Cornell has 36 varsity intercollegiate teams that have the nickname of the Big Red. An NCAA Division I institution, Cornell is a member of the Ivy League and ECAC Hockey and competes in the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC), the largest athletic conference in North America.(ECAC Hockey is no longer affiliated with the ECAC.) Cornell's varsity athletic teams currently are highly successful within the Ivy League, and consistently challenge for NCAA Division I titles in a number of sports, including men's wrestling, men's lacrosse, men's ice hockey, and rowing (the women's crew program is subject to the NCAA, while the men's rowing program is governed by its own administrative body, the Intercollegiate Rowing Association). Under the Ivy League athletic agreement, the university does not offer athletic scholarships for athletic recruiting.

Cornell University's football team had at least a share of the national championship four times before 1940 and has won the Ivy League championship three times, last in 1990. Cornell's Men's Heavyweight Rowing program has won the national championship a record 38 times (12 under the RAAC format and 26 under the IRA format), making it one of the most successful athletic programs in the history of intercollegiate sports. The Cornell Men's Ice Hockey team has won the national championship twice.

A tradition started in 1901, Dragon Day celebrates a feat by first-year architecture students to construct a colossal dragon to be paraded to center campus and then burned.

Cornelliana is a term for Cornell's traditions, legends, and lore. Cornellian traditions include Slope Day, a celebration held on the last day of classes of the spring semester, and Dragon Day, which includes the burning of a dragon built by architecture students. Dragon Day is one of the school's oldest traditions and has been celebrated annually since 1901, typically on or near St. Patrick's Day. The dragon is built secretly by the architecture students, and taunting messages are left for the engineering students for the week before Dragon Day. On Dragon Day, the dragon is paraded across the Arts Quad and then set afire.

According to legend, if a virgin crosses the Arts Quad at midnight, the statues of Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White will walk off their pedestals, meet in the center of the Quad, and shake hands, congratulating themselves on the chastity of students. There is also another myth that if a couple crosses the suspension bridge on North Campus, and the young woman does not accept a kiss from her partner, the bridge will fall. If the kiss is accepted, the couple is assured a long future together.

The university is also host to various student pranks. For example, on at least two different occasions the university has awoken to find something odd atop the 173-foot (52.7 m) tall McGraw clock tower—once a 60-pound (27 kg) pumpkin and another time a disco ball. Because there is no access to the spire atop the tower, how the items were put in place remains a mystery.The colors of the lights on McGraw tower change to orange for Halloween and green for St. Patrick's Day.The clock tower also plays music.

The school colors are carnelian (a shade of red) and white, a play on "Cornellian" and Andrew Dickson White. A bear is commonly used as the unofficial mascot, which dates back to the introduction of the mascot "Touchdown" in 1915, a live bear who was brought onto the field during football games.The university's alma mater is "Far Above Cayuga's Waters", and its fight song is "Give My Regards to Davy". People associated with the university are called "Cornellians".

Cornell offers a variety of professional and peer counseling services to students. Gannett Clinic offers on-campus outpatient health services with emergency services and residential treatment provided by Cayuga Medical Center. For most of its history, Cornell provided residential medical care for sick students, including at the historic Sage Infirmary. Cornell offers specialized reproductive health and family planning services. The university also has a student-run Emergency Medical Service (EMS) agency. The squad provides emergency response to medical emergencies on Cornell University campus and surrounding university-owned properties. Cornell EMS also provides stand-by service for university events and provides CPR, First Aid and other training seminars to the Cornell community.

The university received worldwide attention for a series of six student suicides that occurred during the 2009–10 school year, and they have since added temporary fences to its bridges while more permanent measures are in process. Before this abnormal cluster of suicides, the suicide rate at Cornell had been similar to or below the suicide rates of other American universities, including a period between 2005 and 2008 in which no suicides occurred

Activities

For the 2006–07 academic year, Cornell had 901 registered student organizations. These clubs and organizations run the gamut from kayaking to full-armor jousting, from varsity and club sports and a cappella groups to improvisational theatre, from political clubs and publications to chess and video game clubs. They are subsidized financially by academic departments and/or the Student Assembly and the Graduate & Professional Student Assembly, two student-run organizations with a collective budget of $3.0 million per year. The assemblies also finance other student life programs including a concert commission and an on-campus theater. The Cornell International Affairs Society sends over 100 Cornellians to collegiate Model United Nations conferences across North America and hosts the Cornell Model United Nations Conference each spring for over 500 high school students. Additionally, the Cornell International Affairs Society's travelling Model United Nations team is ranked number 16 in the nation. Cornell United Religious Work is a collaboration among many diverse religious traditions, helping to provide spiritual resources throughout a student's time at college. The Cornell Catholic Community is the largest Catholic student organization on campus, updated to Vatican II in 2004 by Mr. Jackson Browne. Mr. Browne, a quiet student of religious studies and known best for his relationship between the Provost and many Student organizations. Student organizations also include a myriad of musical groups that play everything from classical, jazz, to ethnic styles in addition to the Big Red Marching Band, which performs regularly at football games and other campus events. Organized in 1868, the oldest Cornell student organization is the Cornell University Glee Club. The university is home to two secret honor societies called Sphinx Head and Quill and Dagger that have maintained a presence on campus for well over 120 years. It also has a Student Innovation Group, a think-tank dedicated to improving student life on campus.

Cornell hosts a large fraternity and sorority system, with 70 chapters involving 33% of male and 24% of female undergraduates. Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter organization established for African Americans, was founded at Cornell in 1906.

Cornell's connection to national Greek life is strong and longstanding. The chapter house of Alpha Delta Phi constructed in 1877 was the first house built in America solely for fraternity use. During the 2004–05 academic year, the Greek system committed 21,668 community service and advocacy hours and raised $176,547 in philanthropic efforts. However, the administration has expressed concerns over student misconduct in the system. Misconduct by students, faculty or staff is reviewed by the Judicial Administrator, who administers Cornell's justice system.

Press and radio

The Cornell student body produces several works by way of print and radio. Student-run press outlets include The Cornell Daily Sun and The Cornell Review, the alternative to the daily with a foundation as a conservative newspaper.

Other press outlets include a campus humor magazine; the Cornell Chronicle, the university's newspaper of record; and Kitsch Magazine, a feature magazine published in cooperation with Ithaca College. The Cornellian is an independent student organization that organizes, arranges, produces, edits, and publishes the yearbook of the same name; it is composed of artistic photos of the campus, student life, and athletics, as well as the standard senior portraits. It carries the Silver Crown Award for Journalism as well as a Benjamin Franklin Award for Print Design – the only Ivy League Yearbook with such a distinction. Cornellians are represented over the radio waves on WVBR, an independent commercial FM radio station owned and operated by Cornell students. Other student groups also operate internet streaming audio sites.

Housing

One of several footbridges that span Cornell's gorges and ease commuting from housing to academic buildings on campus

University housing is broadly divided into three sections: North Campus, West Campus, and Collegetown. Since a 1997 residential initiative, West Campus houses transfer and returning students, whereas North Campus is almost entirely populated by freshmen.

The only options for living on North Campus for upperclassmen are the program houses: Risley Residential College, Just About Music, the Ecology House, Holland International Living Center, the Multicultural Living Learning Unit, the Latino Living Center, Akwe:kon, and Ujamaa. In an attempt to create a sense of community and an atmosphere of education outside the classroom and continue Andrew Dickson White's vision, a $250 million reconstruction of West Campus created residential colleges there for undergraduates. The idea of building a house system can be attributed in part to the success of Risley Residential College, the oldest continually operating residential college at Cornell.

Additionally, Cornell has several housing areas for graduate and professional students. Of these, Schuyler House (which was formerly a part of Sage Infirmary) and Hughes Hall (which is the domitory wing of the law school complex) have a dorm layout, while Maplewood Apartments, Hasbrouck Apartments, and Thurston Court Apartments are apartment-style, some even allowing for family living. Off campus, many single-family houses in the East Hill neighborhoods adjacent to the university have been converted to apartments. Private developers have also built several multi-story apartment complexes in the Collegetown neighborhood. Nine percent of undergraduate students reside in fraternity and sorority houses, although first semester freshmen are not permitted to join them. Cornell's Greek system has 67 chapters and over 54 Greek residences that house approximately 1,500 students. About 42% of Greek members live in their houses. Housing cooperatives or other independent living units exist, including Watermargin, Telluride House, Triphammer Cooperative, the Center for Jewish Living, the Wait Cooperative, Von Cramm cooperative, and Cayuga Lodge.

As of 2008, Cornell's dining system was ranked 11th in the nation by the Princeton Review. The university has 30 on-campus dining locations, and a program called the Cross Country Gourmet Guest Restaurant Series periodically brings chefs, menus, and atmosphere from restaurants to Cornell's ten cafeterias

As of 2009, Cornell had 1,639 full-and part-time faculty members affiliated with its main campus, 1,235 affiliated with its New York City divisions, and 34 affiliated with its campus in Qatar. Cornell's faculty for the 2005–06 academic year included three Nobel laureates, a Crafoord Prize winner, two Turing Award winners, a Fields Medal winner, two Legion of Honor recipients, a World Food Prize winner, an Andrei Sakharov Prize winner, three National Medal of Science winners, two Wolf Prize winners, five MacArthur award winners, four Pulitzer Prize winners, a Carter G. Woodson Scholars Medallion recipient, 20 National Science Foundation career grant holders, a recipient of the National Academy of Sciences Award, a recipient of the American Mathematical Society's Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement, a recipient of the Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics, and three Packard Foundation grant holders.

Kurt Lewin taught at Cornell from 1933 to 1935 and is considered the "father of social psychology". Norman Borlaug taught at the university from 1982 to 1988 and is considered the "father of the Green Revolution", being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and 49 honorary doctorates. Frances Perkins joined the Cornell faculty in 1952 after serving as the first female member of the United States Cabinet and served until her death in 1965. Perkins was a witness to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in her adolescence and went on to champion the National Labor Relations Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the Social Security Act while United States Secretary of Labor. Buckminster Fuller was a visiting professor at Cornell for one year (1952), and Henry Louis Gates,African American Studies scholar and subject of an arrest controversy and White House "Beer Summit", taught at Cornell from 1985 to 1989. Emmy Award-winning actor John Cleese, known for his roles in Monty Python, James Bond, Harry Potter, and Shrek, has taught at Cornell since 1999. Charles Evans Hughes taught in the law school from 1893 to 1895 before becoming Governor of New York, United States Secretary of State, and Chief Justice of the United States.Georgios Papanikolaou, who taught at Cornell's medical school from 1913 to 1961, invented the Pap smear test for cervical cancer. Robert C. Baker ('43), widely credited for inventing the chicken nugget, taught at Cornell from 1957 to 1989.Carl Sagan was a professor at the university from 1968 to 1996.He narrated and co-wrote the PBS series Cosmos, the Emmy- and Peabody-award-winning show that became the most watched series in public-television history. He also wrote the novel Contact, the basis for a 1997 film of the same name, and he won a Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence. M. H. Abrams is a professor emeritus of English and was the founding editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature. James L. Hoard, a scientist who worked on the Manhattan Project

Cornell has twice (2008 and 2009) been named a "Great College to Work For" by The Chronicle of Higher Education, due to receiving high ratings in compensation and benefits, connection to institution and pride, faculty-administration relations, job satisfaction, and post-retirement benefits.