<p>I was accepted at both undergraduate programs for CS. Princeton has top Ivy prestige and stronger social sciences/humanities. Carnegie Mellon is better known for their CS.</p>
<p>Financial aid is about the same for both schools. </p>
<p>Any thoughts?</p>
<p>Personally I would say CMU just because of their incredibly well-known and good program. I don’t know if the social life is something that matters to you, because I’ve heard at CMU in the CS school you’ll have to work a lot.</p>
<p>from the recent NRC rankings of graduate school departments:</p>
<p>COMPUTER SCIENCE
1—Stanford
2—Princeton
3—MIT
4—Berkeley
5—Carnegie Mellon
6—Cornell
7—Harvard
8—UC Santa Barbara
9—Penn
10–UCLA</p>
<p>and from the latest USNWR rankings of graduate school departments</p>
<p>COMPUTER SCIENCE
1 - Carnegie Mellon
1 - MIT
1 - Stanford
1 - UCB
5 - Cornell
5 - Illinois
7 - Univ. of Washington
8 - Princeton
8 - UT
10 - Georgia Tech
8 - Princeton</p>
<p>and, of course, the overall USNWR National Research University Rankings</p>
<p>2. Princeton
.
.
23. Carnegie Mellon</p>
<p>At this level, you’re not really going to compare rankings. That’s far too narrow-minded.</p>
<p>If you’re studying CS, what kind of jobs do you see yourself doing in the five years after you graduate? (CMU is obviously the CS powerhouse, but if you see yourself using your CS background to migrate to different, perhaps less-technical fields, you might not want to eliminate Princeton right away.)</p>
<p>Are you going to be in Silicon Valley? The East Coast? International? (In Silicon Valley CMU has prestige. On the East Coast and overseas Princeton will have the name recognition.) And honestly, how much do you care about prestige?</p>
<p>Have you checked out the course requirements for each school? (How well will Princeton CS prepare you?) Do you have any secondary academic interests that would be better pursued at one school or the other? (CMU, despite being a technical school, should still be pretty open to double-majors and minors and interdisciplinary work, however.)</p>
<p>Do you feel you fit better into one culture or the other? (CMU seems like a fairly geeky and workaholic school, and this environment may be intellectually stimulating or exhausting for you.) Do you prefer one location over the other? Is staying near family a concern? Staying far from family?</p>
<p>It’s a good thing money isn’t a factor. Makes the decision that much harder. =)</p>
<p>^^^Well said</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>Thanks Greekfire</p>
<p>Does CMU really look better than Princeton to Silicon Valley employers? I’d think Princeton’s prestige would carry nation-wide, even in CS.</p>
<p>^^^you might want to take a look at where the top officers of those “Silicon Valley employers” came from in addition to where the top Venture Capitalists and Private Equity Firms that invested in those “Silicon Valley Employers” came from…many of them are from Stanford/Ivy/MIT.</p>
<p>Let me remind you of a few: Amazon, Ebay, Google, Electronic Arts.</p>
<p>Princeton does have prestige, don’t get me wrong. But if your r</p>