My S has been invited to an information session but the problem is that 2 schools he is extremely interested in have the sessions on the exact same night at the exact same time. One is Carnegie Mellon and the other is MIT both for CS. Would there be any advantage to choosing to attend 1 over the other? He is really torn as to which to choose.
Has your son visited either campus? The information session does not really add anything more if your son has visited campus.
The bigger question is whether either school tracks interest. Another benefit of info sessions, aside from learning about the school, is to demonstrate interest. To find out whether a school considers interest, check the common data set (CDS), section C. Carnegie Mellon lists level of applicant interest as ‘Important’. MIT lists level of applicant interest as ‘Not Considered’. So this means that MIT does not factor demonstrated interest into the admissions decision at all, but Carnegie Mellon looks very closely at whether students show that they are interested - and they will note whether your son attended an information session.
Based on this data, unless your son has already visited CMU, it would probably be good for your son to go to the CMU information session and definitely sign in (so there is a record of your son attending).
If you are from a bigger city, one of the schools may be doing an info session at another high school on another night. Ask one (or the other) if there is alternative date.
@Faulkner1897 That sure seems to tilt towards going to CM. We’ve only driven in the area of MIT to see some of it but did not get a chance to tour and have not seen CM.
@twoinanddone We are about an hour from Orlando but the next closest is Tampa which is about 2.5 each way and not possible to get there in time after football practice unfortunately.