I learned so much from his class. And yeah, definitely made me very confident that I was like, yes, being a software engineer is what I want to do with my life. So yeah.
SOPHIE HARRIS: OK, wasn't sure if we've heard enough about how amazing our professors are.
SEAN FELTON: They're still here.
SOPHIE HARRIS: I can combine both favorite Professor and research. This was the first semester that we were back after COVID happened. So all classes were online.
And I had just kind of randomly enrolled in a forest ecology class because it fit my schedule and it seemed kind of interesting. And I mentioned that I was in this class to another professor of mine, who I also love. And this professor said, you're taking Tim Fahey's class?
Tim Fahey is-- I believe this is a direct quote-- the pope of northeastern forestry. And so then I said, wow, I should probably pay a bit more attention in this class. And so I started.
And even though it was on Zoom, I said, you know what? I'm going to take this class very seriously since I'm taking class with the pope of northeastern forestry. And I ended up really falling in love with it.
Again, similar to what you were saying about Professor Clarkson, Professor Tim Fahey genuinely cares so much about just teaching forestry to other students. He's been saying he's going to retire for a very long time but has not done it just because he enjoys teaching forestry so much. And I've been very fortunate to come under his wing in my time at Cornell.
And then after I finished the class, I sent him an email. And I said, I really enjoyed your class. I am not incredibly qualified, but would you be willing to let me into your research lab? And he was like, yeah, sure, why not?
So I've been doing research with him now for a while. And I think that is a testament to how willing professors are to take on undergraduate student researchers. For me, it was just as easy as sending an email.
For other students, sometimes you get an email in your inbox that says, this lab is looking for people. So yeah, at Cornell, I feel like you're constantly seeing opportunities. And if you're just opening your eyes and looking for them, chances are, not only will you find one thing that interests you, but you'll find 10 things that interest you. Yeah.
SEAN FELTON: Right. All right, you guys. We're going to change gears here.
We're going to go to weather, food, friends, and fun in our next section. So what has your experience been with the weather that you've experienced here in Ithaca? And be honest. I mean, I think-- I know a lot of the folks that are here watching, listening, are sort of wondering like, what is the weather like, and how do you manage it? So--
SPEAKER 4: As an Angelino, someone from Los Angeles, I was really worried about the weather. A high of 72 every day where I'm from. I did not own a jacket that had insulation in it.
Those were things that were really worrisome to me before I came here. The best advice I could give is just get a good jacket, and you'll truly be OK. The weather, I see it as an opportunity.
It's something so different than what I've ever grown up with, what I've experienced. It's made me so grateful for my upbringing in sunny Los Angeles that I can't wait to go back when I'm done with college. However, that being said, Ithaca truly is a magical place with all of the nature that we have.
I was saying to some folks that I met in the front row-- I hope to talk more after-- that it's truly beautiful. Our fall is unparalleled. All of campus turns red and orange and yellow, and your walk to class looks like you're living in a fairy tale.
In addition, we have waterfalls all over campus, and it's just so beautiful when they crystallize and they freeze in the winter. And that's something that you really can't experience anywhere else. So I'll take a little bit of wind and a little bit of cold to get these new experiences that I've never had before that I'll truly remember for the rest of my life, and I think I've learned to appreciate them.
SPEAKER 1: So I am also from the west coast. I think I forgot to mention this in the beginning, but I'm from Portland, Oregon. And if you guys have seen Twilight, which is where it is filmed, Portland is rainy nine months out of the year.
But it's temperate. So it's about 50 degrees to 60 degrees for most of the winter. And one of the most shocking things to me coming to Cornell was actually experiencing all four seasons.
I was lucky enough to spend the summer after my freshman year here at Cornell doing research, so I literally experienced all four seasons. And not only is our fall incredibly beautiful, but our spring is too. And I know you're not quite seeing that today.
But when you would go through winter and everything is white, which is really pretty at first, it can get a little annoying when it gets slushy. But it's really cool to be able to sled down the slope or to go, like, snowshoeing with your friends on trails throughout Ithaca. But when spring comes back around and you start seeing the little green buds on the trees, I don't know.
It's absolutely incredible. And I think that's one of my favorite things about Cornell is being able to experience all four seasons. I am not from California or Los Angeles, but it has also made me appreciate the sun and the warmth a lot more.
SPEAKER 6: Speaking of all four seasons, I'm from the Midwest. So I'm pretty used to all the seasons. I used to live in Wisconsin, where the weather got pretty crazy.
So I don't think it's as crazy here. So that's a good thing. But I did get a chance to spend last summer here in Ithaca.
And something I've heard from generations of Cornellians is the one thing you should do before you leave is spend a summer in Ithaca. And I wholeheartedly believe that. it is beautiful here.
You need an AC because it gets really hot, but it is fantastic being here. I ended up taking my internship to be remote, and my friends and I stayed here over the summer. We experienced so many different waterfalls. Some of my friends from home came to visit, and I think we saw like seven or eight waterfalls in like a couple of days.
And just getting to swim next to waterfalls in the ones that you're allowed to swim in and just seeing so many gorges, it's just so beautiful and not something I ever thought I'd get to experience or it be so close. Also, over the summer, I went paddleboarding. I went kayaking.
I also went Whitewater rafting. There are all things that are just very accessible here that I don't think you get in a lot of places. So like, I think just the location of Ithaca, yes, it can seem like a bad thing at first. But you get to spend four years here, and I think that's the most beautiful amount of time to spend in a place like this because the nature is like really just unparallelled.
JENNIFER FLORES: OK, so don't be scared of the winter. I feel like-- so I grew up in the city, and I feel like my family, like I said, was very confused as to why I wanted to come to Ithaca. But quite frankly, like, the winter's not that bad.
Like, they're bad, but they're not that bad. Like, yeah. So as long as you have snow boots, you have a jacket, I mean, people don't even wear hats sometimes or scarves. Like, you can, but you don't necessarily have to, right?
I have a friend who's gone all four years without wearing a hat, and she's been completely fine. The thing about the winter here is that it's beautiful. It really is.
It's magical. It feels like Christmas most of the time except when it does get slushy. Then it's kind of annoying.
But the other thing is because there's so much community within Cornell, I know Willard Straight Hall will have events during the winter. So you'll go in. You'll get hot chocolate. You'll get cookies, donuts-- like, really warm things that'll make you forget that it's like negative degrees outside.
So once again, also a tip for people who are from warmer areas-- I had a friend who was from the west coast my freshman year who would walk outside with like leggings on. And it was like negative degrees outside. And I was like, what do you doing?
And so a quick tip for you guys-- wear two pants. Like, wear tighter pants underneath your jeans or your other pants. And when she started going outside, she was like wow, no wonder these people are standing outside for so long.
And like, yeah, like, you have to bundle up. So that's a tip for you guys if you guys end up going here. So--
SEAN FELTON: I didn't think Jennifer was going to take me out with that commment.
[LAUGHING]
All right, get it together, Felton. Get it together.
That was hilarious. So food, I believe, is our next topic. Why don't we shift gears and-- the food here is expansive, and it's diverse, and it's interesting. And maybe you could talk a little bit about your experience with the food on campus, also too with eating off campus if you've ever done that and what that might be like.
SPEAKER 2: I'm going. As the Hotelie of the bunch, food is definitely something that I'm personally passionate about. But at Cornell, there are so many different options. Coming in your first year, you'll be able to spend a lot of your meals at one of the dining halls, whether that's on North Campus, on central, or west. And then we also have some of the eateries that are more a La Carte style, and they're all over campus, open at most times of the day. Even late night hours at Uris Library, you can still get your coffee and pastry to keep you going.
But I've found a lot of the options really great. I'm biased, but I think here in the Hotel School in Statler Hotel, we have some of the best food options. I highly recommend those this fall when you come here.
And then off campus, there is a tremendous food scene here in Ithaca. Collegetown has great options from the classic Collegetown bagels, which I encourage you all to check out as a staple in Collegetown. And then making your way down to downtown Ithaca, there are so many different restaurants.
I tried to make it a job of mine to try out all of them. I have failed. I will have to come back here at least probably for another year to get to all of them. But food is not an issue here.
SPEAKER 4: Yeah, I think-- I heard a metric the other day that Ithaca actually has more restaurants per capita than New York City. So we have a lot of food going on here. And let me tell you, it's really good.
As an architecture major, I don't to get off campus that often. But when I do, we always make it a point to go to a different restaurant. And I have not been disappointed yet.
In addition, a small anecdote-- I have actually a class in the ILR building. And it's really early in the morning for me. And the one thing that keeps me going to this class is that I get to go to Bus Stop Bagels afterwards.
It is like one of my favorite places on campus. You can always get a bagel or a sandwich or a really good coffee and just small things like that at all of our eateries. I also highly recommend Risley, which is our gluten-free dining Hall, and it's also my building where I live.
I love Risley for my whole life. But it's delicious, and you would never be able to tell that it was all gluten-free and very allergen friendly. So that's always a go to place to go, and it's right in between sort of North Campus and central, where you'll be taking all of your classes.
And I've heard West Brunch is very good. We have brunch on the weekends. So it's so good.
JENNIFER FLORES: So one thing that I think a lot of us forget sometimes is there's a lot of free food too. So I like free food. So I constantly, like, walk around building sometimes. Or I look-- there's like a group chat where it's like free food at Cornell or something like that.
And I'm constantly getting notifications. And I swear, like, you can get a meal, like, every day. And the food is really good.
The other day, I had Thai food that they had just ordered. And so I just walked in, and I sat down for about an hour just listening to an event. And they're like, OK, you like grab-- and I was like, OK, thank you.
So there is always something to eat. But also, be careful because the freshman 15 is definitely a thing, and I definitely faced it in the beginning. But you adjust, and the food is delicious.
So you'll be fine. You walk a lot. There are a lot of hills here.
SOPHIE HARRIS: I also just wanted to add on to food availability. Cornell also has a food pantry. It's either considered actually on campus, or it's like across the street off campus. Yeah, Cornell has a food pantry as well as Annabelle's Groceries is selling fresh produce at a discounted rate. So if food accessibility is a concern for you, which, honestly, it is for some students, there are also resources on campus to address that.
SPEAKER 1: Yeah, I just want to reiterate that the-- so Anabel Taylor is reduced rate, but the food pantry is free. So you can actually just walk up, and you don't have to provide any justification for why you're there. They just have free food that has been donated at Cornell that's available, and it's a really wonderful program that they have.
SEAN FELTON: All right, you guys. Let's talk about friends and fun. How has it been meeting people here?
There are a lot of people to meet here. So how have you done it, and how do you have fun? What do you do to have fun?
SOPHIE HARRIS: I have something-- this is something I feel passionate about because I am a resident advisor. So like I mentioned, I live with first year students. But honestly, the way I made some of my best friends at Cornell was in my residence hall.
I lived with my roommate, who was from California. Across the hall, we had two people from Singapore. A few floors up, we had a friend from Dominica.
Down the hall, I had a friend from England and a friend from France who shared a room. And I think that really is a testament to all the different kinds of people you can meet at Cornell just where you live. I definitely encourage making those connections.
And also, when you come here, everyone is looking to make friends because everyone is in the same boat of starting a new experience at college. Everyone wants to meet people. It's definitely-- it can feel intimidating, but that will happen anytime something new starts.
But yeah, meeting friends in the residence hall is definitely something I am very grateful I did. I'm actually living with-- so I lived on campus my freshman year. I RAed for two years.
And then next year, I'm going back to live with my freshman year roommate. So yeah, I think it's just a testament to the strong connections that you can make just the people who are randomly placed in your building freshman year. So definitely try to make those connections.
SPEAKER 5: I did a pretty freshman summer program. So if any of you guys are invited to that, I definitely think you should do it. It's a great opportunity to get prepared with Cornell rigor and the sciences or whatever program you're in.
And also, it's a great way to meet other people and make friends early on. Also, do not underestimate orientation week. That is like the prime time to meet everyone.
Everyone's going out. Everyone's going to different activities. It's a great way to meet friends.
And also, another thing that I really love about Cornell is that there is an organization or club or anything for any identity that you identify with. And I think that's the best way to make friends. So if you're interested in economics or like development or like CS, joining a CS club would help you meet people that are also interested in CS. And it's a great way to just make friends that are also in the professional group that you're interested in too as well.
SPEAKER 6: Speaking of CS clubs, I just want to say as someone who does help organize a lot of those, please just come out. We just want to see you. Like, we have lots of free food that we would love to give you and love to just talk to you, like, genuinely. I know freshman year, I was like, do I go to this event?
And then I just go, and everyone's just smiling, like, wants to talk to me. And I'm like, oh, wait, why was I scared? But I guess, yeah, so if you're looking into, like, I mean, specifically computer science clubs, I look at ACSU, URMC, and WIC. I know they're all acronyms. Just Google that and Cornell, and you'll find us.
But also, I definitely want to talk about pre-semester programs. Something I found out about at Cornell Days was I did POST which is Pre-Orientation Service Trip. Some of my best friends still three years later are from that trip.
We slept in the middle school in, like, Ithaca. And yeah, I got to see lots of Ithaca and, like, just do service projects. I worked at the food pantry for a day, and just, it was a great way to start out my time at Cornell.
And yeah, definitely don't sleep on those programs. They're honestly amazing. And yeah, I had already, like, best friends helping me move into college that I just met. So--
SPEAKER 4: Yeah, and I think another really great way to meet friends is through the residence hall. And I'm a huge advocate for our incredible program houses that we have here that-- a lot of what you can live in all four years or, for me, five years at Cornell. So I elected to live in Risley, which is the arts dorm, and it's so convenient for where I go to school every day.
It is a three minute walk across a beautiful bridge. And what I love most about Risley is just the community. You find people who-- a lot of which electively chose to live there, but you also find people who got lucky and got placed in Risley, who end up loving it as well because of the community that we foster.
We have weekly programming. I get spans of emails saying we have found coffee, lost coffee, which is basically a tea lovers club and a coffee lovers club that rival, that each meet every week. And you have to find them in the building. And we have murals covering the walls. And so these places are really great way to meet people who are like minded but maybe not in ways that you would expect both in terms of interests or based on ethnicity or some other sort of rationale. But it's a great way to meet people outside of academics and also create friends that you can go to different extracurriculars with.
SPEAKER 1: OK, yeah. I just want to reiterate clubs as a great way to meet new friends but also as a great way to experiencing things you've never done before. So as a freshman, you will likely sign up for way too many clubs and never end up going to any of their meetings. I know that I did that. I'm still on the listserv, the email listserv, for at least 50 different clubs, and I've only shown up to 10.
But we have a lot of great opportunities here. Some of my personal favorites are the Bee Club, where you learn how to bee keep and actually make your own honey. There's also the Bread Club.
Again, I feel like a lot of these are foods-oriented-- but the bread club where you make bread. But they also sell their bread on the ag quad, agricultural quad. And every Thursday, I think at the beginning of the semester-- at the beginning of the year and the end of the year, when we have a little farmer's market there. There's also the Tea Club, where you get to try out different teas.
And on top of that, the entertainment at Cornell-- you're just going to have too many options, and you're going to be on Friday, Saturday nights deciding between, like, three or four different things. One of my personal favorites, I'm not sure if you guys have talked about this yet, are the arch sings. So we have a lot of a Capella groups on campus.
They actually inspired the book Pitch Perfect which then inspired them inspired the movie Pitch Perfect. But the arch sings are where a bunch of the a Capella groups on campus get together, and they sing in the arches on North Campus in West Campus. And it's not really a competition like it is in Pitch Perfect, but it's really fun, and you'll often walk back from your big exams, and they'll be doing that. They also do, like, concerts in the fall and in the spring. So a lot of great opportunities for entertainment on campus.
SEAN FELTON: Wow. You guys are so exciting, interesting. I want to be a student. Admissions people, by the way, pretend we're still students in case you didn't know.
So that's the joy in this role. But you guys are amazing. As we wrap up, I'm going to ask you to respond to sort of two prompts, lightning round, 30 seconds or less.
And the two prompts are tell us about your favorite place on the Cornell University campus. Try to avoid one of the 19 or so brick and mortar libraries unless you just can't. That's fine because I know all of you spend lots of time in the libraries because you just do.
You're Cornell students. And then-- so favorite place on campus, and then, of course, your favorite overall thing about Cornell during your time here thus far. And we'll start at the end. We are going to go down the line. So Austin, you'll get to start for us again.
SPEAKER 2: Favorite place on campus is actually horse farms located off of North Campus. If you need an escape, get away from the buzz on campus, I often found myself walking by the horse farms. Nothing quite like just walking past fields with horses and the pastures. There's even a rope swing on a giant oak tree. It is that picture perfect.
And then favorite part about Cornell has to be the diversity and the unique perspective that I got coming here. My world I thought was huge before coming here in Ohio. I came to Cornell, and that quickly was shattered by just the sheer amount of possibilities that Cornell not only showed me, but also opened up.
SPEAKER 1: OK, so I feel like I'm giving a little bit of a secret away here. I debated whether to tell you guys or not. But there's this really beautiful building on campus called Bradfield Hall.
[INAUDIBLE]
SPEAKER 1: So Bradfield from the outside looks like the tower from Shrek. It is a brutalist architecture structure. But it's one of the tallest buildings on campus. And if you go up to the 9th or 10th floor, it's just labs on the inside. But the 9th or 10th floor, you can get the most beautiful view of North Campus on one side and then on the other side the agricultural fields.
It is absolutely gorgeous. What a wonderful place to watch the sunset. And not only that, they also have a bunch of plants up there, and the windows are like from floor to ceiling.
So it kind of feels like you're in a world of your own up there. So Bradfield Hall, if you come to Cornell, definitely check that out. It's a great study spot. And it's also very quiet because not many people know about it. I guess you all know about it.
But anyways, so my favorite thing about Cornell is going to be kind of a generic answer. But also, it's something that I think makes Cornell unique, and it's its community. It's not just the diversity of the community, but it's the way that you bond together over your experience coming here to Cornell and being a Cornell student.
We are not a competitive community at all, but we are all competitive individuals. And what I mean there is that we all are really driven individuals who got here. So we compete with ourselves.
We try to do better than we did on the last exam. We try to do better than we did on the last essay. But we're not competitive with one another. We are supportive, and we, like, build each other up. And I think that's one of the best parts of being a student here at Cornell.
SOPHIE HARRIS: Well, I am absolutely shocked someone said Bradfield Hall because Bradfield does not get the love it deserves. So now I am quickly scanning campus to think of somewhere else. Yeah, again, I really thought I was going to be the only person who would say Bradfield.
I'm going to say the vet school is my favorite place on campus. Inside, the vet school is very aesthetically pleasing-- lots of like green and yellow colors. And also, I prefer to study somewhere where I don't think I'll run into people I know so I can stay focused because if I'm in Mann Library, I see a friend. Then we end up getting coffee, and then not a lot of work gets done.
So I like to study in Bradfield Hall but also in the vet school because it's really beautiful in there. And if you can make it down that way, you can stop at the Dairy Bar and get some ice cream. But yeah, the vet school is really beautiful.
And I think my favorite thing about my time at Cornell has got to be the way that Cornell has shaped me as a person and the person I've become. I don't think I am like the most amazing person ever. That's not what I'm saying in that.
But when I think back to when I was sitting at Cornell Days when I was an admitted student and I was listening to student panelists, I was like, wow. I want to be that person. I want to be the Cornell student talking to a panel of, like, admitted students.
Basically, I wanted to be here. And I think in my time at Cornell, I've really matured as a person, and I've come into my own in terms of what I'm interested in, the kind of person I want to be. And I just think I've grown a lot because of the things I've experienced at Cornell, and I'm really proud of how my three years at Cornell have shaped me.
JENNIFER FLORES: So for me, so I'm in the Ives Hall building, and it's pretty small, I would say. But inside of that building, there is our lounge. And I love that lounge. Again, it's tiny, but there are so many students going back and forth between classes and having breaks that normally, they all end up just sitting there for a while taking their lunch break or just doing some work.
And I just love talking to people, and I love making new friends, and I just love connecting with the friends I already have. So I always sit there between my breaks, and I just really enjoy it. And not similar to you, I like having my friends around me.
Sometimes I do it on purpose to get distracted. But other times, I just love the support, and I love knowing that I'm not stressed out by myself. Or else, I will want to cry.
So aside from that, the thing that I love about Cornell, first of all, like mentioned before, like, community and specifically my friends and how much I've become so close to these people that were once complete strangers to me and so different for me. But also, I do love and appreciate the nature of Cornell. I think it was one of the biggest reasons I decided to come to Cornell, just how much peace it brought me. And so I think those two things combined has been an amazing environment for me to actually grow as a person but also get my education. So--
SPEAKER 3: I would say my favorite place at Cornell is probably-- this is going to be really specific but the rooftop of Snee Hall just because one day, my friends and I, we just spontaneously went to the rooftop of Snee Hall, and the views there were amazing. And we're just blasting music.
And for some reason, it was-- I think it was like winter, but we decided to camp out there. And it's an outdoor rooftop too. So it was very, very cold.
But I think the experience made it really worth it because it was just a really good time, just seeing the views and listening to music, just hanging out with friends. So I don't know if that was-- I don't know if it's allowed for us to be there because I think a janitor kept on trying to kick us out. But it's OK. But would highly recommend checking it out if you are able to.
In terms of my favorite part of Cornell, I would-- if I'm being honest, the first thing that drew me to Cornell was the fact that Cornell was ranked number three in campus food. So I was really excited for the food. But since we've already talked about food, I'll talk instead about the international opportunities that are available.
This past spring break, actually, I went on a class trip to Portugal, and that trip was fully funded by the Food Marketing Fellows program from Dyson. And I had the amazing opportunity to learn a lot about the top retailer chains in Portugal, eat a lot of really, really great food, and meet a lot of great people and just see a lot of Portugal as well. So I think I'm really grateful for all of the international opportunities that Cornell has definitely afforded to me.
SPEAKER 4: My favorite place on campus has to be the Green Dragon, which is a cafe in the basement of Sibley, which is one of the AAP-specific buildings. And it's a great place to study, a great place to get coffee. I definitely take both mental, academic breaks there.
I socialize there. I'm really productive there, all of the above. I highly recommend the Green Dragon. And inside, it's really aesthetically pleasing. There's art of students all over the walls, and it's a really community-oriented place.
And then my favorite thing about Cornell since I've been here has to be the traditions that I started to talk about earlier. Being an AAP student, we have so many celebrations of our students that are so specific to our college, such as Dragon Day. And in architecture, we have a big little program where a second year architect will mentor a first-year architect, and that's how you sort bridge the gap between this kind of scary looking upperclassmen and a new freshman pretty early on in the semester.
We have Rome study abroad and just so many opportunities that are so specific to Cornell that I would not be able to receive elsewhere. And of course, the community, what you've heard my peers talk about today, but you really stick with these people for the rest of your life. And I've seen that.
I was in charge of Dragon Day this past year, and coming up to me during Dragon Week was a Cornell alum from 1984, who came back to campus for Dragon Day to see what these first-year architects were up to. And that was so special. The alumni network really do care, and they come back and they visit.
SPEAKER 5: For me, my favorite place on campus would definitely be like the Human Ecology building in MVR. And I feel like it's that because I love watching the fashion students and seeing their beautiful outfits and all the fashion that they've created. And a lot of times, like, they'll be like, hey, can you try this on?
I want to see if this like looks really good. And I'm like, oh, yeah, that's-- sure. I'd love to do that.
And then also in MVR, people are always smiling. Like, we could be in the middle of prelim week, and people would just be smiling, waving. And I feel like it's just a great place to study because you never feel so alone.
And then what I really enjoy about Cornell is the opportunity and the growth that I've had here. I feel like the mentorship here has been so great, like, even from freshman year. Upperclassmen will always, like, talk to you when you're in a library, be like, oh, what are you studying for?
I can send you my past notes. And I feel like other schools are not as collaborative. But here, you can really feel a sense of community. And there's just so much growth that happens within these four years. Like, the person you are now, four years from now, you're probably not going to have like the same goals or dreams. But that's OK because here, they foster the growth, and through taking different classes, you can really see who you are and what contributions you want to give into the world. And I feel like it's hard to find that kind of growth at other schools.
SPEAKER 6: Yeah, so what I would say for my favorite location on campus would definitely be the AD White library, which is also dubbed the Harry Potter library. If you guys can go-- like, if I had to recommend one place on campus to go check out, I would definitely check out the Harry Potter library. It's in Uris Library.
I think it's kind of confusing to find it. But yeah, go to Uris Library. You're in the right place.
But yeah, I think it's a great place just because the nature on campus, it's really like, wow. Like, I'm here. This is like-- I don't know.
It gives, like, the impression of, like, really how special this place is, and I think it's hard to encapsulate that sometimes in, like, buildings. But I think the AD White library does that very well. Also, it's a dead silent library. So I love studying with my friends, but I don't want us to talk.
And some of my friends are like that too. So we go. We sit next to each other.
We're like, yes, we're here together, but we're not going to say a word. So it's a nice balance between getting work done and also being with people. And I would say my favorite thing about Cornell would definitely be the community. I know a lot of other people have said this, but I think it's in a lot of ways a-- I didn't know if I met a lot of people who were very much like me before college, and it's really crazy meeting people who are very similar and very different in the same way, like, at the same time.
Even like this past week, I was eating dinner with one of my friends, and I was just thinking something. I was like, no, I'm not going to say it. And then she literally said the words that I was speaking in my mind.
And I was like, wow, OK. That's kind of wild. And then one of my other friends said the exact same sentence later that week.
And I was like, wow, OK. So we all are feeling the same things, and like, you really do bond from this. And that goes past Cornell too.
Something that really comforts me is after I get my degree, I know that I'm still going to have a Cornell community. At my internship, I work with a lot of Cornell people, and it's really cool hearing about, oh yeah, this new building went up. Have you seen a picture of it, or what used to be there?
Or I've heard about how good the west food was before, and wow, I'm a little jealous. It's OK. But yeah, it's just knowing that the Cornell community doesn't stop after the four years and how much we bonded. Being here at the same time or not, it's just really special.
SOPHIE HARRIS: Can I add a different favorite place?
SEAN FELTON: Absolutely.
SOPHIE HARRIS: OK, after Bradfield Hall was taken, I had to quickly think of the next thing I could think of. But now I've changed my mind upon further reflection. BB Lake and the-- actually, there are pictures online on the screen. The Cornell Botanic Gardens, I feel like, underrated.
You'll actually see BB Lake if you visit the Tang Welcome Center. It is like right there. I highly encourage you to take a walk around BB lake if it maybe stops raining.
Or even if it is raining, take a walk around BB Lake because it is really-- when I've had a long day and I'm coming back from classes-- I live on North Campus. Sometimes I'll just take the long way around, and I'll go around BB Lake. And it's a 15, 20 minute walk, and it really is just like the reset I need coming from classes to then going back to my room.
BB Lake is like, I love that place. And also, the gardens, if you have time to visit while you're there, you definitely should. I may be biased because I work with the gardens, but I feel like a lot of Cornell students don't check it out because it feels like it's really far away. But it's not. It's right there on campus, and I highly, highly encourage you to check it out because similar to BB Lake, it can just be a refreshing reset when you've been in the library all day or at class all day. Yeah, I love spending time there.
SEAN FELTON: Well thank you guys so much. I'm going to ask the audience to join me in giving you a huge hand. And you guys can put on your foam fingers. I think what makes Cornell number one are these young people right here.
So I know some of you saw me in the bookstore yesterday buying these. But I do want to thank you for your candor and for your excitement. They would stay and talk with you all day if they could, but we need to let you go soon because there's a tour coming up for some of you at 1 o'clock.
Thank you so much. It was my pleasure to be with you guys and host this. I'm going to turn the program over now-- hang on before we leave-- to my colleague Pamela Tan, who is going to close things out for us.
PAMELA TAN: Thanks, Sean. Oh, you are amazing. You know, this is the reason I come to work every day is because of you all. And the things that I heard were things that rang true for me when I was an alum.
I love this idea of collaboration but also trying new things. So Jennifer, Gabriela, could you please help John Burdick with this dance fail that he's having related to ballroom dancing and salsa? Help this man succeed where he's failing.
And also too in terms of this being a place about tradition but also cutting edge, right? I really loved those of you who mentioned Cornell hockey. Huge hockey fan myself even though I'm from Florida by way of the Philippines.
We don't do ice hockey in the Philippines. But boy, are you going to do it here. I feel badly when we say, like, we throw a fish at Harvard. We don't throw them at Harvard. We just happen to throw them on the ice when they happen to be skating.
Same thing with Colgate, right? What do we do? We throw toothpaste. I feel bad about that.
SPEAKER 1: [INAUDIBLE] better.
PAMELA TAN: --paste at them. But that's on them. That's on them, poor Colgate.
The bottom line is that for some next steps, for those of you who are here on campus, definitely ask questions. We're going to stick around, chat with everyone you meet today.
Also, know that the Student and Campus Life Division will be in Willard Straight Hall, which is right across from the campus store. Awesome. They'll be there until 2:00 PM to help you learn about resource centers, campus services, how to get involved on campus. If you're at home right now doing the live stream or the recording or after you go home, for those of you who are on campus, continue to learn more about Cornell through our virtual events and engaging on the See You On the Hill platform.
For those of you applying for our need-based financial aid and need help, no worries. Give us a call. Send us an email.
We're happy and assist you to the process. And just a gentle reminder that the deadline to enroll is Monday, May 2. So we'll be keeping an eye out for that. But before we dismiss you by group to your next stop, thank you for taking the time to come to campus for those of you who are physically here, and thank you to those of you who took the time to watch the program virtually. And once again, congratulations on your admission to Cornell.
Welcome for newly admitted students who will hear from current Cornellians about their campus and community experiences during their time at Cornell.
