<p>My son got admitted to CMUs SCS, Columbias SEAS, and Cornells School of Engineering. He wants to study computer science and possibly to minor in business. We cant decide between CMU as one of the top computer science schools vs Ivy League prestige, name recognition, and future opportunities. Would you give up on Columbia/Cornell selectivity to attend CMU?</p>
<p>I may have ‘some’ bias… but I say Cornell. You get both the Ivy-prestige and a fantastic comp.sci program. The Dyson School (for the minor) is a Top-5 undergrad business program and it is truly remarkable (helped me get onto Wall St!) </p>
<p>Plus, our comp. sci program will be intensifying in the years to come. Read this article on the construction of a brand new facility exclusive to c.s. <a href=“Home | Cornell Chronicle”>Home | Cornell Chronicle;
<p>Just a word of advice: at some point the small differences in prestige don’t equate to the experience and luxury of attending the ‘right-fit’. Let your son feel out each school and usually the place where you can ‘see yourself’ is exactly where you belong.</p>
<p>Best,
gt</p>
<p>If his interest is to pursue the technical path, conventional wisdom would say either CMU or Cornell, depending on which he thinks he might like it at better. If his interest is not so much the technical path, but rather to get a support staff job on Wall street, Fu is probably best for that. I forget the statistics, but it’s something like less than a third of their “engineering” students actually pursue technical careers. That doesn’t necessarily make Fu Foo, just a lot different than the others.</p>
<p>FWIW a Cornell degree can also preserve the Wall Street option, I am living testament to that. But relatively more of their engineering school students are there because they actually want to be engineers. I would assume the same applies to Comp sci.</p>
<p>See, each school has their own strengths. CMU has the most CS prestige and the least overall prestige. Cornell is in the middle in both CS and overall prestige (but is not far behind either of the 1st places). Columbia has the most overall prestige but is the least known for CS. Given that, I’d probably go with Cornell. We offer both a fantastic program (#5 in the U.S.) and Ivy League level prestige. Very few schools can say the same apart from MIT, Stanford, and Princeton.</p>
<p>^ Columbia does not have prestige for engineering. Ivy League prestige is not that important, and most of the ivy leagues are not amongst the stronger engineering schools (this excludes Cornell, Princeton, and, to a lesser extent, UPenn, which has a strong bio-med engineering program). Honestly, “prestige” is not that important and you need to pick a school based on the academics as they apply to you and social fit. For example, Harvard may be more prestigious in general than Georgia Tech, but Ga Tech creams it in engineering and it would be unwise to pick Harvard (financials obviously excluded)</p>
<p>If you’re doing engineering. Cornell is the best of the ones you listed. However, CMU is really strong in comp sci. If you are definitely going for computer science, CMU seems like the best choice; however, if you are unsure and feel you may switch majors, Cornell is better with stronger engineering programs besides computing/electrical.</p>
<p>Also, think about fit. I do not know much about CMU, but it is in Pittsburg. Cornell is in Ithaca. I imagine these cities having vastly different feels. If possible, visit both campuses.</p>
<p>Don’t do Columbia Engineering unless you want to flip that into a job in finance. If you want to do real science or engineering, don’t go there. This must also just hurt the quality of engineering because so many people just don’t have a passion for it. Also, don’t knock Cornell’s capacity to turn engineering into financial, as they do offer a financial engineering major.</p>
<p>I don’t normally comment on this board, but in this case I feel like I might actually be able to provide you with some useful input. I attended Cornell for undergrad, and CMU for grad school (both for mechanical engineering). Then some years later I returned to CMU for my MBA. I’ve also worked as an engineer and am now working on Wall Street.</p>
<p>The first thing I will say is that, assuming cost of attendance not an issue, you can’t really go wrong with any of these schools. Cornell and Columbia are both world class universities and are both heavily recruited for both technical and financial careers. Among lay people both are more “prestigious” than CMU. However, both the CS and robotics programs at CMU are arguably the best of their kind in the world. The people who need to know (aka the recruiters who will hire your son) do know this. Having been through on campus recruiting at CMU twice, I can tell you that both programs are frequently singled out by recruiters for the best opportunities.</p>
<p>That said there will be some differences between where the majority of your sons classmates will end up post-graduation at each school. This doesn’t have to effect you son’s career choice, but since it can be hard to resist following the crowd its worth knowing these differences.</p>
<p>At Cornell the majority of engineering school grads go into traditional engineering fields. My classmates ended up working for the likes of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Schlumberger, Honda, the DoD, Microsoft, Intel, etc… A smaller group head to Wall Street. Those that went to Wall Street generally went into traditional investment banking at places like Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers (when it existed), etc… The bulge bracket banks were well represented during on campus recruiting.</p>
<p>At Carnegie Mellon the focus is much more on Silicon Valley. Younger, faster moving companies. When I was there companies like Google, Amazon, and Ebay hired literally armies of CMU grads. Many more went to other smaller, but still hot start-ups. There is a real culture of entrepreneurship at CMU and I imagine that todays grads are swarming to companies Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon. A small minority went into finance. Those that did generally went into trading rather than investment banking. Top prop shops like Jane Street, Optiver, and SIG recruited on campus. Bulge bracket banks like Goldman and Morgan generally did not.</p>
<p>Not having attended Columbia, I can’t really comment. However, Columbia is one of the best represented schools on Wall Street.</p>
<p>Hope that you find this information useful.</p>
<p>“At Cornell the majority of engineering school grads go into traditional engineering fields”</p>
<p>Because the majority you knew were studying in the traditional engineering fields, probably. That’s not where the computer-related guys were going. IMO. Way back when I was there, lots of EE grads were headed to places like Tektronix, HP, TI, and the like, these were the hot firms in the digital age at that time. I doubt it’s any different now. It sounds more to me like you didn’t have many EE and CS friends.</p>
<p>With all due respect you are listing a jumble of jobs that are common destinations for the “traditional” disciplines, ie jobs Chem Es mech Es, and “regular” EEs would have taken (which makes perfect sense since you were mech e there) , not jobs computer-related and CS grads would have taken. Also you were not in recruiting there the same years. I doubt CS grads from Cornell were heading in droves to Schlumberger, or Chem Es at CMU were heading in droves to Google.</p>
<p>There are nearly 10,000 Cornell alumni in the Bay area, I imagine all of them are not working the oil rigs at Schlumberger there
[Cornell</a> Silicon Valley | Alumni | Cornell University](<a href=“http://www.alumni.cornell.edu/csv/about.cfm]Cornell”>http://www.alumni.cornell.edu/csv/about.cfm)</p>
<p>The subject is certainly worth following up on by interested prospective CS grads, you should make inquiry into where Cornell CS grads are going, and who is recruiting them. I"m pretty sure they aren’t all heading to Lockheed Martin.</p>
<p>Congrats on your son having 3 outstanding choices. If your son is also interested in having a traditional college experience - on a gorgeous campus in a wonderful college town - Cornell is the clear choice.</p>
<p>All are great–however, if your son is interested in having a co-ed type of social life, I would say Cornell over CMU. The male-female ratio at CMU is 3:2, while at Cornell it is 1-1. This was a factor for us when DS2 was looking at schools.</p>
<p>All great replies. Thank you. My son is very interested in computer science and happy to admit that he is a nerd. Although social life is important, he really wants to be involved with research projects.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Just in case you haven’t yet checked out the engineering research pages at cornell.edu:</p>
<p>[Starting</a> Point - Cornell Engineering Research](<a href=“http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/research/]Starting”>Strategic Areas of Research | Cornell Engineering)</p>
<p>If he’s really interested in Computer Science and research, CMU is the best there is.</p>