<p>Hey guys! I was recently admitted into a few colleges, and I've mostly narrowed them down to Columbia, CMU, and UCLA. </p>
<p>UCLA and CMU are both great for compsci, from what I've heard. UCLA is close to home and slightly cheaper than CMU would be for me. However, I know that when it comes to CS, cmu is easily the best in terms of course offering. The computational biology concentration is something that fascinates me, especially since I applied to most other schools as a BME or ChemE major.</p>
<p>I love cs. Prior to high school, I taught myself programming and then was able to take 3 years of computer science in my high school at the AP/IB level. I'm fairly sure I like computer science, but I'm not sure if it's something I want to do for the rest of my life, nor am I sure that I want to go to a school that focuses heavily on cs/engineering alone. I feel as if going to CMU and UCLA will kind of force me to pursue cs (since I was only admitted to scs in cmu and classes are so impacted at UCLA). Columbia seems to offer a more well rounded education overall, and is probably the most prestigious based on name alone. However, their engineering program was not the strongest, so I'm a bit (or a lot) concerned about employment prospects after graduation in this regard. However, at Columbia, I don't have to declare a major until sophomore year, so I can choose from a variety of engineering majors.</p>
<p>I was hoping that people here can offer me some advice on the pros/cons of cmu (and the other schools if you have experience with them). Thank you in advance. :)</p>
<p>Go for Columbia! It is truly awesome. Who cares about jobs? I mean if you have the capability of getting into schools like CMU (SCS) and Columbia, you shouldn’t worry about getting a competitive job, You’ll do fine. You will get a rich undergrad experience at Columbia. However, if you don’t care of social life and want to study all week, CMU is your school - and you can enjoy later. At the end it is your choice… UCLA is good too if you would like to stay close to home. Good Luck!</p>
<p>If you want a highly prestigious, concentrated, amazing education in CS, then hands down go to CMU. But if what you’re looking for is maybe CS with maybe engineering with maybe some humanities thrown in, I’d say go to Columbia. </p>
<p>Since each school you listed is prestigious and will get you jobs, you might want to consider how you’d like to spend the next 4 years of your life. The student body will have entirely different attitudes at each school, and only you can know where you will fit in. If you haven’t already, I suggest you do the CMU sleeping bag weekend, or at least visit (and do the same for the other schools).
I’m in SCS at CMU, and I ultimately chose it after doing a sleeping bag weekend, because I could easily see myself fitting in here, and it ended up being true. A lot of people describe CMU students as working all week and having no fun, but the thing is, the people here enjoy the work and respect academics. We also get time to do fun things, you just shouldn’t be surprised if some weekends you need to do work due the next week. Some people also choose to overload their schedules, but you definitely don’t need to. It’s really what you make of it here.</p>