<p>@ysbera, but seeing the way you’re torn between WashU and CMU, I’d say you’ve ruled out Imperial. Why?? </p>
<p>I ruled it out cos of its lack of name value when getting jobs in my country (it doesnt give much credit to UK unis altogether)</p>
<p>Oh I haven’t ruled out Imperial, I might go there, it depends if I meet my offer and if I like it after my visit. Hah I didn’t really write clearly, I am torn between WashU and CMU in the US but in my opinion Imperial is definitely one of the top universities in the world, ranked 6th by The Times and I would go there and probably to the States for grad. Your from Korea? I want to work in Asia after graduation, like China and HK and I think Imperial is definitely recognized in many places in Asia, especially HK and Singapore.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m from Korea-my offer from Imperial is unconditional 
I heard it’s more focused on academics, while on the other hand CMU is more industry-related.</p>
<p>yea, 4 years on the same course (engineering). But the thing about Imperial is that you can take classes/modules in business every year, especially in your 3rd and 4th year and that is a great thing for me because I just looked at the syllabus and before I thought you could only take classes in your course. </p>
<p>Between Imperial and CMU, my decision will be based on first meeting offer of Imperial, then which is more prestigious. Although CMU is really well known in US, however globally I would have to say Imperial is more famous (not exactly sure, and I am not biased). I have been told that to decide between UK and US universities, the most important factor other than prestige is what kind of college life you want. </p>
<p>BTW are WashU and CMU known in Korea? Do the academic, business people know them at least?</p>
<p>yeh they’re pretty well known…but still here the Ivies rule…something that I hope will change over the next few years…</p>
<p>isn’t CMU more widely known, besides Europe? (where it’s only natural that Imperial is more widely acknowledged)</p>
<p>and how different would college life in the UK/US be?</p>
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<p>Just so you know, you have equal if not more opportunities to do things like that at CMU. No matter what college your major is in, its not at all difficult to minor or take classes in the Tepper School of Business, or to minor or double major or at least take classes in any of the other colleges at CMU.</p>
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<p>Very different. Entry-level requirements are higher in the UK than in the US, basically because the A-Level curriculum for pre-engineering students is far more advanced than the standard U.S. High School diploma (roughly equivalent to first-year college-level math and physics in the States). </p>
<p>The main difference though is that, in the UK, one studies one single subject in depth for three or, in the case of engineering, 4 years (sometimes it is possible to study two related subjects simultaneously like mathematics and CS, or history and politics, but that is not common in engineering, certainly not at Imperial). In the US on the other hand, there are so-called “general education” or “core” requirements that force you to take classes in multiple different areas. You then choose one particular area to be your “major”. There is also the possibility of doing a “double major” (not very common in engineering though) or adding one or more “minors” to your “major” (basically by taking a minimum number of elective classes in select areas you want to “minor” in). Minors can be completely unrelated to your major (e.g. CS and music), which is impossible in the UK. </p>
<p>There is also a sharp difference in the way performance is assessed. In the US, courses typically last one semester (roughly 4 months) and performance assessment is on a continuous basis. Students are normally required to turn in homework every week, which counts towards your final grade, and there are multiple “midterms” or “quizzes” throughout the semester in addition to a final exam. A letter grade (A, B, C, etc.) is assigned to each class you take every semester. You are treated more like a school kid really, as opposed to an independent adult. Attendance in lectures/labs is compulsory and is verified by the professors. In other words, the system is more paternalistic and there is more guidance/supervision , like in High School. </p>
<p>In the UK on the other hand, lab practicals and lectures are routinely held/offered during the year and you may or may not be assessed for coursework. Most of your grade however will be determined by a bunch of final written exams (8 or so for engineering) that you take at the end of each year. Courses are normally modular and last a full academic year, with the different modules that you have studied assessed in the same (three-hour) final exam. As a result, it appears that most British students tend to “slack off” throughout the year compared to US students, but then face the additional stress of make-it or break-it final exams at the end of term. In the final years of your degree, you will be normally required to complete a major graduation project which will account for a significant percentage of your grade (in humanities subjects, that is replaced by a graduation thesis). </p>
<p>My opinion is probably biased, but I tend to think that undergraduate education in the UK is superior to that in the US as far as depth is concerned, mostly because, as I said, you study only one single subject in detail for the entire undergraduate course, instead of completing “general education” requirements. In graduate school, the reverse is true though. PhD programs in the US are far more intense than in Europe and the dissertations submitted by PhD candidates and their associated publications are on average of a much higher level.</p>
<p>wow, thanks for the great comparison! really helped me out a lot!!</p>
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My husband was really shocked that someone he was considering (from Britain) for a post-doctoral position got a PhD. without a single published paper.</p>
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<p>I think the flexibility and the freedom to explore in the US college system pave the way for superior work at the PhD level.</p>
<p>I think that bruno made a great general comparison, but there are certain things that are not uniform across the US higher education system, especially when considering CMU that he didn’t really address or mentioned differently because he was speaking in generalities.</p>
<p>For instance, while overall the entrance standards in the UK may be higher, for engineering especially at CMU I doubt you’ll find much difference because CMU is a fairly high-level engineering school. It’s also a research institution, so you’ll find a lot of research opportunities there as opposed to strictly theory based classes you may find at other universities.</p>
<p>In addition, CMU is known (and in fact this is a differentiating factor) throughout the US as a school that has an uncommon focus on your major. This is why you are required to apply to your specific school during admissions and not the university as a whole. There is a very minimal ‘core’ at CMU, and I think the classes they do require you to take are ones that are truly beneficial to all people receiving a degree - so nothing that you may perceive as ‘out there’ like studying a specific subset of literature or something. This is another facet that is somewhat related to CMU’s position as an international research institution - and that again allows undergraduates to get involved directly with their material instead of simply learning theory.</p>
<p>Another thing, and I cant speak for all US institutions, but I would tend to disagree that there is a paternalistic/high school-like system in college, at least at CMU. Whether or not to consider attendance as a factor is a professor-specific question, its their discretion whether to penalize you for not attending. Many professors, though, will not penalize you for not coming to lecture/recitation so long as you maintain a grasp of the material. In any case, its certainly much less rigid than high school.</p>
<p>I have joked that with all the AP credits my son had coming in, he is essentially getting a British education. He’s a computer science major and doing physics as his required minor. He took 1 World History Course, 1 general writing course and 1 technical writing course. Everything else has been computer science or physics or math courses that count for computer science. He’s happy about it.</p>
<p>Crazyshow,
I also felt about the same. Bruno made a great general comparison. But the strength of US system is that you <em>can</em> easily get away from the norm if you want to. Sure, the HS requirement in the US is a joke but for the brightest kids, there are probably more opportunities for advanced courses beyond A-level/AP and research in the US than UK.</p>
<p>General comments: I agree with most of what Sam Lee, Crazyshow, Mathmom and others have said. </p>
<p>Indeed, whereas general HS requirements in the US are a “joke”, a good spread of AP classes in the junior and senior years would give an American student the equivalent of a British or continental European pre-university education. In addition to a high GPA and good scores on the SAT, the London School of Economics for example requires from US applicants at least 4, preferably five, AP exams on relevant (full-year, as opposed to one semester) subjects, with grades 4 or 5. It is fair to assume that is what they would consider equivalent to a good spread of British GCSE’s plus 3 or 4 A-Levels. </p>
<p>On the issue of “paternalism”, I didn’t mean to imply that CMU or any other particular school in the US is paternalistic (maybe it was an unfortunate choice of words). I was just remarking that, for an European university student, the idea for example that one should turn compulsory homework every week or take 3 or four tests in one subject every semester sounds somewhat strange, because it is something one would associate more with High School than uni. That is not an uniform opinion though. </p>
<p>In Oxford and Cambridge for example, your grade is also determined almost solely by big final exams in the end of each year (sometimes, e.g. in most humanities courses, you have a prelim at the end of the first year and then take a new batch of final exams only at the end of the 3rd year !). Your graduation thesis or final graduation project is also a much bigger deal than in the US. Nevertheless, because of the Oxbridge system of tutorials/supervisions, you end up having to turn in work (essays or problem sheets) every week and discuss them with your tutor, even if that counts nothing for your final grade. I also heard that Imperial, under American influence, is now introducing more continuous assessment, like midterms to give students feedback on their performance.</p>
<p>Finally, on the issue of quality of PhD study in the US vs Europe, especially the UK, I believe sometimes it has to do more with money than educational philosophy. In the UK, research (i.e PhD) students are funded by government scholarships (from the research councils), which normally last 3 or 4 years. If a student does not graduate in 4 years, the university he/she attends is heavily penalized by a cut in the total funding they will get next year from the government. On average, UK students are expected to finish their PhDs in 3 years, with a few extra months allowed for thesis write-up and corrections.</p>
<p>Of course, it is not possible to come up with a substantial original contribution to knowledge and prepare it for publication in multiple peer-reviewed journals (with long review cycles) in 3 years only. It is basically unrealistic IMHO. That is why PhD work in the US tends to go deeper in my view than in the UK for instance. But, since I did my PhD in America (at CMU BTW, ECE/Signal Processing, with Jose Moura), my opinion is probably biased.</p>
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<p>My answer to this is it depends more on the person you’re talking to rather than the school itself.</p>
<p>We live about 6 hrs away from cmu by auto; my son graduated 3 yr ago so I’ve been answering ‘Carnegie Mellon’ for a long time. Some people haven’t heard of the place, I can tell by the blank stares. More have heard of it but don’t know it’s a high quality place. And probably an equal number know it’s a very good school. I’ve gotten ‘isn’t that ivy league?’ and ‘wow that’s a really prestigious school (exact word)’. But we’re in a kind of hick area of NJ, not the elite suburbs of NYC or Phila, so here if you say College of NJ, Rutgers, U of Delaware or god forbid Penn State, you’ll get people falling on the floor, they’re such amazing schools. Lots of the US is provincial, or regional like this. I can also say we’re about an hour from Phila and I can guarantee you plenty of people have no idea UPenn is a good school, and have never heard of Swarthmore or Haverford (less than 1 1/2 hrs away).</p>
<p>One of my son’s current co-workers, at the time a Princeton student, was asked by his interviewer why they should choose him over someone from MIT or Carnegie Mellon. This is anecdotal I know, and it was for a CS related position at their firm, but it does show the name CMU is out there in force where it matters. </p>
<p>Also, when you think how few people across the US and the rest of the world are actually accepted for engineering into Stanford or MIT, second best isn’t so bad. If these ‘rejects’ end up at CMU, Cornell, Berkeley, RPI, Harvey Mudd etc that isn’t too shabby in the grand scheme of things.</p>
<p>Who cares what HS students or ordinary people think? You should care about the recruiters and in that regard CMU is just as good if not better than Ivies. I was able to make it to Ibanking in this economy and I have no regrets. Woo Tepper!</p>
<p>lfecollegeguy, I, like my fellow graduates of 2007 are also all still employed. Many of whom are making a good deal of money. CMU has an excellent reputation with employers, across a variety of fields. My friends ranged from engineering and computer science to the humanities. All are employed in excellent careers at the moment.</p>
<p>CMU is a great school</p>
<p>Seriously, I wouldn’t worry about this at all. As a Dartmouth student, even with the Ivy league status of my school, half the people i talk to have never heard of it. tbh, only the really educated individuals…doctors, teachers, other ivy students know what it is. and i don’t let that bother me, because i know i’m going to one of the nation’s top schools, and whether or not it has MIT or Stanford’s street cred, it’s still just as good, if not better in some respects. just do what’s right for you, and you’ll be successful.</p>