Can students from various HSS departments please describe their typical day/workload? Thank you.
My son is a freshman at Dietrich. He had concerns about the “stress culture” reputation, but in fact he isn’t working much harder than he did in his somewhat elite high school. Both at CMU and in high school he took an overload of credits, and in both he does similar ECs (theatre, chorus, various political and cultural events). One difference is that at CMU he has a job, which was not true in high school during the school year.
Keep in mind if you go to a less competitive high school, CMU’s work expectations may be a bit of a shock. To give a baseline, probably 50% of my son’s high school matriculate to Ivy/Ivy equivalent schools. Many had national recognition for academics, ECs, or both. Upon starting at CMU, my son felt he had some advantage over his CMU peers since he had already fostered excellent time management skills to keep up in HS. So far, his GPA at CMU is better than it was in HS.