pentheus1980

I was an undergraduate at Cornell and am also from NYC. Ithaca is Gorges, if you're visiting for a day or two. If you're living there its another story altogether. To its credit Cornell is beautiful, one of the most beautiful campuses that I've ever seen, and the faculty that I knew there were some of the brightest people I've ever encountered, and I've studied at Harvard too, but the place is like a living hell. You begin to run out of places to go within the first two weeks and have to resort to excessive drinking and drugging like the undergraduates to get yourself through the weekend. Collegetown is a piece of shit, it's just two blocks with some lame ass bars and Collegetown Bagels, whose coffee tastes like someone ran through hot water through soil. The absurdly steep hills make it difficult to bike (or walk) to most places on campus (especially West campus). On the plus side there is a great supermarket there, Wegmans, but you need a car to get there unless you want to take a one hour bus ride. There's also a great restaurant called Maxie's on the outskirts of town that has super cajun food and local beers etc. If you're a granola munching nature lover, then you might enjoy Ithaca, at least when the nature is not covered in permafrost. As someone from NYC its really hard for me to imagine a place that I've liked less but hopefully, like me, you'll be too busy doing work to care about all this stuff anyway.