<p>What are your feelings about the cost of CMU? Its obviously expensive, but do you think that the price is appropriate? Many "college guides" say that CMU is overprecied...me and simplefallout were talking about this...</p>
<p>aww I'm sorry your guidance counselor feels that way, mine was actually encouraging to go to NYU. But then again, she knew it'd been my first choice/dream school for 10 years, and I seriously doubted I'd get into CMU through the waitlist. The cost WAS too high, even after we tried to appeal 2 times.
I was on another disadvantage for CMU's financial aid; they give the least amount of money to the waitlisted kids, which makes sense but still doesn't quite justify it.
IMO, any private institution that costs over 40 grand a year is going to be a huge burden on your family's and your own finances. As much as I don't want to apply for those big interest rate loans, I'm 90% sure I will have to. Schools sometimes don't seem to take a lot of other expenses into account, and that's the worst part, because they don't understand why you can't pay for the school, and hence comes the expensive bills every month.
Before being accepted, I'd never visited CMU's campus. It is a 6-7 hour drive for me, and my parents never got around to taking one of the weekends off and driving there and back. And there was me, who again, was telling them "why even bother? I'm not going to get in". But as soon as the phone call came telling me I got in, we took a drive that weekend. We didn't have anyone lead us around, but you might want to, because in some colleges they might ask whether you have visited the campus with an officer. I don't think it will guarantee you admissions, but it never hurts to let them see that you care and that you like the school.</p>
<p>I live in East Brunswick, NJ which is also about seven hours from Pittsburgh so I don't really want to drive all the way to Pitt. just to visit CMU. My parents know some people in Western PA, so maybe next time we go and visit them we'll stop by CMU again to make an "official" visit.</p>
<p>You should be happy that you are going to CMU, it is ranked much higher than NYU. However, if you were really looking forward to living in NYC I could understand your disappointment.</p>
<p>I agree with you on the topic of financial aid. Just because your parents make X amount of money and have a big house worth Y dollars schools feel that they should be able to pay for your college with no probelms at all. Most of the time, this is not the case. What can we do though...<sighs></sighs></p>
<p>I'm from South River :)</p>
<p>Wow...really?</p>
<p>Thats pretty cool we're like five minutes away from each other.</p>
<p>I took my SAT II exams in South River High School in the beginning of this month. Its pretty cool, you guys have like all the schools in one place, and it's hidden in a residential area. Our school is pretty lame and a lot of the kids are very annoying.</p>
<p>How big was your graduating class?</p>
<p>CMU is expensive (obviously). Is it worth it? I don't know - if I had to pay for it myself with loans and such I'd say it depends on your other options. I was lucky in that my grandparents set aside money to pay for all of their grandkids' college educations. So again this is something I'm not really the person to ask about.</p>
<p>Wow...you have ncie gradnparents Kazema...lol...</p>
<p>But seriously...that's pretty cool.</p>
<p>My biggest fear (althougth it would be a good situation) is that I get a full ride to Rutgers and get into JHU, CMU, and UVA. Then I would really have a hard decision to make...</p>
Kazema, from your post I got a sense that you need to be able to qualify for pre-med at CMU based on probably your SAT II scores. Is that true? I thought that anybody wishing to do pre-med could declare pre-med.