Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art

Date: May 10 2008
Major: Chemical Engineering (This Major's Salary over time)
Cooper is all it is cracked up to be, as long as the people you interview with know the school. If they don't know the school then you might as well tell them you went to a SUNY school or other state school since it won't make a difference since they are not aware of Cooper's quality. However, if they DO know Cooper, you will be in like flint. Having it on my resume has helped me quite a bit in my career path.

One of the first things they tell you when you get in Cooper is that is very hard to get into the school, but it is even harder to stay in. There is such a high dropout/transfer rate in the first year it is surreal. If you do succeed in graduating, your GPA won't be great but I will tell you this, you will definitely have the skills to succeed in the real world. I was a Chem Engineering major and I can tell you that Cooper really taught me how to write a quality lab report as evidenced by my performance in my graduate studies.

You will see a Campus rating on the page here. They might as well just remove that line completely - there is no campus. There are a total of five buildings, including the freshman dorms, which are contained in 2 Manhattan blocks (3rd ave and 6th thru 3rd ave and St. Marks). If you are looking for campus life, greek life and all that college fun stuff, don't goto Cooper. There is no grass, two fraternities, one sorority, no "organized" NCAA sports, etc.

Besides the fact that Cooper doesn't have the funds or the student body necessary to support a field of extracurriculars, there is just too much school work to even consider participation - unless of course you don't mind having your grades suffer more than they already are.

One major positive of the lack of a campus and the school being so small is that the transition from High School to Cooper is rather easy. I was at a High School where the average class size was 20-25, my entire class was 150 students, everyone was familiar with one another, and all my classes were in one building. Cooper was the exact same way .