Cornell is located in Ithaca, a city in central New York State with a population close to 100,000. The region is known for its natural beauty, with waterfalls and gorges bracketing the campus. When the weather is nice, outdoor activities are popular, including sailing, swimming, skiing, and hiking. There are also state parks are just ten minutes away from campus, New York City and Toronto are less than a five-hour drive away. Ithaca also has commercial centers that students visit, including Collegetown, which features a number of restaurants, shops, and bars. Some upperclassmen choose to live in the district’s apartment buildings. Ithaca’s small businesses give off a small town feel: used bookstores, art house cinemas, craft stores, and vegetarian restaurants contribute to the character of the community.

Cornell’s 745-acare campus is located on a hilltop overlooking the 40-mile-long Cayuga Lake. Two sides of the campus are bounded by some very old gorges. Cornell’s campus seamlessly connects nature and the built environment, with trails, arboretums, and gardens blending with university quads. There are more than 260 buildings divided between Central and North Campuses on the top of the Hill, West Campus on its slope and Collegetown south of Central Campus. The main campus is marked by several architectural styles that include Gothic, Victorian, Neoclassical, and Modernist. Central Campus contains administrative as well as the majority of academic buildings, athletic facilities, auditoriums, and laboratories. North Campus has housing for freshmen, graduate students, program houses, and 29 Greek houses. West Campus has residential colleges for continuing students and 25 additional Greek houses. Collegetown has the Performing Arts Center as well as some housing for continuing students.

All first-year students are guaranteed on-campus housing for their first year. Housing at Cornell is all about luck. Freshmen are segregated into a little patch of land north of the main campus, which goes by the name ‘North Campus.’ The hike from North Campus to Central Campus can be gruesome in winter with snowflakes whirring around you. Also, walking alone back from Central at night can be a little daunting too. First-year students live in residential communities that have two active community centers, three dining halls, and two athletic facilities nearby. There are traditional residence halls, which are old-style dorms with a common lounge and floor bathrooms. Students can also choose to live in one of Cornell’s nine program houses, which place students with similar interests or backgrounds together. Some of the more popular houses include Ecology House, Ujamma (a tight-knit African American community), and Risley (performing Arts). The freshman ritual can be summed up as working hard and hanging out with friends on weekends and at night. In the quieter, more intellectual dorms, like Balch (all women), or townhouses, which are across the road, people bond while watching movies. In the more rowdy ones, such as Dickson and Mary Donlon, which is shaped like a thong from a bird’s eye view, people get pretty crazy. At 2:00AM on a Saturday morning, you can hear screaming from the end of the hall as people return from one of the legendary frat parties. The rooms on North Campus vary. Sometimes, students can get a single the size of a double, which depends on the location and luck. These rooms come with basic furniture such as a bed, desk, and closets. So, where do upperclassmen live? Every March, rising freshmen, sophomores and juniors who want to live on campus next year frantically stare at the computer and try to get the rooms they want. But, the trick to the game is that everyone is assigned a lottery time slot before winter break and the system is based on seniority. This means that if you are a freshman who has a 10:00PM timeslot on the last day of room assignments, your prospects are pretty bleak: you could be edged all the way to North Campus or into the Gothics, which have extremely narrow corridors, and cramped rooms. Many students want more privacy after their first year and choose to live in singles. The majority of upperclassmen who stay on campus live at West Campus, which is down the slope. The best places to live there are Hans Bethe House and Carl Becker House since they are newly built and extremely roomy. However, Cornell is building two new residence halls on West Campus for its ever growing student population. You also get the option to live in a frat, sorority, or any off-campus house or apartment in Collegetown.

Cornell has 36 varsity sports teams that compete in the NCAA Division I-AA and Eastern College Athletic Conference. Among the varsity teams, the men’s ice hockey team is the most historically successful and is widely followed among students. Cornell’s Hockey Team is one of the best known teams on campus. There is a mad frenzy every year when tickets go on sale. A couple of years ago, there was a huge mob, and it resulted in many people going to the hospital. Now, they assign each undergraduate a number, and a certain amount of those numbers are chosen for tickets. The Cornell Men’s Lacrosse Team had a great season last year, and so now they have also become popular on campus. In 2007, the team went undefeated in the regular season and had its first trip to the national semifinal since 1988.” In 2008, Cornell’s men’s basketball team had a historic weekend when the squad earned a No. 14 seed in the NCAA tournament, while the women’s team got its first-ever NCAA Tournament bid. It was the first time in Cornell’s history that both the men’s and women’s basketball teams played in the NCAA Tournament in the same season. Cornell also has around 30 intramural sports for students to participate in.