34 CommentsAccording to the Wall Street Journal, Mayor Bloomberg plans to announce that Cornell’s won the competition for an applied-science campus in NYC. They beat out the rest of the “shortlist,” which was down to Carnegie-Mellon, NYU, Cornell, and us, after Stanford dropped out on Friday.
Not all hope is lost; even if Bloomberg awards Roosevelt Island to Cornell, we could still score some cush government funds for M’ville. Since our proposal didn’t include any of the three locations Bloomberg suggested, if we get funding, we’d still receive more or less what we wanted to gain in the first place.
Seems like all New York is gettin’ gobbled up by universities these days.
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34 Comments
@James Poly is a great school, with a rich and deep history as the second oldest private engineering institution in the US. It was a school on par with even MIT back in the day. Yes, Poly has had financial difficulties in the past years, and the fact that it is a rather small school hurts it when it comes to rankings and such. But companies who hire engineers know better than to trust a magazine who uses faulty methods of ranking. There is a reason why Poly is ranked high by Payscale for average starting salaries. NYU isn’t stupid; they know Poly is a great and underrated institution. Back in the day, when NYU was forced to sell their Bronx campus, the engineering program was merged into Polytechnic’s. Now that Poly is almost fully integrated into NYU, it can only reach greater heights with the backing of a large research institution. And honestly, if it weren’t for Polytechnic, NYU itself wouldn’t bother with this competition; they lack the experience in the engineering and applied sciences field necessary. In all honesty, it will be NYU’s Polytechnic Institute that would make the whole thing work.
@Hey, Bloomberg When you start campaigning for a 4th term, don’t bother coming to Morningside Heights.
@Anonymous Columbia has always had competion in New York from NYU. NYU on many levels is a much better school than Cornell, and its medical school, law school, business school, and engineering are every bit as goood as Cornell’s if not better. There are four medical schools in Manhattan alone, and nine in the metro, tens of hospitals, and Columbia remains on top. Competion is good. Columbia will remain the best.
@Alum NYU closed its engineering school 40 years ago. It didn’t have engineering programs again until very recently, when it absorbed the Polytechnic.
And to say that NYU/Poly’s programs are “every bit as good as Cornell’s if not better” is absurd. I’m not a fan of US News rankings, but they rank Cornell’s graduate engineering programs 10th in the country while NYU/Poly is ranked 66th, tied with UC-Riverside. (SEAS is ranked 16th, in a tie with Wisconsin.) That’s a reasonably fair assessment of their relative qualities.
@Well They were right about two grad schools–NYU Law is ranked higher Cornell (#6 vs. #13), and the business school is ranked higher (#10 vs. #16),
@Anonymous My cousin was a grad student at polytechnic. i heard it sucks.
@LOLOL this will officially end cornell’s engineering guys transferring into seas, wave after wave.
all the cornell transfers at seas ive talked to said they came here to “get the hell away from ithaca”
@actually you’re probably right
@Anonymous does that mean the cornell guys won’t be jumping off bridges again?
@Anonymous This school will take decades and billions of dollars to build. Cornell is going to go bankrupt trying to build it. It will be extremely difficult logistically for professors and students to maintain the undergrads in Ithaca, and the grad students in New York.
@Anonymous They’re literally doing exactly that with their med school (located in NYC) already. Chill out…Cornell knows what it’s doing. Disclaimer: I’m a Columbian that bleeds light blue, but I just think a little competition could actually be helpful and force us to get our shit together.
@Alum Cornell will still have engineering grad students in Ithaca. It will just have additional students — and additional faculty, facilities, etc. — in NYC. This is an expansion, not a move.
@i suppose you serve as a confirmation of the suspicion that cornell students are dumb as fuck.
@Anonymous Cornell is definitely not the top engineering school. Bloomberg could not get Caltech or MIT to apply that was already a major failure. Cornell cannot be better than Columbia.
@Anonymous Agreed. You have to realize that the overwhelming majority of schools wanted nothing to do with this competion. MIT, Caltech, Princeton, etc, laughed at the prospect of moving their campus. Their reputations are way too strong where they already are. If you are good, professors and students will come to you. Also, Harvard and Brown are in the works to open up their own separate engineering schools on their campuses.
@Alum Nobody is “moving their campus”. Cornell is expanding its engineering programs, not moving them.
While MIT is widely seen as America’s top engineering school, Stanford is generally considered #2. Attracting it to the competition disproves your theory. Note that Cornell’s engineering school is often ranked in the top 10 and almost always ranked above SEAS, though not dramatically.
Finally, Caltech’s lack of interest is probably because it is a small school. It has little interest in expanding, especially at a site nearly 3,000 miles away.
@Cornell '16 Oh my god I just got into Cornell! Does this mean I get to go to school in NYC? google isn’t giving me answers.
@Anon Get out of here, you state school trash.
@relax he’s got a crown next to his name, meaning he’s posting on a Columbia IP. everybody chill out, Cornell’s not that bad.
@Anonymous that’s hilarious! i had no idea bwog had that function. I don’t have a crown. oops i swear i’m not a super old alum or cornell creeper…
@Anonymous Sorry, this school will purely be for graduate students. You should have applied to Columbia is you wanted to go to New York.
@i'm confused... the manhattanville funds will be in the form of marijuana? screw roosevelt’s island, cornell can have it!
@Anonymous a serious problem will arise when cornell cannot bring in additional master’s students, but pulling away half of those who are supposed to be columbia’s financial engineering students. there will be a real competition and columbia’s cash cow may be killed by cornell.
@Alum There are plenty of students to go around. Besides, Columbia’s financial engineering program is well-established and very highly respected. Cornell’s new program will have a lot of catching up to do. And even if it is strong from the start, the arrival of a new competitor does not mean Columbia’s program will whither and die. Cornell’s medical school didn’t drive P&S into the ground, and there is little reason to think the new applied science programs will have such an effect on SEAS.
@What if a huge highway went right through Columbia’s engineering school?
It would be Robert Moses parting the SEAS!
@bravo but really ken jackson, don’t you have better things to do with your time.
@Anonymous cornell can use 10% of the 350 million to buy fu foundation seas (which cost 26 million). prezbo must be very sick of all the negative news about seas these days and wanted to get rid of seas
@Anonymous Dude, we’re like ranked sooo much higher by USNWR now.
Number 4! Number 4 more years! Number 4!
@Alum The $26M Fu gift was for endowment of SEAS’s programs, not construction of its facilities. You’re comparing apples and accordions.
Bear in mind that, with inflation, the Fu gift is probably worth about $40M – $45M today. And while most large donations are paid in installments over many years, all of the Fu money was donated immediately. That made it equivalent to a vastly larger donation made in more conventional terms. Finally, SEAS was not as strong at the time and was therefore not in a position to command a very large naming gift. The Fu money is one of the main reasons SEAS has become so much stronger in the years since then.
@It will be interesting to see how Cornell copes as an institution with the fact that the main body of their engineering is getting moved out of Ithaca. Even if some professors prefer to live outside of New York, you don’t drop $250 million and not have it be the centerpiece – the real deal is going to be here. So what happens to what’s left behind? Engineering is probably their most well-known program, and if they move the engineering undergrads that’s a quarter of their enrollment someplace else.
@Anonymous I wouldn’t be so sure about that. NoCo cost around 179 million (according to some spec article from ’09). i think you just have to realize building stuff is expensive as fuck in nyc. who knows how big/small this will be or whether or not it will be the focus of their engineering program.
@Anonymous I guess getting “Fu Foundation” tacked on was a bargain then, $26 million!
Kravis (CBS ’69) donated a princely $100 million and only got his name on the lousy Manhattanville buildings.
I’d be curious to see how SEAS deals when the big boys come to town. Better hope that NYC makes Cornell engineers more bitter than they already are!
@Alum Cornell isn’t going to move its existing engineering programs to NYC. It certainly isn’t going to move the undergraduate engineering programs. The new campus will be in addition to what it already has. Some faculty may move from Ithaca, but Cornell will surely hire others to replace them.
@person Who’s going to be here, then? I know that the SEAS graduate program has exploded in the past few years, but surely there must be some end to mediocre master’s students?