<p>Every year we get pretty much the exact same questions over and over, so here's an attempt to try and pool some answers to the most common questions.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Meal plans: get the smallest one possible. This is tried and true. You'll thank me later.</p></li>
<li><p>Yes, there are lots of attractive people of both genders at CMU. Yes, we party. Yes, we drink. No, you don't have to. Yes, you will have a wonderful lovely social life either way.</p></li>
<li><p>In terms of best dorms: Mudge, Stever and Morewood E are top tier. Donner, Schlag, McGill and Rez are second tier. File your housing deposit as early as humanly possible, since your housing is based on that. </p></li>
<li><p>How hard is it to switch from ___ to ____? It is easy enough to switch into any program -- even if you were rejected or waitlisted for those programs as an incoming freshman. It doesn't matter what you want to do - you can switch into it provided your grades are good and you take the right courses. I promise. Talk to your advisor the day you get on campus and he or she will be HAPPY to help you figure out a way to get into the program you want.</p></li>
<li><p>Your financial aid CAN change from year to year. Often aid goes up. Mine definitely has. Yes, CMU does accept finaid offers from peer institutions as bargaining material for better aid. This doesn't apply if you're ED, only RD. Talk to The Hub if you want to do the aforementioned bargaining.</p></li>
<li><p>If you get an F in one class, you are not going to get your offer of admission rescinded. Don't stress. Just don't let senioritis get to you.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Hey Kate, do you know if your GPA influences your financial aid package. For example, would a student with a 2.3 GPA expect a drop in his finaid package, or a 4.0 student get an increase?</p>
<h1>1 is simple. You won’t each as much as you think. I eat like a horse and I have red 9 (smallest meal block). It is advantageous because it comes with the least meal blocks and most flex cash, which allows you to eat when you want instead of losing blocks if you don’t eat enough for a week or two.</h1>
<p>Plus you can always move up to a meal block, never down until the next semester.</p>
<p>@Blizz: There is no evidence that it does or doesn’t. My suspicion is that finaid can go up if you’ve got good grades, but will rarely go down due to bad ones. You can, however, receive “scholarships” (small amounts) that are merit-based off of your grades. I have 2 and they are in amounts of something like $300 - $1000 each, so not huge, but it does make a difference.</p>
<h1>1. The meal plan is a pretty big waste of cash considering it doesn’t roll over semester to semester and you can’t withdraw any leftover funds at the end of the year. Additionally, CMU’s timing on eating periods is really wonky, and you can only spend one block per eating period. (IE breakfast goes from like… 5 AM to 10 AM. If you have morning class at 9 that gets out at 10:20 and then go buy a block, you just spent your lunch block. Want to eat again at 3 pm? Too bad. No blocks for you, and the dinner period starts at 4.) Like Blizz said, you can also always scale up.</h1>
<h1>2. We often get the question “are people actually super ugly at CMU like X website says?” – most of those articles are like… five years old and are really inaccurate. I remember reading that stuff when -I- was an incoming freshman forever ago.</h1>
<h1>4. There is no hard minimum GPA required in many cases (though each department has a ‘your GPA should be above this’ policy with transfers, usually). It’s totally dependent on who is doing admissions to the program and how they feel about you as a candidate. Many fewer people try to transfer programs than you’d think, and I’ve found that every counselor I talked to was very excited to help students with this process. It’s rare to get rejected as an internal transfer, with the exception maybe of transferring into CS.</h1>
<p>“It’s rare to get rejected as an internal transfer, with the exception maybe of transferring into CS.”</p>
<p>Okay now you’re scaring me…that’s exactly what S wants to do. Are a lot of people turned away? Is it because they didn’t get good grades, or is there just not enough room in the program?</p>
<p>Check this out. The more CS course he takes and the better he does in those courses, the more likely he is to be accepted as a transfer. Many students come in to transfer having taken NO CS courses at all, and they can be turned away for that.</p>
<p>Here’s the critical question. Do you know anyone important in the admissions office who can get my son moved up to the top of the waitlist? Name your price, he’ll pay for your dinner every week, clean your room, do your laundry (though it might all end up the same color). I’m barely even joking…</p>
<p>megan, keep in mind if he wants he can always double major into CS from any other department. His “home school” just won’t be SCS. The biggest difference might be a little more difficulty getting into some CS classes since spots are reserved for in-major people, while people outside have to fight for them.</p>
<p>RacinReaver - I figured he’d probably be able to get the lower level courses, but it’s the higher ones he’d get shut out of, which wouldn’t be worth it. Why pay all that money to go to one of the best cs schools, if you can’t get into the courses?? That’s why he wanted to go there!! He was accepted to H&SS because he likes liberal arts as well, and he wanted to study creative writing. But his main focus was computers, and he was hoping to combine the two.</p>
<p>my son was double majoring cs, though I doubt he’s going to finish up like that. The only difficulty he had was when the classes were full. A couple of teachers told him to just go to the classes anyways, and in a few weeks people would start dropping the class and there would be space. I don’t think he was shut out of anything. And it does seem that with double majors, no permission is required.</p>
<p>Yeah it’s not that hard to get into the high level CS courses as a non-major provided you’ve done well in the previous courses and have a little bit of persistence. I’ve gotten into courses in nearly every department (including graduate level courses) and usually all it takes is talking to the professor a couple times.</p>
<p>Often if the class is full, at the beginning of the semester the prof will say “sorry guys, if you’re here from the waitlist don’t bother, the class is full.” Just wait a few days. People drop. Then the professor will probably be happy to put you on the roster. I’ve had professors insist I would never get into the course and then a few days (and 8 drops) later, they were happy to let me in.</p>
<p>Sending an email to the professor before registration starts is also a great way to get in touch and have them help you get into the course. Politely introduce yourself, tell them why you’re interested in what they’re teaching (despite not being in that major) and tell them you’re worried about getting into the course. They’ll usually help you out.</p>
<p>megan 12 my son picked up CS as his second major. Honestly, it was no big deal. The adviser couldn’t have been more encouraging and helpful. First, my son took the same two programming courses CS majors would take—I’m not sure but I believe they were, at the time, course numbers 15-211 and -212. He may have done the same for math series. Did well in these courses so he was basically good to go.</p>
<p>I will say, he had a few friends across various majors who, like him, also wanted to double in CS…but they couldn’t make it through -211 and -212. Some even got well into -212 (forgive me if these aren’t the correct numbers) and got bogged down and fell behind which is apparently the kiss of death for these courses.</p>
<p>Does anyone know if it’s possible to do the Math Honors program (getting a Masters degree) AND get a Bachelor’s in CS? Maybe if I did it over a 5-year period instead of 4?</p>
<p>Looking back at my post (#17), it seems as if I was asking if I could get a Bachelor’s in CS and a Master’s in Math. What I meant was getting a Bachelor’s and Master’s in Math via the Honors program while double-majoring in CS to get a Bachelor’s in it. Is that feasible at all or does Honors Math take up too much time?</p>
<p>@ameliab That’s insane. One of my really good junior friends is a math major and she’s said the honors program by itself is crazy. A double major in CS at the same time would be life ruining.</p>
<p>You could do it, but you would have pretty much no life or social time. )</p>
<p>@LFC Not to my knowledge. The undergraduate admissions email would have more information about that - you can always mail them.</p>