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Cornell Tech CM

Here to give you a reality check -- this program is actually much worse than what's discussed online.

Truly the center of the universe. Although the school is on an island and getting off isn't the most convenient, the subway near campus can take you to any major NYC attraction or entertainment venue within 30 minutes. It may have the most expensive total cost of any CS-related program in the US -- without scholarships, the two-year total cost is estimated at $220K+. The school is small, so research competition is much less than at large public universities, though the PhD situation is unclear. Most students live in the dorms, so campus life is decent -- easy to get together for board games or Mafia. Job hunting outcomes are mediocre and it's basically not a target school for any major tech company. Students are generally normal people with interesting backgrounds.

Reasons for the B+ rating:

  1. Expensive ($220K+). Even with scholarships, they won't cover much. The only known case of a 50% scholarship was a US green card holder -- Chinese nationals basically can't get that level of aid.
  2. Job hunting outcomes are not ideal. Multiple students who enrolled in 24 Fall reported that the job market was very tough.
  3. It's hard to get more interviews just based on the Cornell brand.

Housing​

If you're not picky about room type, most students should be able to get a dorm assignment. Priority is roughly: second-year > MBA > first-year. Based on observations, new students who want to live alone should prioritize 1B1B and standard-layout Studios, since if you can't get a 1B1B you'll likely be offered a Studio instead. If you get a 1B1B, you can theoretically swap rooms internally with others. Standard Studios have about 6 per floor across 23 residential floors, so Studios are generally available. There are also two oddly-laid-out Studios (one of each per floor) that are hard to get -- purely luck-based, and personally I don't think it's worth trying. You can list five housing preferences in priority order. I recommend listing a 3B2B/3B1B as a safety option since you might not get a dorm at all. CT dorms don't allow living in the common area. Monthly costs: 1B1B ~$3K, Studio ~$2.3K, 2B ~$2K, 3B ~$1.8K -- absolutely great value near Manhattan. However, I personally don't recommend the 3B since the bedrooms are really small. In terms of value and comfort, my personal ranking: 1B1B ($3K near Manhattan is great value, even though $3K/month is still expensive) > standard Studio > other Studios > 2B1B > 2B2B > 3B. The building has shared laundry and dryers (haven't seen shoe dryers), plus a free gym. For $30/month you can join the sports center 50 meters away, which has a pool and reportedly excellent facilities. Friends not in school dorms sometimes live at Octagon on the other side of the island. There's a free island bus, but walking to class takes 20 minutes which isn't very convenient -- consider buying a scooter. Personally, unless you didn't get a dorm assignment, there's no need to live elsewhere, since everyone lives in the dorms and social activities all happen there.

Course Selection​

The courses available in the first semester are mostly ML Engineering oriented, with very few SDE-oriented ones, so CM isn't great for career change to CS -- it's better suited for students with an existing CS background.

  1. Applied ML: Has midterm, no final, has Project and Final Project. Difficulty 2/5 -- if you've taken Andrew Ng's ML course you can breeze through this. Workload 2/5, assignments and projects are not demanding. Basically everyone takes this; can be considered a must-take. Very easy to get an A.

  2. MLE: Has midterm, no final, has Project. Difficulty 4/5 -- you hand-build a small PyTorch from scratch, reportedly a resume-worthy project. Gets too deep later on, genuinely painful for non-MLE students. Midterm exam is curved, though I personally found it quite hard. Workload 2/5-5/5 -- the Project can be easily coasted through, but learning seriously takes a lot of time. Many people take it, but given the difficulty, consider carefully.

  3. Applied Algo: No midterm, no final, purely five Assignments. Difficulty 2/5-4/5 -- since there are no exams, how you approach this course is entirely up to you. Some later assignments are genuinely challenging if done seriously. Workload 2/5-4/5, purely depends on how you want to get through the course. If you want to coast, this is the easiest course of the semester; if studying seriously, I personally think it's slightly easier than MLE. However, the algorithms covered barely relate to LeetCode -- lots of seemingly obscure algorithms that don't seem very practical. Still, getting an A isn't hard, and many people take it.

  4. HCI: No midterm, no final, homework every class, ongoing Project. It's a UI/UX course -- zero background is fine. If you have any frontend or UI experience, this course is basically no challenge at all. Class time is pure team work assignments; the professor doesn't lecture -- lectures are pre-recorded and should be watched before class (though not watching them doesn't really affect class participation). Difficulty 2/5 -- the professor is very lenient, and homework basically gets full marks as long as you do it, even for those with zero UI/UX background. Having had UI/UX and frontend experience, I could tell the professor put a lot of thought into the curriculum and assignments. You can learn things if you want to (not SDE-oriented, but PM and UI/UX-oriented). Workload 2.5/5 -- weekly 2-hour team work assignments, Projects in pairs generally take 4-6 hours, about 5 Projects per semester. As long as you attend and complete classwork normally, you'll get an A.

  5. Psychology is a required course for CM. Reportedly quite grueling -- attendance checks and quizzes every class, and I hear from others that grading is harsh. If you're not a CM student, don't bother.

  6. Business Foundation is 1 credit. Non-MBA students who want to take MBA courses need to complete this. Reportedly very strict -- friends who took this course all dropped it. If you took business general education courses as an undergrad, you can waive this and go straight to MBA courses.

Admission Threshold​

Backgrounds are very diverse. For fresh graduates, from my investigation, basically everyone is from 211/985 universities, US undergrads, or joint programs -- essentially no non-985/211 CS majors. CS majors are the majority, followed by DS. GPA requirements are higher than expected -- most people I know have 3.7+. If you have entrepreneurial experience, the threshold seems to be lower. I estimate about 1/6 of all students are people who worked for several years before applying, and the threshold for working professionals applying to CM seems lower, with business/DS backgrounds represented.

  1. NYU CS undergrad, GPA 3.84, major GPA 3.97
  2. Princeton University, Cum laude graduate
  3. UW HCI undergrad, GPA 3.9
  4. National Cheng Kung University CS, GPA 3.99
  5. Syracuse University DA undergrad, GPA 3.95
  6. Queen's University Math undergrad, GPA 4.0
  7. US undergrad top 100, Math undergrad, GPA 4.0
  8. NTU CS + Business undergrad, GPA 3.97
  9. Lehigh University, GPA 3.8
  10. NYU Shanghai CS undergrad, GPA 3.8

Job Hunting​

CM has 66 students. HT and UT each have fewer than 20 -- I haven't looked into other programs. The impression is about 30% Chinese, 30% Indian, 40% other -- fairly diverse, not the "all Chinese students" kind of feel.

Job hunting info is limited to mainland Chinese students for 25 Summer Intern; I have no knowledge of 25 NG or other regions. As of March 16, 2025, an estimated maximum of 10 Chinese students landed 25 Summer internships, representing about 30-40% of Chinese students. Since the sample size is too small, it mainly comes down to individual ability. However, this is several orders of magnitude worse than the official 90% employment rate. CT has virtually no career fairs in New York -- you can go to Ithaca for Cornell's main campus career fair, but there are basically no major companies there either. In short, career fairs are essentially decoration. New York's geographic location hasn't brought any job hunting advantages either -- everyone does online interviews these days.

CT awards a Cornell degree, so it can roughly be seen as Cornell. It seems like Cornell isn't a target school for major tech companies -- among people I know, Meta, Google, Apple, Uber, and other well-known big tech companies have very few placements. Bloomberg, the big sponsor, does give interview opportunities, and the HR representative for our school is reasonably proactive. Compared to some data points where candidates get ghosted for two to three months, CT's next steps are generally completed within 7-30 days. In October they collected a batch of resumes from the school and came for on-site interviews, but as of now no Chinese student has gotten a 25 Summer intern offer from them. Compared to the degree to which Paycom recruits from Rice, it's far behind.

Everyone still looking for Summer Interns is probably counting on Amazon's big hiring wave this year, but that has nothing to do with CT, lol. In summary, the school provides basically no help with job hunting, and the Cornell title may not be as valuable in the job market as some engineering-focused schools.

  1. SCU transfer to US undergrad, four months of small company internship, landed Meta new grad