<p>Now that I've actually been accepted into these places, I'm having the hardest time deciding where to go. I'm leaning toward Cornell, but I thought I'd check here for some feedback before making a final decision. I'm looking at going into Computer Science, but at the same time I'd like to keep my options open.</p>
<p>Thanks in advance for any information/advice.</p>
<p>CMU/MIT are the best for CS. CMU I know is 72k median avg starting salary. Don't know MIT's exact figures.
Next would probably be Cornell (avg 50+ks) and then Upenn(don't know) and finally Brown(don't know).</p>
<p>This is how recruiters at Google/Microsoft/IBM/Amazon/etc. see it though there may be differing opinion on CC that overvalues Ivies in fields like CS.</p>
<p>I seriously doubt that there are substantial differences in starting salaries among graduates with degrees in the same fields from any of these schools. You would need to account for BS vs BA degrees, subfield of CS, CS vs CE, etc.</p>
<p>You will argue with actual data?</p>
<p>Once again I knew some CC ppl would not really understand CMU/MIT's presence in fields like computer science. 72 median CMU and 58k avg for Cornell.</p>
<p>if computer science, and wanna leave options open for other things, id reccomment carnegie melon</p>
<p>otherwise, if u decide u no longer r interested in computer science, go to UPenn ... and enjoy</p>
<p>Actual data? Let's try again</p>
<p>To quote the placement report "(111 of 158 reporting)" 2004
"116 of 188 reporting" 2003
"97 of 186 reporting" 2002</p>
<p>Of course, the real mean is the mean of ALL grads. Which we don't know because so many of them (nearly half in 2002) do not report their salaries. </p>
<p>What is the mix of industries among ALL grads, not just those who reported? Again, we don't know. We also don't know how hard the placement office chases people to get the data, or whether they discourage reports from those still seeking employment ($0). </p>
<p>So, without knowing the REAL income distribution for the grads, the reports of a subset tells us almost nothing. </p>
<p>MIT does better about defining what jobs people have taken, and the range of salaries reported <a href="http://web.mit.edu/career/www/salary/05summary.html%5B/url%5D">http://web.mit.edu/career/www/salary/05summary.html</a></p>
<p>However, the numbers for MIT make it clear that this is only a small subset of MIT CS grads. Again, you just don't know what the salaries were for the others. </p>
<p>Nothing wrong with posting the information you have, if done without bias toward the higher salaries reported, but very misleading to assume that a report of barely half the grads tells you the salaries of typical students.</p>
<p>For a more meaningful report, look at Penn</p>
<p>First, they tell you</p>
<p>"Each year Career Services surveys the SEAS graduating class to gather information about their post-graduation plans. This report summarizes the responses from December 2004, May and August 2005 SEAS Bachelor's degree
recipients. The school awarded 330 undergraduate degrees. Career Services received 279 responses, which represents an 84.9% response rate.
N
early 65% of the survey respondents were employed full time (including military service and self employment). The top industries that graduates accepted positions in were consulting, financial services, manufacturing, and technology. Over 20% were pursuing graduate work, which is an increase of over 6% from last year. Of those going on to graduate school, nearly half are pursuing a degree in engineering. The percentage of those still seeking employment was 10.8%, which is the same number who were still seeking last year. Of those who are employed full-time, 86.9% reported salary information. The overall average salary of the employed respondents was $54,988.
Prepared by: Amy LeVasseur,"</p>
<p>So you know how they conducted the survey, how representative it is, how many still did not have jobs...</p>
<p>Later, the survey breaks down salary by major, industry, and other useful information. If you don't have these answers, then you don't know how the graduates are doing financially.</p>
<p>The statistics still stand. No avg salary is representative of all grads but they are still very relevant. The reason we have statistics is because we usually never get the total population. </p>
<p>The links I have posted show companies and location along with the salaries and # of students reporting.</p>
<p>I don't really understand what you were trying to prove but just going off recruiters/employer reputation you can reach the same conclusion that MIT/CMU are the leading schools for ugrad CS and just add on Berkeley/Stanford for grad CS.</p>
<p>The problem is that surveys such as this tend to be systematically biased in their response rates, with those who have higher salaries responding. </p>
<p>In the year that Penn had a 97% response rate, one could consider the results representative. When the response rate dropped to 85% you don't know whether the other 15% also had no jobs (making the total not yet employed 25%, rather than 10%). If all the nonresponders were employed, then the conclusions would be very different. </p>
<p>When you have ~50% responding, or in the case of MIT, far less than 50% of the engineering graduates represented, any conclusions you might draw will be hopelessly confounded by bias.</p>
<p>Surveys are like this. You have to consider the reliability of the data before drawing conclusions. Bad data can be worse than no data at all.</p>
<p>I am not disagreeing about the quality of these schools for CS. That is not debatable. I am challenging the assertion that the published salary figures are reliable, for the reasons noted above. I am also challenging the notions that starting salary differences (if they exist at all) reflect quality of the programs, that the real starting salary figures differ substantially among these schools, after controlling for the types of jobs students accept, that employers would pay an entry level employee 20,000 extra for having graduated from school X rather than school Y, that longer term career outcomes have much relationship to having attended a college with a top 5 or top 30 graduate program, or that decisions about which college to attend should be made on the basis of such unreliable information and assumptions. There are real differences among the experience at these colleges, but students should not decide where to go based on differences in the salaries reported by small subsets of the graduates.</p>
<p>For the Class of 2005 at Cornell, average starting salary in CS was $65,800</p>
<p>The mean salary at CMU in Comp Sci is 2004-05 was $67, 500</p>
<p>Based on 63% of the Cornell graduates. But that 63% includes 28 who are in graduate school. There were 124 graduates, and the report presents average salary data for 50 of them. That means, excluding the grad students, 46 unaccounted for. So the report of salary might include only 52% of those who are working/looking for jobs.</p>
<p>For CMU, the report includes 70 graduates who are in the workforce, and 20 who are in grad school. According to IPEDS COOL, there are about 140 graduates in CS each year. So about 50 (35% of total, 41% of those who are not listed as enrolled in grad school) are not accounted for in the survey. Are these 50 also in grad school? Unemployed? Working but did not respond? The real mean could be unchanged, or much higher or lower, depending on what they are doing.</p>
<p>Should anyone good enough at quantitative thinking to get in either place choose between Cornell and CMU based on information like that?</p>
<p>CMU for CS period. iff you know for sure that CS will be your major. otherwise...Brown</p>
<p>I agree that CMU beats the rest in CS, but make sure that's what you really want to do. If you end up majoring in agriculture you'll wish you'd have gone to Cornell.</p>
<p>Besides the academics, though, consider what type of setting you want to live in. Penn and CMU are in huge cities, Brown is in a large town, and Cornell is in the middle of nowhere.</p>
<p>go to Cornell. </p>
<p>if you decide that CS is something you dont want to do, Cornell will offer you the most available majors and the most options otherwise, not to mention the fact that they have an incredible CS dept.</p>
<p>afan-
The salary data is based on a survey and surveys never have 100% response rate. A 60% response rate is not bad. I think the information is better than complete ignorance about salaries. Consumers of information have to use their critical judgement but it would be irrational to completely discount this data.</p>
<p>thanks for all the feedback so far. I did manage to visit all the campuses, and Cornell was just beautiful. Still though, it's hard to ignore a CS program like Carnegie-Mellon's. Does anyone know how well CMU does outside of computer science? While I doubt that I'll actually end up changing major's, it's still something to think about.</p>
<p>yeah, their business etc (tepper) is great</p>
<p>CMU is a great school, but Cornell does beat it in the "other than CS majors" department. I know you're probably pretty well set on CS, but be aware that the average college student changes majors 3 times before they graduate. Plan accordingly!!</p>
<p>Business and Engineering are all about the same with Cornell a bit ahead in overall engineering and Carnegie Mellon ahead in overall business. </p>
<p>CMU is highly respected by Google/Microsoft/IBM/Amazon and other tech companies whether you are CS/ECE/Engineering. </p>
<p>CMU this year was NewsWeek's university for Hottest Jobs. It has consistently held this title in other rankings such as the old PR's list and from top recruiters.</p>
<p>despite what others may say here, brown is widely considered the most prestigious university of those you've listed--primarily on the basis of the difficulty of admissions. many may say prestige is of little importance, but that's up to you.</p>
<p>to boot, brown has a top cs department--the chairman holds the second PhD ever given in the country. for a small, undergraduate focused school--brown's cs department ranking is very respectable, and much higher then penn's
<a href="http://www.greguide.com/comps.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.greguide.com/comps.html</a></p>
<p>hope this is helpful food for thought</p>