Program in Real Estate Cornell University

What we look for in Applicants?

Many top graduate business admissions committees begin by looking at the numbers. The Cornell real estate admissions committee instead starts with you the individual applicant. Your ability to bring leadership to the real estate industry, passion for real estate, and your ability to contribute to the learning community at Cornell are all factors that can be emphasized over quantitative factors such undergraduate grade point averages and GMAT scores. Interviews, either in person or over the phone, are an important component of the Cornell Real Estate admissions process to assess an applicant’s full application potential. You can best understand what Cornell looks for in applicants by visiting our admissions criteria, which provides tips on successful application to the program. Applicants also can view the prior year’s class profile to gain a portrait of their potential future colleagues.

A Class Portrait of Cornell Real Estate

A hallmark of the Cornell Program in Real Estate is the interesting and diverse backgrounds, intellectual spark, and collegial attitudes shared among the students, who hail from Germany, Chile, Korea and elsewhere and have backgrounds ranging from architect to engineering to psychology. The admissions process focuses on admitting a class diverse in geography, academic and work background, and real estate career interests to insure a dynamic peer-to-peer learning environment. It is a selection process that emphasizes fit and development of a Cornell real estate community over individual test scores.

Students in the two-year program average 28 years of age, although high achieving, high potential students just out of undergraduate programs contribute as do those with considerable work experience. California, Texas, Illinois and New York are represented among the two-thirds of the students that are US residents, and roughly one-fifth bring families with them to Ithaca. International student diversity is a program priority as well, with eleven countries represented among the one-third of the students arriving from outside the US.

Students from many undergraduate majors have succeeded in the program. Architecture, business, economics, engineering, and finance are common backgrounds, particularly among real estate career enhancers, but computer science, English, law, psychology, philosophy and other backgrounds are also represented among applicants changing to a career in real estate. Most students have had some business or professional experience before enrolling, or at least a basic familiarity or family-based experience with the industry.

Class statistics depict a limited portrait of the personalities and future friends and colleagues that constitute the Cornell Program in Real Estate.