<p>Maybe down South no one has heard of CMU but everyone here in New York does it.</p>
<p>Unless money is a huge issue, go with CMU would be my advice, the academics and opportunities just don't compare.</p>
<p>Dima, CMU and Illinois are roughly equal in terms of Engineering education and resources. Overall, both universities are very highly respected. It really depends what the OP wants out of college. Illinois is a huge state university located in a college town. CMU is an average-sized private university located in a large industrial city. I would recommend the OP visit the two schools before making up his mind.</p>
<p>What's UIUC? Sorry.</p>
<p>I would go to georgia tech for a year or two, and then transfer. I know life isn't that good over there, but it will save you lots of money.</p>
<p>I would not say that Pittsburgh is a large industrial city. Industry in Pittsburgh has long been replaced by a revitalized cultural district, which has Heinz Hall (home of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra). It is urban, though. There are also sports venues for baseball, football and hockey. Of course there are lots of places to shop. I think it's sort of a medium-sized city, and the Oakland and Shadyside areas that surround CMU are certainly not industrial. CMU is about a 10 minute drive into the city, but a large park abuts the campus. Oakland is an urban college town (CMU, U.Pitt, Carlow and the nearby Duquesne) that is also home to the Carnegie Museums of Natural History and Art, the Carnegie Library, Carnegie Music Hall and Phipps Conservatory. (Can you tell that steel industrialists left alot of money here?!) Shadyside is an upscale urban neighborhood with lots of restaurants, boutiques and pricey housing. It would be best to visit.</p>
<p>lkf, Pittsburgh has certainly come a long way in the last few years. I went there in 1988, 1996 and in 2004. Each time I went, I was amazed at how much the city had changed. It is now a very liveable city. I considered CMU very seriously in 1996, when I was admitted into their doctoral Economics program. I decided not to pursue a PhD, but I was certainly impressed by the campus and the town.</p>
<p>I've only heard of CMU cause my physics teacher was a chemistry professor there :p Well honestly being from the mid-west and them not being up top on sports, I wasn't aware of it either untill doing some research on colleges and getting some rankings.</p>
<p>aw, at least I'm over with waiting for admissions, but not completely over as of yet. NEW PROBLEM, it feels like gambling my life away, about to settle on something that'll dictate my life forever. Which one is the better deal? NYU? I like adventure, but what's my GPA gonna be like! too expensive anyway. UCSD? boring school, too competitive, too many Asians to compete with (I'm Asian) UT Austin? boring school in Texas, ugh, but it's big and affordable. My world is split into three different roads, which one to choose! I cant help but feel guilty when I choose one over the other, thinking that I'll be letting a big opportunity fly away forver, some of you would probably agree with me. I wish I'm dead sometimes so I wont have to think about being old with a sucky life wishing that I should've gone to that other school and everything would've been perfect.</p>
<p>Alexandre, that's very interesting. I had never heard of UIUC until I got to this forum, and I guess I going to a top high school (Stuyvesant) where a lot of people go into tech (MIT, Cal Tech, Cornell, Olin and CMU are probably the most popular), I don't think much of schools I've barely heard of. I guess they just haven't had very good exposure here in NYC.</p>
<p>On another note, I know CMU has always been on the leading edge of robotics research.</p>
<p>UIUC: University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. You couldn't google it?<br>
But we call it U of I here.</p>
<p>I think Carnegie Mellon will be the school where you get the best education</p>