Can anyone explain Cornell and the Land Grant tuition thing, please?

[OLG]

I do understand that a students needs to apply to a particular college/school with Cornell but what I don't understand is the tuition rates as a land grant college. I couldn't find anything on the website that indicated this method of application. Maybe it doesn't exist any longer?! Thanks in advance.

 

MAry

[Musicmom]

We visited Cornell in June and they talked about this on the tour. Here's my admittedly limited understanding of it: Cornell is both a private university and NY state's land grant institution--a land grant institution is one that is given land and funding by the state and in return has to offer programs such as agriculture, industrial relations, etc. to benefit the people of the state--comes from the industrial revolution. Because of the state funding, tuition at land grant colleges is lower (and may be required to be lower, I don't know for sure) than that at private colleges.

 

So... the way this all works at Cornell is the university itself is made up of a number of individual/independent colleges (which is why you apply to a particular college). Four of Cornell's colleges (agriculture & life science, vet science, industrial relations, and maybe human ecology? ) are their land-grant colleges--receiving funding from the state--and the rest are private colleges. The tuition listed for Cornell on the College Board website is for the private colleges. Our tour guide implied it was quite a bit lower for the land-grant colleges (and I'll bet especially for in-state students.) IOW, lucky for you if you want to major in Biology!

 

Here's what I could find on tuition for the College of Agriculture & Life Sciences. Unfortunately, the link to the actual tuition costs appears to be broken. You could maybe email the college directly to find out what the tuition is.

 

http://www.cals.cornell.edu/cals/prospective/admissions/applying/financing.cfm

 

Cornell also does have more info on the land-grant thing which I found by googling Cornell University land grant.

 

Anyway, I don't think it affects your actual application so much, just your tuition.

 

HTH

[OLG]

MusicMom,

 

Thanks so much for taking the time to share that information. Now I see that the land grant tuition break applies only to certain schools within the college. That helps a lot! I gather selecting the school of interest is key in the application and, as you say, the tuition falls into place.

 

Would you have any further comments on Cornell to share after taking a tour of the place? It's a long, long way from home so we are gathering as much info as we can from a distance!

 

Thanks again for your help!

 

Mary