The Big Red Barn Graduate and Professional Student Center

This is my favorite place on campus.
$ 1 beers and popcorn, lots of fun student events, and great company. The staff is always so friendly and nice!
It’s for Cornell graduate students only, but if you are a graduate student, you should go!

Seems a bit overrated here. None of the sandwiches ever really seem to turn out as good as they sound, the coffee isn’t anything to write home about, and it’s often really crowded for lunch. I’ve found the attitude of some of the employees really gruff and unwelcoming, too — although others are perfectly nice. Wouldn’t detour from anywhere located near a more convenient eatery to fill up here, in any case.

Cheap beer ($ 1) and cheap or free snacks? What else can you ask for.
Tuesday night trivia is pretty great too (free popcorn and soda).

$ 1 beers on Friday AND free snacks!!! This is my grad-​school heaven.
Best to come here when it’s sunny out so you can sip your beer on the grass.

The best thing about being a grad student at Cornell is the access to really cheap beer.
I’ve been here a few times throughout the semester for TGIF. A dollar for a cup of beer cannot be beat. Drinking beers outdoors in the fall foliage is pretty nice too. It’s a great place to socialize with other grad students at the end of a busy week. They have free snacks like popcorn and tortilla chips, and sometimes they’ll have things like free egg rolls and chili.
There are lots of food options too if you drop by for lunch. I have yet to try them (as well as other Cornell campus food…) but they all look pretty decently priced and seem more awesome than some Collegetown options.
We get a lot of emails from this place listing all the events that happen every week so if you ever need a break from studying, you can find lots of events here like free snacks, salsa lessons, holiday events, and of course cheap beer.

My four stars pertains only to the location as a meeting/​study area. It’s better than libraries. Free popcorn (gmo? probably … hope but I doubt they will go organic), enough space to spread out stuff, and outlets, if you look hard enough for them … bathroom? right around the corner. Hungry? there are something edible there…
Like the other reviewer noted, you can’t expect this place to have an amazing gourmet food, but if you are extremely hungry, they have something to satiate your pang. I wouldn’t personally go for them though, because Cornell in general doesn’t seem to care much about avoiding gmos (indeed impossible to avoid them, isn’t it, given they are almost in all commercial products in the form of additives … some profs here even advocate for it, holy cow) and pesticides residues and stuff like that … well, I hope they’ll take a righteous notice and a big change to all of that. Questionable, though … look at «Bill and Merinda Gates Blding» under construction — those people support gmos in Africa … claims that they are going to help stave off hunger. Not! That guy Bill gates seems to have some sort of gradiose complex these days … supporting «new and safer» nuclear reactor construction in China. In China! Sigh… anyway…
As with all campus buildings, parking is challenging. I recommend taking a bus #10 if from downtown get off at Goldwin Smith, hike up the little hill.

Dollar beers everyday after 2pm. How much more awesome can it get? I guess free beer is better, but we all know there aint no such thing as a free lunch — dollar beers get pretty darn close though!

The soups here are amazing. I’ve tried the tomato florentine, New England clam chowder, chicken noodle, turkey chili, and chicken gumbo. All of them are fantastic. They also have tomato bisque and minestrone. They alternate 2 soups a day.
Big Red Barn also lets you build your own sandwiches with all the usual ingredients. The premade ones don’t seem that good to me. I tried the turkey brioche, which seems like a popular choice considering how many people order it, but it was bad. Instead of thick slices of fresh avocado I got a sad tasteless green mush. The turkey itself wasn’t much better. My favorite sandwich to get here is a tuna melt because they have amazing tuna.
Other options include salads, some pasta dishes, and omelette wraps before 10:30am. The beef ravioli was pretty disgusting. They just have the ravioli sitting in a container in some red slop, and they heat it up and sprinkle some cheese on it before giving it to you. The beef inside the ravioli is unrecognizable as beef – it’s just a brown mushy substance.
There’s lots of seating, including outdoor seating.

I will always have a great fondness for this place.
I had an amazing «first date» here. He skipped class to extend our lunch to 3 hours. How sweet is that? There is a warmth that the BRBarn has… it just loves people. That’s the only way to describe it.
The boyfriend is gone, but the Big Red Barn remains… and all the memories implied.