Details

• United States of America
• MACEMS-25
• Graduate
• SoSe 2026
• Time spent at the partner university: 4 months
• Contact: Login to see contact information

1. Preparation

Look for housing well in advance, I looked on Cornlet and found it very helpful and easy to find housing there. For traveling I suggest flying to NYC via plane and then booking an OURBus or Flixbus to Ithaca & then either walking or taking an Uber to your home there. For OurBus, there might be buses directly from JFK to Ithaca, which would save you the way with the metro through half of NYC.

2. Accommodation

I found it rather easy but still time-consuming to find accommodation. I would start to look well in advance (3-6 months prior or as soon as possible). Gail, the CEMS coordinator at Cornell sends out a Housing Excel Sheet and access to a Whatsapp Group well in advance and I immediately connected with other Cemsies there as soon as I got the access, I filled out the Housing Sheet and even sent a message into the group chat that I found a nice place to sublet on Cornlet and if people wanted to move in together. Fellow Cemsies reached out to me immediately and that is how I found my roommates. I can highly recommend that approach, it worked well for me and I had a great living experience. I recommend staying in Collegetown as it is near campus and most likely also most of your friends will be living there.

3. Academic life at host university

I loved the academic culture and teaching style at Cornell as it was very participative and I thought my courses were very well structured and I liked the mix of exams, assignments, and group work. I liked all of my courses, especially my electives and I think you can hardly get it wrong with electives as Cornell offers many great courses. If you are interested in Economics and Politics, I can especially recommend the course "Using Big Data to Solve Social and Economic Problems" by Prof. Goldman, it was my favourite class for sure.

5. Every day life in the host country

Ithaca felt extremely safe, it is after all a small town consisting mostly of students and families. I mostly walked everywhere but there were also buses from Collegetown to University or from Collegetown to the shopping area where Walmart etc. are located. For groceries I can recommend getting your grocercies delivered by Instacart or Walmart+ as the shops are usually far away (Tipp: Your roommates and you can each get the trial versions for a month and share the account details with one another ;)). There is actually a lot to do in your free time, I recommend getting the App Campus Groups to see what events and activities are happening on campus. Also, there will be plenty of CEMS events. I can also recommend gettting the Gym Membership as it even includes sports classes like Yoga, Pilates, Cycling etc. and offers a lot of variety for your workouts with multiple gyms on campus.

6. Testimonial

I truly had an amazing exchange experience at Cornell. What made my exchange so special were definitely the people, especially my fellow Cemsies there, with whom I hung out almost every day. Also, Cornell offers some really great and interesting classes and I loved the informality and low power distance with the professors and staff that allowed you to ask your questions more freely, enter discussions and even talk to professors in office hours or social gatherings. Cornell is generally full of surprises and amazing opportunities, if you keep your eyes open and look out for them, for example there was a talk by Boris Johnson and one by the former president of Iceland, a lecture free to all held by last year's Physics Nobel Prize winner, a Chainsmokers concert, and a Comedy Show held by Rainn Wilson (The Office). Overall, my time at Cornell offered a great mix of fun and meeting really interesting people as well as learning new things and spending time in nature, so it was a very balanced and interesting semester. :)