Brown vs Cornell Engineering

Cornell with no doubt

Cornell has the better engineering program but it will be easier to get into IB from Brown

Either or you'll be fine. I'd choose whichever school you like more and also factor in engineering vs whatever at Brown. Personally, I'd choose Brown. Other people are saying that Cornell has more alumni on the street and better on campus recruiting, which is true. But you won't have any problems getting anywhere on the street from Brown. Whereas at Cornell you'll have to put in extra work to differentiate yourself from all of the other people competing from Cornell, at Brown you'll have to put in some extra work to network with people if the firms don't come as often to Brown. I'm sure you'll have no regrets choosing either of these and the differences are so minuscule the only factors you should be considering are your potential happiness at either school and the quality of the experience you'd get.

I think it really comes down to personal preference here. I chose Brown because I didn't want to be in bumfuck nowhere, hated the idea of general eds, and had no interest in engineering. I later ended up in an engineering club, and from what I can tell our engineering department is definitely not the best.

That being said, if you're set on finance the grading here is definitely inflated (less so in engineering though). Every year we send a bunch of people to all of the BBs and quite a few to EBs and top MMs as well, and there aren't hundreds of people going for finance either. The lack of curricular requirements also makes it very easy to change/add majors should you decide to do something different halfway through.

You really can't go wrong either way, just go wherever you think you would fare best.