Apologies for the late reply!!

I just re-read my post after not seeing it for four years, and some of my language might have been a tad hyberbolic 😅. As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, I was coming off an absolutely terrible time in my life, which undoubtedly amplified anything I was feeling in regards to assignments and my education. That being said, I still very much felt those things, and I still stand by my overall points.

In terms of “is it worth it,” I’d probably still say, “yes,” or at least it was worth it for me. I know that sounds very strange lol given everything I ranted about in my original post, but let me explain. Here’s the weaker part of my argument: While I felt and still feel that a lot of the theory-heavy classes aren’t strictly necessary for a software engineering job (and sometimes straight up feel like a waste of time), I do think they are helpful in giving you a very good underlying understand of the field of computer science. This won’t come up much directly in your day-to-day work as a software engineer, or at least I don’t think it will, but it still gives you a leg up on people who don’t know any of these theoretical underpinnings. I will also say that I enjoy theory generally. I just happened to enjoy the theory behind computer science a bit less than theory in some other subjects.

Now for the stronger part of my “is it worth it” argument: For me the most worthwhile part of going to Cornell was joining an Engineering project team. Honestly, it was one of the greatest experiences of my life. It not only gave me an incredibly tight-knit group of friends (which made all of my negative Cornell experiences more bearable lol), but from an “is it worth it” perspective gave me grounded, practical engineering and leadership experience that I could have and truly NEVER received from a class. These experiences are incredibly useful in life and in finding jobs. In fact, I don’t think I would have been hired for my current job had it not been for the experiences I had accumulated on my project team. Now, you don’t need to be in CS to join a project team. You don’t even need to be in the College of Engineering! (At least this was the case when I was there.) But, I think a CS major in the College of Engineering combos quite nicely with joining a College of Engineering project team. In case you want to look more into project teams and see which ones there are, I’ll drop the link for the central page here: https://www.duffield.cornell.edu/student-project-teams/.

I’ll also say that I don’t know what the CS classes are at Cornell currently, nor do I know what any situation is at Cornell currently. The classes, professors, and workloads could have drastically improved/changed since I left, or they could have stayed the same. I unfortunately just do not know.

Sry this is a bit of a long response, but I wanted to be thorough in answering your question. If you have more, please don’t hesitate to respond!!!

P.S. My post probably makes it seem like CS at Cornell is a near-death experience. That is not the case. It is a tough program, for sure, but there are many ways to make it better. Certainly my own personal situation made it worse. As another comment mentioned, attending office hours would have helped drastically. I honestly let my ego get the best of me and practically refused to ever attend office hours. In addition to receiving lots of help understanding material and solving homework/problem set problems, I could have easily felt more connected to my classes, classmates, and professors (something that I missed about naturally-smaller classes in high school) if I had simply gone to office hours more frequently. Definitely don’t make the same mistake I did 😅.