Carnegie Mellon vs Northeastern vs George Washington vs Stevens

College Search & Selection
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I need advice for my daughter that is currently trying to decide which college to attend. She has been admitted to Carnegie Mellon (ECE major), Northeastern (Computer Engineering and Computer science major), George Washington, and Stevens Insitute of Technology. I know the decision appears obvious based on the schools listed but there are a number of factors to consider:

Carnegie Melon
Pros: Clearly the top choice for academics.
Cons: The most expensive. No merit scholarship. Out of pocket cost of 50,000 per year.
Concerns: My daughter is not 100% convinced she wants this major. She may actually prefer Computer Science. I know it is extremely difficult to transfer into the Computer Science school.
Will she be stuck and unable to transfer if she is unhappy?
The other major concern is the workload. She enjoys working out, singing, and performing in drama. She would like to explore other interests and not feel like she needs to study nonstop to survive. Also, If she chooses to minor in something different (or even just join the theater club), will she be incredibly stressed? She wants to have a somewhat normal college experience.

Northeastern**
Pros: Well-ranked computer science/computer engineering program. The major she was accepted into is actually a dual major in both Computer Engineering and Computer Science (a plus).
The COOP program (not sure if this is positive or negative for us as it may add an extra year or summer classes)
My daughter got a merit scholarship for 14,000 that brings the out-of-pocket cost to 42,000. It may be less if she does some of her COOPs back home as we live near NYC.
Northeastern will probably allow her to easily switch majors if desired, as well as double major or explore other interests. If the workload is lighter, she will actually have more time to participate in extracurricular activities.
Great location and more well-rounded students (maybe??)

Cons: Doesn’t have the prestige of Carnegie Mellon
Not THAT much cheaper than Carnegie Mellon
May take longer to graduate and not the traditional college experience

George Washington
Pros: 45,000 merit scholarship each year (Clark Scholars Program recipient) but no need-based aid. Total cost is 35,000.
May be a more traditional college experience in a good location, less stress. Can put the extra money to a good grad school.
Cons: Not a very good ECE or computer science reputation.
What are the job outcomes compared to the other schools? Will she get any job offers compared to the Carnegie Mellon grads?

Stevens
Pros: 60,000 scholarship each year (55,000 plus 5,000 for travel or research). Out of pocket cost- 15,000ish
Location is good with lots of connections to NYC (where we live and where she hopes to live in the future).
Can use the extra money for grad school
Cons:
How can we say she chose Stevens over Carnegie Mellon!
May be a commuter school, not a traditional college environment
Not enough girls. Will she fit in? My daughter is actually a bit of a “girly-girl”.
What are the job outcomes compared to the other schools?

Any input would be appreciated, thank you.

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Actually, I would say GWU doesn’t offer a typical college experience because it doesn’t really have a campus while Stevens does have a campus and my understanding is that it isn’t commuter-heavy.

To me, the choose is between CMU and Stevens.

  1. You can pretty much assume she won’t be able to transfer in to SCS. CMU does have a bunch of CS-adjacent majors, though, that may be easier to transfer in to.

Why can’t you say you chose Stevens over CMU? For engineering, the difference just isn’t that big. Definitely not big enough to justify the large difference in cost. CMU would offer a lot more access to recruiting from high tech companies . . . but I still can’t justify the high difference in cost. Stevens grads do well financially (it’s location probably helps a lot). So my heuristic is that unless your net worth is in the 8 figures, Stevens is the easy decision. From a pure cost/benefit perspective, you can’t justify the other options.

That money can be useful in the future (CMU or an even better masters if she wants it; or invest it; in 4 decades, it will provide a decent chunk to enough to cover all of her retirement depending on how the market does)

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Stevens grads do well financially because they all end up as coders in the financial field around the city


Not sure engineers that pursue other tracks do as well 

I went there for a year 
 (a cpl decades back) 
 student body was very avg 
 professors were really good, but they couldn’t push the students enough - in honors physics we had 3 tests in the row with avg score of 60 
 I transferred after a year and was very happy I did 


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But at least she would be able to switch to CS at Stevens. And there are benefits to being a big fish in a small pond.

5

True 


However, ECE as a major is very close to CS - she’d have a nice overlap to begin with, and if she minored in CS or took CS electives, she’d graduate with a major that’s pretty much equivalent to CS - he resume won’t look any different, and, in-fact may look even stronger - EE guys take some hard core math for their major.

It’s about the money I think 
 Stevens gets ppl jobs 
 but it may not get the BEST jobs 
 however - if she goes there and would be the BEST - she’ll be just fine.

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Thank you for your reply. I know Stevens has a good reputation, especially if one wants to work in NYC. However, it hard to turn down such a prestigious school when I’ve heard the CMU grads are heavily recruited by top firms. You bring up a very good point about the money and that definitely is an issue. From an academic standpoint, I can see the decision would be between Stevens and CMU. However, we want her to have a good college experience all around (without excessive stress and some extracurricular activities). This is why were considering Northeastern and GW. I would love any thoughts on the stress culture at CMU.

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Did you transfer for any reasons other than the academics? Did you find that the students participated in other activities on campus?

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I felt I deserved a better school / peer group (I transferred to Cornell).
But at the time my parents had no income (we were FOB), so I graduated with
45k in loans only (20+ years go). Cornell set me up with a track that wouldn’t have been
available to me had I gone to Stevens. (Sales and Trading).

Same year top 5 kids from the Honors Program (incl me) transferred out
(Rice, Cornell, Cornell, MIT, CMU)

Stevens does do a pretty ridiculous job placing people - I had a summer internship in the city
the summer after my Freshman year (randomly with no connections) - and many of my friends also found internships that summer 
 that would have been unheard of even for Cornell.
After sophomore year, Cornell kicked in and I got a job that I couldn’t have got out of Stevens.

9

It really does sound like CMU vs Stevens unless there is more to the story.

Following up on PurpleTitan, there do seem to be a lot of computer science ‘adjacent’ majors at CMU. In other words, a lot of inter-disciplinary majors for which one or more of programming, data science, cyber security, etc. will be prominent.

Anecdotally, I have a friend who is a Stevens alum. His daughter chose Stevens over Olin with his full support at the time, but they were disappointed in Stevens during her time there. She graduated a year or two ago. I believe she was a comp sci or comp eng major.

That said, she does seem to be doing very well post-graduation.

In short, your daughter will be very employable, particularly in the NYC area, with a Stevens degree. I think if she wanted more geographically diverse options for employment I would think CMU would be worth more of a premium than if she wants to remain in the NYC area.

My daughter has also been accepted to CMU for engineering and the ease with which majors can be changed , or courses from other schools there taken, is important to her as well as she weighs her choices. I will follow this thread to see if more perspectives on that are shared.

Good luck.

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I feel like a sucker, but CMU.

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Thanks for sharing. Any thoughts about Northeastern? They have a combined CS/ECE degree that seems like a good combination since she is undecided about ECE and CS. Also, Northeastern has a great location, coop, and ease of changing majors (and probably less stressful). Is Northeastern really that much worse than CMU?

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Might as well stick with Stevens 
 especially given the px diff

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Northeastern does not have the “prestige” of CMU. That is the only “bad” thing about it. Many posters on CC will automatically recommend the most prestigious school.

Also it is possible to do a degree there in four years with two 6 month coops. It may require a half summer or two depending on what AP credits she may have. Doing a summer session is not a concern for students once they get into the college flow.

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I can speak for GW. If she has lots of non stem interests, and wants to be in a city , then GW would fit that bill, and they did offer decent money. Job opportunities and internship would likely be Government related.

CMU- I attended in the 80’s. Its so much more competitive now. Not sure about social life these days.
NE, you have to want the co-ops.

Stevens is just fine. There is a campus. if between CMU and saving money for Stevens, pick Stevens. If she changes her mind, she has the opportunity to switch.

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To be sure, it’s difficult, but not impossible to transfer into SCS at CMU. You wouldn’t want to start with that as your plan, but they lay out the criteria pretty specifically on the SCS website.

That said, there are lots of “CS-adjacent” majors and, in truth, as an ECE major a lot of the key courses will be the same. Some are very, very cool. And CMU ECE is very known and marketable of course.

CMU is not an easy place for sure (motto: “my heart is in the work”), but the “stress culture” idea is overstated, IMO. I have a junior there, and he works hard, certainly; but there’s a lot of regular college “stuff” going on all the time (pre covid). And the mix of art, drama, music, etc, people make for an interesting mix. And Tepper b-school is a big part of the campus. There’s a cohort of kids that come in dead-set on Google or Goldman, but there’s 90% of other kids who are not.

I can’t speak to the other schools, nor to the money aspect. But my son was similarly concerned about “working to hard all the time and not having fun” when he was deciding but I think he’s happy with the trade offs.

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I don’t know how much of an impact the relative prestige of the schools will make long term. From my perspective, the more prestigious / higher ranked school would generate more options (not necessarily always better . . . and, like choosing a college, the person will only choose one grad school or one job (at a time) so the benefits are hard to quantify). The less information one has the more one might rely on the ranking (as a proxy for options provided) and the cost (as a proxy for options taken away) to make a decision. It sounds like she knows where she wants to be in 5 years and that is a plus for Stevens. It also sounds like she might be interested in a tradition college experience which, I think, might be a plus for CMU.

I am afraid I know very little about Northeastern beyond the rankings and random tidbit gathered here. It sounds like the main thing going for Northeastern is the perception the workload would be lighter and, maybe, the COOPs.

I occassionally get into DC for work and park in a GWU garage there . . . the area seems nice. That is my extent of GWU knowledge. :slight_smile:

My daughter is in some instagram (I think) groups for the schools she is still considering (CMU, Cooper Union, Michigan, Barnard? - not sure on the last) and seems to be enjoying / learning from the CMU group. Your daughter might be interested if she is not already a participant. We also have a neighbor who is a sophomore at CMU that speaks highly of it.

17

Fit is important, especially if you’re going into a demanding major. You need a support system and the male/female ratio at Stevens may be a great dating statistic will your D find her people? Since she wants to end up in or around NYC she might enjoy having her college experience in a different city. Have you visited any of the campuses?

My S17 looked at Stevens and he liked it (and applied/was accepted) but felt the campus was cramped (although the NYC skyline view from the dining halls was magnificent) and the energy somewhat subdued. He ended up at Lehigh in their Computer Science/Business major.

One of his close friends is a senior at CMU and has loved his time there. Great research opportunities and relationships with professors. Supportive friend group and Pittsburgh right there. He does work hard but he’s that kind of kid.

This might be also worth a read Why you should avoid Stevens

It’s one opinion but it’s someone who is a current junior.

As far as Northeastern, I don’t know much about the CS or engineering departments. My D19 applied and was accepted but decided the transitory nature of having your friends coming and going due to coops wasn’t the college experience she wanted.

An accomplishment to have such great choices in any event!

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ouch 
 but it may still be ok to go there for 2 years for nearly free, get 3.8-4.0 GPA and Transfer Out. And get some internships on the way (they ARE good at that)

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True but transferring is quite disruptive. You’ve made friends, have a bf/gf, joined clubs, started research or a part time internship/job and you’re going to start over as a junior. Not always that appealing. It gets bandied about on CC as a good option but it’s far from guaranteed. So you might get “stuck” where you start.

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What does the extra $35k/year do to you and the rest of the family? Would you have to debt finance it? Or is it mom/dad have to hold on to a car for a couple more years? Do you have other children to worry about?

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