I was accepted to Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences and Carnegie Mellon’s College of Science. I am absolutely going to major in Mathematics with a possible double major/minor in Computer Science. My ultimate goal is to pursue a graduate degree in Mathematics, but the kind of mathematics I especially enjoy has a lot of overlap with computer science (think cryptography, complexity theory, information theory, etc.).
I am having an extremely difficult time deciding between these two schools. I did like Cornell’s campus and locale better when I visited, and they are offering more financial aid than Carnegie Mellon (I was accepted as a Rawlings Research Scholar). Overall, I liked Cornell better than Carnegie Mellon and initially intended to commit to Cornell. However, the other major decision factor for me is to what extent my existing college credit will transfer, and this is the major hold-up for me. Through dual enrollment, I’ve taken over 100 credit hours with local colleges and more than doubled the number of credits required for high-school graduation, and I have absolutely no desire to spend another second diverting my brainpower from my primary interests of mathematics and computer science. I am therefore hoping that I will be able to transfer much of the credit I’ve earned to satisfy general education/distribution requirements so that I can focus on courses that I will actually enjoy and will advance my education within my major.
Here’s the deal: I spoke with an admission counselor from Carnegie Mellon, and she explained that upon admission, my academic advisor would review ALL AP credit and dual-enrollment credit for potential transfer. For me, I would likely get a substantial amount of my general education/distribution credit satisfied (note that when possible, I also took AP tests corresponding to my dual-enrollment courses and I scored 5 on all of them). On the other hand, Cornell’s website explains that only college credit which is not counted on a student’s high-school transcript will be eligible for transfer. Theoretically, this would mean that even at Cornell, I would likely have a fair bit of credit satisfied (though probably not as much as at Carnegie Mellon) since the credit I’ve received is well in excess of the high-school graduation requirements; the overflow credit should transfer. The issue is that all the overflow credit I’ve earned is still listed on my high-school transcript, it just isn’t counting toward my graduation requirements and is listed under “elective credits.” So I have 30.68 high-school elective credits out of 6.00 required. But since it’s listed on my high-school transcript, it’s uncertain whether this credit will be eligible for transfer. I’ve emailed the admissions office of Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences to request clarification, but have not yet received a response (to be fair, I only emailed them yesterday after being redirected to them from the University’s Office of Admissions). The College is not accepting phone calls during the COVID-19 crisis.
Just to be clear, the dual-enrollment credit I’ve earned hasn’t been from “blow-off” courses that offer easy credit. Some examples of (non-mathematics) courses I’ve taken include Organic Chemistry I and II, Intro to Philosophy, Intermediate Spanish, and US Government and Politics. I’m simply not interested in pursuing any of these subjects further. They can be interesting, sure, but if I want to explore a subject more, I’ll just read some books about it without having to pressure myself to digest an entire textbook’s worth of material and do hours of unfulfilling assignments, all the while concealing hatred and depression for being forced to spend time and money on something I only am taking to satisfy one-size-fits-all regulations. That being said, I’m not too concerned about transferring my mathematics credits because I don’t mind using my brain to think about and tackle problems that I actually care about. Further, I’ve met with representatives from both schools’ mathematics departments, and both have explained that they work with students to place them into the right courses (so they aren’t unnecessarily repeating a course).
Does anyone have experience with the nuances of Cornell’s policy regarding the transferal of dual-enrollment credit? Or does anyone have suggestions as to what I should do?