When I attended CMU in the early 1980s, many of their programs - engineering, comp sci, architecture, design, etc. - were total grinds, and it appeared that the university was trying to fail out the bottom 20% of each class. Is that still the case? What is the atmosphere like on campus?
My son is going to be applying to engineering or science programs in the Fall, and CMU would be a reach for him. I expect any engineering school to be demanding, but some schools are more student friendly than others (UofM Ann Arbor, for example, prides itself on high graduation rates), and I am curious if CMU has changed.
I would be particularly interested in feedback from current students or recent graduates.
Iâm glad someone else uses this term! My son intentionally avoided any school with that reputation. A school can be plenty hard, with full theory, without pushing volume to the point that it makes the whole experience drudgery. There are too many great programs that donât make 4 years miserable that produce very good engineers to put schools like that on the list.
I canât comment on CMU now. At the time my son applied, Mines, HMC, Cornell and Caltech all had that rep. Iâm sure there are others.
I visited CMU about 4 years ago with my son on a major college road trip. During a group tour, as we were standing on a patio overlooking the soccer field, a student walked by our tour group and loudly said to us, âHave the tour guides told you that we have the highest suicide rate in the country?â Everyone in the tour group immediately turned to the tour guides, who looked as if they had been smacked between the eyes; and one of them stammered, âWell, we have really good counseling services here!â It wasnât the most reassuring answer for a parent.
Now, this was a few years ago, and I donât know whether the statement about suicide rates was even remotely accurate (then or now). But it raised the point about the stress level among the student body; and today, with Covid, just how bad might it be? Maybe CMU does have really great mental health counseling services.
If you travel with your son to visit CMU, perhaps you could raise the subject with someone who might be able to address the issue: Just how much are the mental health counselors there in use, how much (if at all) have mental health issues on campus increased over the past year or two, and what resources are available to students who believe that they have a mental health problem that needs treatment? Is there a way to compare CMU to other peer institutions regarding the incidence of problems related to mental health?
This is not exactly an answer to the question that you originally posed; but this is an issue that probably should be raised more often than it is, and before your child enrolls at a school rather than afterwards.
We also toured 4 years ago with our D and I have to say that our impression was that students seemed very stressed and unhappy (engineering). My D didnât apply. (She felt the same way about my alma mater, Cornell).
Iâm an â87 ECE grad; my son is SCS â22 (with a minor in music). Neither of us would say itâs a âgrindâ.
It depends on the student for sure; and yes, the school motto is âmy heart is in the workâ - itâs no party school, but there are plenty of parties, and plenty of fun. And they encourage exploring multiple interests. CMU has a large business school, a world class drama program, tons of arts and humanities majors.
Is there work? Yes Are there times when thereâs a lot of work? Yes. Are some people stressed by the work? Sure. The environment is there to learn and stretch your mind. weâve found it a creative, caring and frankly amazing environment to launch from.
imo, MIT, Cornell, CMU, Caltech are very rigorous in engineering and CS. However, there are more pros than cons. Employers would prefer people from these schools because they know how hard the engineering curriculum is. Even if they dont, youll be more prepared to handle the tough workload.
All prestigious instituions in engineering(Stanford, MIT, Caltech, CMU, Cornell) have very rigorous engineering programs.
At CMU, there is an interdisciplinary focus as well. You can take a lot of different types of classes as an engineering major. You can business classes from Tepper for business and Information Systems(both are ranked top 10 for ug)
UMich and CMU have very similar graduation rates around 90%
There are two problems with these statements. First, rigor/preparation and over volume grind are not the same. MANY schools produce equivalent engineers.
Second, thereâs no evidence that employers prefer grads of those schools. Sure some do, but some have other pet schools. Look no further than the Directors of all the NASA bases (Edwards, JPL, Goddard, etc.). The sum total of NASA Directors with degrees from those institutions is zeroâŠZERO.
Iâm not saying they are bad schools. I am saying thereâs no objective evidence to back up those statements.
I know kids who are flailing in engineering at Drexel, U Conn, Hofstra- and the kid/parents intentionally chose those programs as being âless stressfulâ than some of the more competitive or well known programs.
I donât think itâs the school, I think itâs the kid. Level of preparation matters, math prowess matters, ability to multi-task when appropriate or to focus like a laser when appropriate- that matters. Weâre all supposed to pretend that every kid that scores a 620 Math SAT has test anxiety and thereâs no difference between a 620 and a 780. Or that getting a 3 on the AP Physics exam was a fluke, and not that the kid will be ill-prepared compared with the kids sitting next to him or her who scored a 5.
You know how your kid processes stress. You likely have a sense of how rigorous your kidâs prep has been in HS. Start there.
I know kids who graduated from MIT, Cornell, Cooper Union- allegedly the pressure cooker engineering programs- who had PLENTY of time for extra-curriculars and a social life, and now kids graduating from some tier two and three engineering programs who did nothing but grind.
If your kid doesnât want an intense, heavy studying four years of college, there are LOTS of things to major in that are not engineering btwâŠ
It is well known that the cake is baked by the time a student graduates from HS. Studies over and over have shown that you can put a high achieving student anywhere and they will thrive. Itâs just that the schools mentioned above donât accept students who arenât high achieving. People make the mistake then of saying itâs the school and not the student, but that is wrong.
Certainly there are benefits at the margins of having mostly high achievers. You can go a little faster (or in the unique case of Caltech, a lot faster). How fast do you need to go though? If you get through Continuum Mechanics for example, you get through Continuum Mechanics. Whether you do it quickly or a little more slowly, makes no difference. Itâs how well you master it that does.
Engineering is hardâŠeverywhere. It is also very egalitarian. If there was a lock on the âbestâ schools, theyâs be overrepresented in the top jobs. They arenât. The top students are.
I have similar concerns about CMU (for DS22). I understand that engineering is going to be hard across the board and ABET standardizes the field to a certain degree. Students will come in with varying degrees of preparation, discipline, stress management, executive functioning, etc. This is all useful to know. If a student will flounder at CMU, he could also struggle at a lower ranked school, and a high achiever could potentially bloom in any scenario.
Iâm still interested in the OPâs concern about CMU. In reviews and anecdotes, you hear whisperings of the intense, unhappy vibe there. Thus far, I havenât heard these kind of rumblings about other engineering schools. I often hear statements like, âitâs HARD,â but thatâs to be expected. The concerns at CMU are different⊠unhappy students, pressure cooker, competitive climate etc. goes beyond the run of the mill engineering complaints.
If the school isnât the issue, and the student is, does CMU attract a certain type of student? The motivated, competitive, overachievers who thrive on stress and prefer to intensify their own grind?
My kid didnât go to CMU (but had friends there) so I canât accurately describe the âvibeâ for you. But my sonâs experience at MIT suggests âdonât believe everything you readâ. It also had a reputation for unhappy, grind, intense, AND had some very sad incidents (a horrifying suicide) a few years before my son applied.
His experience suggests that what the university does institutionally makes a HUGE difference. MITâs pass/fail first semester takes the pressure off- all a kid needs to do is to show up, do the problem-sets, write the papers, take the final, and even a low C means âpassâ. Nice way to get acclimated to college level work. The university made a huge commitment to mental health; my son had a friend who needed intervention, the kids were expecting the usual âyou can get an appointment in three weeksâ but they were wrong- appointment immediately, full range of health care providers were on the case ASAP. Deans who take calls at night, weekends. I had a mental health concern at one point- did not want to be âthat parentâ but ended up being that parent- and the Dean called me back within the hour, already had a list of possible âfixesâ for us to discuss. And he reached out to my kid without alluding to the conversation with a parent as the trigger (and problem resolved quickly). He claimed the RA had called (which was plausible but not what happened).
So rather than going by what you read online (misery loves company) Iâd suggest exploring what is available institutionally. How do professors respond when a kid flunks the midterm? How hard is it to find a TA for some informal tutoring in addition to official review sessions? How seriously does the administration take funding health care- emergent, assessment, mental health? If a collegeâs response is to refer ALL issues to external providers in the community, that might be fine- but what if your kid doesnât have a car, canât get to a counseling session at 2 pm when it conflicts with a lab? Or doesnât want you to know that heâs seeing a therapist so going through your insurance isnât an option? We never saw a bill from university health care⊠kid was on their planâŠ
Recreation- are the clubs, etc. only open to kids who are already participating at a high level? Is there golf for kids who just want to bang around a bucket of balls with their friends, or are university facilities only for talented golfers? Is there âbush leagueâ frisbee, debating, swing dancing, music performance for kids who love to participate but arenât very good? We found that these made a difference.
Drinking culture- is there enough to do on weekends for kids who donât want to start partying on Thursday at 3 pm? This is really important.
Having an ME degree from â86 and being on campus pretty regularly pre-pandemic, it seems to me that the overall work environment and âvibeâ isnât much different than what my D describes at Purdue (ME degree next month) (other than the demographics). Or what her HS classmate described at MIT when he visited last summer, though that was a brief conversation.
Sure, itâs a lot of work. Any quality engineering school will be. I donât know that CMU will be substantially different.
I think thereâs a difference between a lot of work and how the student body in general seem to be mentally. I remember my son telling us about getting the answer key for his first Fluid Mechanics II weekly homework assignment at Cal Poly. It was 96 handwritten pagesâŠ10 problems, each with roughly a 10 page answer. They had that much work every week for one class. They could get negative points on labs. Yes, a score below zero. Yet, they all seemed adapted, happy and in it together. No student worked harder than that professor did.
I donât know if we had some sort of Spidey Sense, but we could sense campuses where students were generally happy and the campuses where they really werenât. When touring RPI my son would ask random students on campus why they picked the school. Not one said anything other than they gave them a good scholarship. Nothing about classes, labs, other students, clubs, the town. Nothing. They all seemed like they were just biding their time. Tufts, Cal Poly and WPI were just the opposite. Everyone seemed to be exuding happiness. Hopefully a visit will help him know if itâs a good fit or not.
If thereâs a lot of work and some students will be in the bottom quartile (and quintile, decile, etc.) by definition at any school, some of these students will feel stressful (unless, of course, everyone is a given a gentlemanâs B or better at that school), wonât they?
Yes, the bottom quartile of kids will struggle anywhere and I agree that there is a different vibe at some schools. There is a difference between working hard and being unhappy.
My d has plenty of friends that have had to retake courses because of poor grades (and not just bottom). Memes go around with Neil Armstrongâs poor freshman grades and there is an âIâll do better next time â mentality. Tons and tons of academic supports. There is also an attitude of resiliency and that the struggles make you stronger. We saw more of âmy life is overâ type responses at repeating a course at some of the other schools we saw.
I realize because of covid this wasnât possible but for the future, go eat in a dining hall. Are students sitting together talking or relaxing, or is everyone sitting alone with their noses in a laptop?
Sit in on classes. What are students doing before and after? How are they interacting with the prof? Watch students walking to their classes. Are they relaxed? Smiling/laughing? Playing games? Listening to music?
And I donât believe it is a function of tier of school. We sat in on engineering classes at JHU right before exam week and the students still looked relaxed and happy. Lots of casual banter between themselves and the prof.
Thereâre unhappy students due to academics on any campus, unfortunately. Some of them also tend to make their views known publicly more often than those who are content. Collaborative culture and mechanism to deal with mental issues are obviously important, but a student can avoid a lot of that stress if s/he can find her/his academic fit.
I donât think itâs fair to assume the only ones who stress are in the bottom quartile. The indication I get is that the said âgrind schoolsâ arenât enjoyable for lots of students regardless of where they fall on the decile ranking.
@momofboiler1 College research in covid times is not easy! Without the kinds of campus visits you describe at JHU, weâre left to research on Niche, Reddit, Unigo and the likes. Misery is well-articulated in anonymous online forums for sure. CC offers the experience of parents who researched pre-covid. Itâs helpful to flush out âreputationsâ through conversations like this. @JackH2021 glad you initiated the conversation!