<p>its getting close to that time, does anyone know when CMU releases decisions? Also, for those people who applied for SCS (School of Computer Science), if you could just post why you chose CMU (besides the obvious reason), start any kind of discussion I would really appreciate it. Thanks.</p>
<p>Hey,
I applied to the school of Computer Science. In all honesty, it's my 2nd or 3rd choice (behind MIT and Caltech, probably) </p>
<ol>
<li>Obviously it's rated as one of the very best computer science schools in the country.</li>
<li>There's very good undergraduate research opportunities, especially in AI, etc.<br></li>
<li>I like the Robotics minor.</li>
<li>CMU has ties with Google and some other major companies.<br></li>
<li>Its easy to double or even triple major in other schools of CMU if I want.</li>
</ol>
<p>Overall, it seems like a very, very nice school. I certainly wouldn't be disappointed if I ended up going here. :-)</p>
<p>yeah exactly, i want to do computer science and carnegie mellon seems like the best place to do it, ahead of MIT and Stanford my first and second choice schools.
what kind of stats do u have Fermion, just curious bc i have seen you on the MIT, Stanford etc. message boards.</p>
<p>I'm a sophomore in CS at CMU, and I'm here because of some combination of wanting to get out of Texas (Rice and UT are lovely school, but...), not liking other schools that I was accepted to once I visited them ('fit' just wasn't there), being rejected from MIT, and really liking CMU when I visited.</p>
<p>I think getting rejected from MIT was good for me. The CS program at MIT is EECS, so it has a fairly large ECE component, but CMU's curriculum is more math-oriented, which is what I prefer. I didn't know that at the time, though, so I probably would have gone to MIT had I been admitted. Also, in general CMU's CS curriculum is very flexible, compared to more engineering-y programs at other schools where you have to take certain classes every semester in order to graduate. Here I'm able to double major and take semi-random classes. We have a science/engineering requirement (4 classes, 1 has to be a lab, 2 have to be in the same department) instead of a strict requirement like MIT's 1 bio, 1 chem, 2 physics class requirement (I think that's what theirs is, I'm not 100% sure), so I'm able to take classes like Physics of Musical Sound and a psychology class with a lab component for my science classes. Other friends of mine have taken ECE courses and a history of Einstein class.</p>
<p>Just a general comment- we have recruiters on campus all of the time. Microsoft and Google seem to love us, so they're around more than pretty much any company. At the (technology) job fair this fall, there were so many companies that some of them had booths outside because they couldn't fit in the gym/ballroom/random small rooms that were used. (We have separate job fairs for 'business' and humanities/social sciences/fine arts).</p>
<p>KrazyKow, do you know much about internship/summer employment opportunities for undergrads in comp sci? I've been kind of curious about their availability...</p>
<p>After freshman year, a bunch of people I know stayed in Pittsburgh and worked on research projects for the summer, making $10-12/hr. It's generally pretty difficult to get an internship at a company after freshman year, but it's not that hard to find employment on campus if you're a reasonably good student. I found a summer research program at another university.</p>
<p>I know quite a few people who have had luck finding internships for the summer after sophomore year, but I also know some people who haven't had much sucess so far. Generally, the people farthest along with their coursework (came in with credit for AP CS AB) and/or with high GPAs seem to have offers already, but there's still at least a month to go with offers and what not. I'm under the impression that pretty much everyone finds internships after junior year. In general, internships in industry pay very well.</p>
<p>do u think that there is any chance for anyone who has not taken computer science in high school to get into computer science at carnegie mellon university</p>
<p>Thanks, KrazyKow!</p>
<p>About 20% of CS majors take 15-100, 'introductory programming', their first semester at CMU. Some of these people have a bit of a background in web programming, but most have almost no experience. It's definitely possible to be admitted without taking CS in high school, although there does seem to be a bit of a correlation between female/URM status and starting in 15-100. Also, there are people who start in other classes and are only self-taught.</p>
<p>Wow, thats actually fairly surprising. I was under the impression that you had to have started no less than 4 open source projects to get into SCS, lol.</p>
<p>i really hope that is not the case because then i have no chance</p>
<p>ehiunno's impression might have been right 5-6 years ago, but they changed the admission criterea to focus more on strong academics than previous experience, as a way of raising the number of females in CS. It worked- in one year it jumped from below 10% to around 30%. There are certainly people who have been hacking away since they were 4 and are insanely obsessed with open source, but that's a small number of people, and most of them probably won't have many classes with you and will spend much more time with their computers than around you.</p>
<p>my whole thing is that i am really a standard student who likes math and science and while that may sound really primitive in a thread full of people who are programmers etc. i just want to hope that i stand some chance at any school of computer science.</p>
<p>i hope you stand a chance! if you don't, i am not sure about my future! i haven't had much programming experience. the languages i have studied in high school are probably not common to cmu's courses. if it's like most schools, it will probably be java based. just a guess, though! good luck!</p>
<p>I am in the same boat as many of you. I applied ECE 1st choice SCS 2nd choice and am crossing my fingers. I haven't had much experience with programming as there are no courses offered at my school. I recently began teaching myself C++ and have been dabbling in Linux for a few months but its hard to find the time sometimes!</p>
<p>I just started an internship a JLab and I will be dealing with PC-104 SBC's so hopefully I will pick up some stuff from there too :-)</p>
<p>anyways, I am in no way confident in my chances at either school (my stats pale in comparison to many of your's), but I will give it a shot either way.</p>
<p>You will all be fine interests-wise if you don't have a lot of experience with programming- computer science isn't just programming, anyways, it's also a bunch of math, too, as long as you are still a strong student in math/science and your stats are around what SCS usually admits. They know that not everyone has the time/opportunity to become a 1337 h4xx0r in high school. It is the philosophy of the freshman advisor that if college is a race, what matters is not that you come in first, but that you go the longest distance. </p>
<p>The core corses are taught in Java (1st and 2nd semester programming, data structures&algorithms), ML (functional programming), C (introduction to computer systems/introduction to C and unix), perl (introduction to C and unix), and x86-64 assembly (introduction to computer systems). It doesn't matter whether or not you already know them, though- school is supposed to teach you things. (As a side note, I've taken courses involving Lisp out of the psych department and some classes allow C++ to be used, but C++ is never taught in the curriculum. Python appears occasionally too. If you need something to do this summer, you should consider learning python, because it's pretty cool, useful, and straightforward.)</p>
<p>So how much does being a girl boost your chances? Would it be a significant amount? Like the equivalent of +50 pts on the SAT or something?</p>
<p>I don't know how much being a girl actually boosts your changes- there is less than a 1% difference in the SAT scores of admitted guys/girls. It's just my observation that of people starting in the lowest programming class, there are about an equal number of guys and girls, and in the highest there are very few, if any girls. Maybe it's opportunity/how people spent high school. What being female or URM will possibly make a difference with is scholarship money.</p>