Cornell Days Brings Pre-Frosh To Campus

Prospective students and their parents have been flocking to campus for Cornell Days, which started April 9 and continues through April 20. Cornell Days is jointly run by the Cornell Red Carpet Society, which manages the overnight hosting, and the Cornell University Ambassadors, who plan the daytime events.
According to Laura De Santis ’09, co-chair of RCS, of the over 1000 people came to campus for Cornell days on Friday, 600 were students — the largest one-day turnout so far.
“It’s been going fabulously, everything has been going really smoothly and we’ve had nothing but positive feedback so far,” De Santis said.
Many prospective students arrived at Cornell this weekend to take part in the programs over the week. Many said they had positive first impressions of Cornell.
“I had only seen pictures and brochures, but when I actually came here and saw the gorges and the waterfalls I thought it was amazing, I thought, ‘I want to live here,’” said Roca Banerjee, a prospective student from Hamden, Conn.
“I’m so happy to be here,” agreed Doretha Dawkins, a prospective student from Concord, N.C. Even the weekend chill didn’t faze Dawkins, who is used to temperatures around 60 to 70 degrees at this time of the year.
De Santis said that as part of Cornell Days, the RCS and Cornell Ambassadors planned an array of activities for students to attend in addition to the activities normally occurring on campus. They tried to set up opportunities for prospective students to interact with current students through events such as lunches with ambassadors, ice cream socials and bowling games. Over 400 female hosts and 200 male hosts that are members of RCS participated in overnight hosting.
One of the events held last Friday was a panel by the Cornell Undergraduate Research Board to answer questions from prospective students and their parents about research opportunities at Cornell.
“We talked about research at Cornell,” said Lisa Opdycke ’11, one of the students on the panel. “There was a panel of seven of us including faculty members and we talked about our own projects and how we got involved in the fields we were in and then answered questions”
The planning for these events started in the Fall semester; there are also 24 host-training sessions throughout the semester to prepare hosts for the prospective students.
“We’ve got a pretty great response. A lot of our hosts are really enthusiastic about Cornell Days because they were hosted when they were prospective students,” De Santis said.
Expect to see prospective students and their families wandering around campus for the next couple of weeks as they partake in Cornell Days.