<p>Hey. I need some help cutting down my list of schools. My primary choice for a major is computer science, but I'm also considering civil engineering or computer engineering. Urban or suburban areas both sound alright to me, though I think I would prefer an urban location. Student body size doesn't seem like so much of an issue to me, but I don't want anything too small.</p>
<p>And do I need more/lower safeties?</p>
<p>Here's a quick, abbreviated profile:
Asian male
Pennsylvania
GPA: 3.8 UW, 4.1 W (as recent as I know)
SAT 2160 (retook and expecting 2250-2350)
SAT II: 710 Chemistry, 740 Math II
AP: 5 Calc AB, 4 Chemistry, 5 English Lang, 3 Euro History (screwed that last one up)
Main EC's: Martial arts, Mock Trial four years each (in addition to others)
Don't need financial aid.</p>
<p>Here's my list, just in alphabetical order:
Brown
Carnegie Mellon
Cornell
Georgia Tech
UIUC
Imperial College of London (UK)
King's College London (UK)
McGill (Canada)
Michigan
UPenn
Rice
Stanford
UT Austin
U of Washington
U of Waterloo (Canada)</p>
<p>I appreciate any help you can give me! Thanks.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply. I replaced Brown with Penn State. Could you provide some explanations for your other choices? I'm curious as to how those international schools stack up against the American schools on my list.</p>
<p>I don't know, but if you want to work as an engineer in the states, I'd choose any of the American schools over the Canadian and UK schools. American employers are much more familiar with them.</p>
<p>Okay, I've gotten my list down a bit. But I don't know the following schools very well (though I'm trying to research). I need to eliminate one or two of them, since I'm pretty set on the rest. Does anyone know enough about their CS/Engineering programs, campus, and lifestyle to make a comparison (even between a couple)?</p>
<p>The two I'm most thinking of eliminating are Texas and Michigan, but I don't know... I'm thinking of Illinois as a safety; does that make sense?</p>
<p>I can't compare the ones you have listed, but I will vouch for Georgia Tech. I'm currently in the ECE program and one thing I can say is that all of the engineering departments are large enough that you can really branch out and take a lot of interesting classes that might not have been justifiable from a funding point of view at places with smaller programs.</p>
<p>As for the campus, it's really nice and doesn't feel very urban but then you walk over to Tech Square on the other side of the 16 lane highway via an overpass cleverly disguised as greenspace and you are reminded you live in midtown Atlanta. The campus itself looks very nice with a very college-y feel to it; The college of computing in particular is mostly housed in a new building.</p>
<p>As for lifestyle, yeah there are some gamer nerds (I can sometimes hear people talking about World of Warcraft in the dining halls) but there are a ton of active people as well. The campus rec center was built for the olympics in 1996 and then renovated to make it probably the most impressive gym I've ever been in. It's got (among other mundane things) a rock climbing wall, a 3-storey water slide, a lazy river, and a track on the 5th floor that gives an amazing view of downtown Atlanta while you're working out since it sits on the highest point on campus. I know you mentioned you practice martial arts, so I'll say that there are about 10 different types taught there incase you want to keep going. I'm rambling a bit about the gym because it was the one thing that really wowed me on campus.</p>
<p>The social life is ok for me, but I'm not really a clubbing type, though I know people that are. Some people are a bit too hung up on their courseload (it's a tough school, but its rep for being impossibly hard is a bit overstated), but there are also a lot of people who aren't. The girls aren't too bad either, but the choice is generally limited to asian girls or southern belles, or maybe you could just say limited in general. Girls typically have a guy on either arm, but the smart guys will head across town to Emory or Georgia State.</p>
<p>I think Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, and Stanford are great choices. GT, PSU, Indiana, and Vtech have good programs as well. Add 1-2 safeties and it looks like a good well-rounded list.</p>
<p>UT has an outstanding computer science program, but it is extremely difficult for an out-of-state student to get admitted there. You've got other good choices, so I would suggest dropping UT.</p>
<p>Thanks for the help. After looking into UT, it seems you're right: it seems difficult OOS, so I'll probably drop it. Anyone else have some input?</p>
<p>I would keep Cornell/Carnegie Mellon for NorthEast.
Rice/Georgia Tech for South
Michigan/UIUC for MidWest
Stanford for West
McGill for Canada
Imperial College for UK</p>
<p>@Columbia_Student:
That's my list right now, with Waterloo instead of Rice. I visited Waterloo and though the campus is rather dreary, I've research their programs quite a lot and am intent on applying there. From what I have seen of Rice, it seems that the ratio of difficulty of getting in to CS rankings is really high. I figure that there are other schools on the list that I have a higher chance at and which I would rather attend. Do you think this logic makes sense?</p>