Carnegie Mellon vs Brown social atmosphere.

Yes, I’m still a student here. My older sibling was also a CMU student and, during his sophomore year, he thought that he wanted to switch out of CMU for social reasons. Basically he wanted to be at a more social school (he likes parties more than I do). He didn’t end up switching because his academics and athletics at CMU were important to him, plus I think he realized that most of the other schools he would want to transfer to would have similar social settings to CMU.

I totally, totally understand why you’d want to transfer. I spent all four years of high school with enough real friends to count on one hand because I just didn’t connect with the majority of my school. I don’t find this to be the case at CMU. While CMU is a very academically rigorous school and it’s no party school by a long shot, there’s definitely a certain kind of student that is attracted to CMU which, from what I’ve heard, is different than many students at JH. CMU is definitely a quirky school.

A negative of CMU is that it is hard to get into art or design classes unless you’re in one of those programs. In which case, maybe Brown would be a better choice.

In full disclosure, from a registrar standpoint it’s simple to take RISD courses, but from a scheduling standpoint it’s more difficult because RISD’s scheduling doesn’t match up perfectly with Brown - especially if you’re looking at a studio course where you might need a 6 or 8 hour block of time for the course. It depends on what other courses you’re taking. RISD winter session courses are probably the easiest to take since I believe they fall entirely within Brown’s winter break.

yeah the risd scheduling is a problem too.

Knittergirrl do you find it hard to make friends from your classes? is it mostly outside activities where you have met people? What are you studying at CMU?

I’m in Dietrich, major undecided but leaning towards creative writing (I’m a rising sophomore). I guess my friends at CMU are a mix of people from my classes, my dorm, and extracurriculars. I definitely don’t think it’s hard to be at least friendLY with people in my classes. I’ve made some good friends from certain classes, but from other classes I’m more at the level of casual acquaintances, but they’re still people I can get lunch with. I’m pretty introverted, usually, so sometimes it just takes getting out of my comfort zone to get to know people, which does make a difference.