@merc81 Well, SAT score is hardly a good standard for ranking undergraduate experiences. How can you determine the best school based on a score students received before they began their studies there?
Well, you canāt @humanperson. However, Iād regard the top 28 assertion as being less flimsy than the unsourced* top 15 assertion.
*If USNWR represents the purported source, then Ivy League schools can be found in the top 18 in one of the two national categories.
How did this thread turn into a Ivy-bashing contest? Anyone (besides me) want to actually respond to OPās question?
@AboutTheSame His question has been replied to by several of us.
If you could quote a disparing Ivy comment, this might make sense.
CMU is a very expensive school and FA is not the best. Can you afford CMU and does the athletic recruitment include some scholarship money? If money is not a consideration you wonāt find much better than CMU for CS. Most of the Ivyās, excepting Cornell and Princeton are not CS or engineering focused.
Everyone knows CMU for engineering is not only hard to get in but even more importantly super hard to get out. CMU engineering grads are incredibly legit and people know about the incredible hard work they have put in their studies (CMU engineering is brutal). Name is not everything, and CMU has a great name amongst the people who matter. And this is coming from an Ivy League grad. Besides the Ivy league does not mean too much anymore. Stanford is not an ivy league school, but it does blow every ivy league school other than Harvard out of the water based on many metrics.
@TomSrOfBoston : Please note that I did NOT say that EVERY post was not responsive.
@merc81 : Read the thread. If you do not think that some of the posts are disparaging, then we have no common vocabulary. Anyhoo, I was just trying to encourage people to focus on the question rather than their opinions about the Ivies. Capisce?
Sure, itās a bit more nuanced in a larger discussion about college quality. After all, the whole reason the Ivy League came together as a college conference is because the universities within it didnāt offer athletic scholarships and so did not have the level of athlete that could compete with other universities that did. Ironically, though, that makes it both just a conference and not just a conference - because one of the other reasons they conferenced together was simple geographic proximity. They all happened to be in the Northeast, and in the early 1900s when travel was harder than it is now, it made more sense for sports teams in closer geographic proximity to play each other.
In any case, typically when I see the phrase used, itās because someone is - as in this case - using the āIvy Leagueā to try and denote that the schools within the athletic conference are somehow better or set apart among a larger group of elite schools. Thereās no reason to believe that the Ivies - either as a group or any individual member - are better than other elite schools. Just because Brown is an Ivy doesnāt mean itās better than Carnegie Mellon, or that Cornell is better than Stanford, or that Yale is better than Duke, or so on and so forth. In making comparisons among a group of highly selective, elite colleges, the Ivy League is just an athletic conference.
Probably. Personally, I would like to combat that, because I want to dispel the notion that this collection of schools is objectively better than any other elite schools. It doesnāt help, and incorrectly subsuming any elite school under the Ivy moniker only furthers the problem - and you get situations we see on CC all the timeā¦like this one. Itās far better for students to learn that there are many elite schools and many other very excellent selective ones, and in terms of selecting a college and comparing a collegeās educational quality, the Ivy League membership alone is a pretty weak indicator when comparing among other elite schools.
Which brings me back around to the OPās question - the fact that Carnegie Mellon is not in that athletic conference says absolutely zero about the universityās academic quality. Conversely, belongingness to the Ivy League does not mean a given university is better than CMU, especially for you as an individual student. You should make your choice independent of whether a university is an Ivy or not, and you should feel free to attend CMU because itās a great place and a great start for a career.
The thread title appears as follows:
The discussion with respect to the Ivy League seems appropriate here.
@merc81: No. Read the darn title that you quote yourself. OP was referring to the Ivies as a college group, not the athletic conference. But, go ahead, believe whatever untruths make you happy.
I donāt think CMU will hurt you at all for CS or engineering. However, being an athletic recruit may not be good enough to get you into CMU CS. CS is in its own school and the school is small and admits very few students.
Also, if financial aid is important to you, the Ivies will tend to offer a better package because CMU has a smaller endowment. I would consider visiting CMU and a few other schools that interest you and see where you feel like you fit in. I suspect that Cornell or Penn is the closest Ivy to CMU.
Yeah I agree the ivies with the most similar vibes to CMU are probably Penn and Cornell.
@lolsji : Re engineering, US News ranks CMU eighth overall among the universities in its category and fifth in computer engineering. In both cases, these positions surpass any Ivy League school.
Ehh Penn and Cornell are probably two of the the most āfunā ivies. CMU is pretty far from that tbh. Hard to compare tech schools to Ivies.
@Flurite Definitely true about the fun part but Penn and Cornell are also probably two of the most (if not the most) intense, competitive and pre-professional ivies which probably most closely resembles CMU. Also they are probably less preppy than all the other ivies which is probably another similarity. Columbia is probably in the less preppy group too.
CMU CS > any ivy CS
None of the Ivy schools are particularly well-known for their CS departments, at least compared to the CS departments at CMU, MIT, and probably Stanford and possibly Berkeley.
CMU CS beats CS at any Ivy. Not sure why this is even a question.
Can you join CMU CS as part of being a recruited athlete? If so, go for it! If not, then your chances of getting are small to nil - the CS department is arguably the most competitive in the country. Engineering is easier to get into.
I would give some more thought to how much you want to play your sport in college - if it is important to you go with CMU.