Not an expert on ED but I would think you would use ED for the one school that you love and want to attend more than any other. When you’re talking about MIT, CalTech, CMU, or Stanford for CS you’re splitting hairs. Which school do you like the most? Which environment do you like the best? Which campus do you like the best? Which curriculum and teaching approach do you like the best? Answer those questions and I think you would find a school for ED.
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Cal Tech, MIT, and Stanford all have rejection rates in the range of 93-96% of a very talented pool of applicants to begin with. CMU has had a much lower rejection rate of 83-85% in the past couple of years, so it would be the much safer bet. That being said, the most recent information I saw for the CMU School of Computer Science was a rejection rate of 93%, pretty much in line with the other colleges you’re looking at, but the rejection rate for the CMU College of Engineering was only 80%. That raise the question of which school or college at CMU do you want to study CS IN.
Since you seem to have a preference for a tech-oriented environment, consider adding Harvey Mudd to your list.
I actually talked about the SCS vs. engineering dilemma with my family. I think it’d be best to apply for computer science, even if that reduces my chances a lot.
It’s true that CMU, Stanford and MIT are all very similar in computer science, and it probably doesn’t make a difference which one I apply to. I’ve decided to apply to Stanford because my parents think that CMU isn’t quite as good as UC Berkeley, and as I mentioned in my first post, they’re very hesitant to pay 70k a year for a college which isn’t the most “elite” in the country. The money is definitely there, but my brother goes to a very good college and that’s become the standard I suppose.
In fact they have really brought around another problem, which is that my parents believe that I should essentially not apply to target schools (except for the UCs). They I think I should apply to a safety or two (like SJSU), UCs and then top colleges. Basically the thought process is that I either get into one of those or go to a UC I hopefully get into. I’ve tried convincing them that colleges like CMU are just as good as MIT, but they won’t listen.
Is this leading to a disaster? The money is definitely there, and although my dad hates spending money I could probably bring them around to pay for a decently good college in the end. On the other hand, maybe their logic is correct? I guess it depends on my chances of getting into Berkeley, so if someone has some insight on that it would be helpful.