<p>Hi, I'm a long-time lurker so this is my first post. I'm kind of facing some financial difficulties so I was wondering what the student can do to make it more affordable?</p>
<p>Is it possible (if at all?) to finish a CMU engineering degree in three years, with maybe two minors?</p>
<p>If your work study is limited to a certain amount, can you work more than that? The admissions office told me you can work a maximum of 20 hours a week. Do people often do this and survive? Does this get taken out of your aid after a certain amount?</p>
<p>Thank you for any help and suggestions!</p>
<p>It’s possible to do an engineering degree in three years, I knew a guy from Korea or somewhere like that attending CMU on a government fellowship where for every year he went to school he had to work for them for two years so he loaded up crazy amounts of classes and got through. I don’t imagine he had much time for minors other than maybe one he might have been able to pick up with some careful planning of distribution requirements.</p>
<p>Hm. Does that mean it is possible to finish the master’s within four years?</p>
<p>Another friend of mine did a BS/MS in four years. It’s easier than graduating in 3 years since you can start your MS spring of junior year. I probably could have done my MS in 4 years as well, but I knew I was going to grad school and felt not taking loans out for an extra semester was a better choice than getting one MS in Materials Science & Engineering and another in Materials Science.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies! Do you happen to know about the job question?</p>
<p>It’s certainly possible to work 20 hour weeks, but I don’t know if it would be along with everything else unless you’re incredibly efficient at doing work and are stellar at time management. If you do want to do work-study, though, I’d recommend shooting for desk attendant jobs. If you work during off-hours you’ll hardly be bothered and you can use the time to do your homework.</p>
<p>Thanks again for the reply RacinReaver! Is it more feasible to get a minor or two with the masters in four years? Or still no? Is this something you need to set up with an adviser first/special program? </p>
<p>Does anyone know if students have successfully worked 20 hours a week at CMU?</p>
<p>Also, are there any departmental scholarships or scholarships you can get from the school while there?</p>
<p>OP: You would want to get advisor’s advise to try to push so hard. DS close friend did get a through with a Mathematics BS/MS in four years plus a Philosophy degree. However he started at near at a junior math level. You however may start out a freshman level and try to jam sequential-prerequisite courses as concurrent courses. Your classmates will be different in each course vs students who work together as a unified cohort.</p>
<p>Very true what LongPrime said about having different classmates in each course. CMU is hard enough normally, but if you don’t have a solid group of friends to work on problem sets with it’s going to be even tougher.</p>
<p>Also, my friend with the MS in two years got a minor in photography. I got a minor in physics and finished in 3.5 years (I only had one class I was required to take my senior year, otherwise I could have graduated a year early).</p>
<p>Thank you for all the replies. I guess my main question now is, is it worth it? Right now I’m deciding between Carnegie Mellon and my state school, Stonybrook (New York), costs being the main factor. I visited the latter today which will cost around 13k a year while CMU will cost around 30k a year (a bit less). The main thing is I kind of want to pursue other interests at the same time, for example industrial design (which isn’t offered at Stonybrook) and business/management, maybe start a company someday. The reputation of CMU engineering is a big plus. However, I think that the engineering curriculum is generally pretty standardized? - so I’m can’t prove for sure how much of a difference CMU vs Stonybrook is. My dad in particular thinks the extra cost isn’t worth it so if he doesn’t come through I’m looking at at least 60k in loans. </p>
<p>Any opinions?</p>
<p>Opinion:
I think that the more “difficult” engineering schools are more difficult in depth and because the of this difficulty, the students are forced to work together, thus also getting a wider aspect of the problems. The benefit, students broaden their thinking, building people relationships and people skills.</p>
<p>In a school like CMU, where there is a self-selection, an admission selection, a peer selection, and a financial selection, students are more driven to attain a certain level of achievement. This may not be so with a larger school where the law-of-large-numbers is more important in producing good engineers. </p>
<p>It is only an opinion.</p>
<p>Possible, but you better be super confident in your abilities. I’ve seen 4 year MBA/CS or Masters. CS requires a minor, and has less credits. But, those people did not do work study (they had summer internships though), and they were quite ahead with ap credits, experience.</p>
<p>Some who have graduated in 3 years have regretted it because you need to take heavy course loads. Some have difficulty making it through at a normal pace in 4 years. I would be cautious with that amount of pressure…</p>
<p>Hm. A friend of mine mentioned that the fifth year Masters at many schools often results in a lot more scholarships and such to help cover tuition/Ta-ing or something of the sort. Is that true at CMU? </p>
<p>Are there plenty of paid internships over the summer for CIT students? Would this be able to cover a significant portion of the loans?</p>
<p>One of my major worries is that I might want to attend graduate school, although maybe not immediately after undergrad. Does it make sense to take such significant debt in the undergraduate portion?</p>
<p>(I’m sorry for all of the questions…I’m just having a really hard time making a decision as my family and I really know little about life after high school)</p>
<p>If you’re going to graduate school for a PhD in the sciences/engineering it should be funded, so you won’t need to take out any extra loans while you’re there. If you want a MS you’ll generally have to pay for it.</p>
<p>There are lots of internships for students over the summer which would help offset the loans a bit, but $60k in debt is a lot of money. Keep in mind that tuition will also go up a bit each year, too. I have a number of friends here in grad school that went to state colleges due to finances, and they turned out perfectly well. I think the main difference is the amount of initiative required on your part to get opportunities at a large state school versus what you’ll have at CMU.</p>