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What you wrote about CMU:
What you wrote about Princeton:
It doesn’t sounds as though Carnegie Mellon is a good fit for you as you don’t like the location and the social life feels dead to you. Your weaknesses for Princeton is more about the love of CS and that it is modestly lower ranked than CMU for CS. Unless the love of CS is going to keep you happy at night and on weekends for 4 years, go to Princeton.
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CMU is a world power at CS, no doubt, but it sounds like you think you wouldn’t enjoy the experience.
Princeton is solid in CS and has a worldwide brand name with tons of tradition. IMO, you can’t do better for an undergrad education than Princeton, compared to all other US universities. They are the most undergrad-focused of the HYPSM group.
Every program they offer is very strong, so if you changed your mind you’d settle into something else that is top-notch. And you feel that the vibe and environment fit you better. And it’s cheaper. Boom, it sounds like you should head to Princeton.
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What kind of research is expected of you at CMU? At Princeton you’ll have to do at least 1 junior paper and a Senior Thesis/Project. It may differ depending on the AB or BSE option. CMU probably has research opportunities too but is it built into the curriculum? I know a CS professor who did Princeton UG and CMU Grad - he preferred that order due to Princeton being more UG focused.
I know the food topic is supposedly distracting but my D17 that attended Princeton didn’t like the dining hall options that much - she’s vegetarian so that contributed but she’s also came from a foodie family. At Princeton if you don’t like the dining hall options then the immediate off campus options are either mediocre or expensive. You’ll have to do the dining hall the first 2 years no matter. After that you can either join a Eating Club or a Co-op or go offcampus or get into a dorm with your own kitchen. CMU being in a city (and a city with a relatively lower cost of living) you’ll have a lot more food options and off campus living options. But I suppose you can use the 17K saving at Princeton to eat out a lot more often 
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I think you need to reconcile some of your pros and cons.
You want to use CS to solve world problems but you like the interdisciplinary options of Princeton.
If you’re all-in on CS then CMU but if you want to branch out then Princeton. Nothing wrong with either approach. Both will get you where you want to go but you need to prioritize your wants.
I can’t speak for Princeton but I went to Pitt many years ago and made friends at CMU. I’ve also worked for some CMU start-ups. This side of MIT and SV I’m not sure there’s a better place for that type of atmosphere. That said, I’m not sure how much an undergrad benefits from that other than being in the “right” type of place. As a grad student or professor the benefit would be greater I suspect.
You have a good problem to solve. No wrong choice. Good luck.
OP (@mystic_nacho) - so I went through all the posts above and if I have the tally right, amongst people who posted an opinion about picking one college over the other:
- 7 picked Princeton
- 1 picked CMU
So, I hope that helps answer your question.
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That’s because of the cost, which is important of course. If both were equally affordable, then I’d go with CMU for the long-term goal of entrepreneurship in CS, disruption, innovation in tech. The other reason of being able to switch to another major being easier at Princeton is another good reason.
Here is my 2c on the topic.
I have a kid that made this choice 3 years ago.
He made a choice that fit his needs.
Princeton was his EA school. CMU was #7 on his list. I am not sure it is on his grad school list either if he did choose to go to grad school :-).
He wanted a liberal arts education apart from CS
He wanted a strong math school.
CMU is an excellent school for CS. There are many areas of CS that are better represented at CMU than at Princeton. For example, HCI. If you want to do HPC, you may want to go to UCB for instance. Robotics – perhaps CMU etc.
What Princeton really excels at are the following things:
- CS Theory
- CS Systems
- Math – as it is pertinent to CS theory for instance.
This is not to say that CMU is bad for Theory or Systems. Not at all.
Princeton is perhaps better than CMU for Math though, to the extent that is important to you.
Princeton has perhaps less of a startup scene in the traditional sense of tech startups. Not sure if CMU is a whole lot better. Could be a bit better than Princeton, just by the fact that CMU SCS takes itself too seriously :-).
Princeton is better at giving a huge amount of exposure in non-CS areas. Govt, policy, Finance, Consulting etc… on the professional side, as well as exposure to kids who have significantly other academic interests.
In terms of negatives on the CMU side, I have heard about three things – 1) Many kids in CMU SCS wished they were somewhere else – e.g. Stanford or MIT, and it affects the school vibe, 2) Many kids at CMU SCS think they are better than kids in CMU IT or CMU Electrical, and certainly better than other Engg kids at CMU etc – the environment should be healthier than this, and 3) There is a bit of a stress culture at CMU – perhaps more than there is at Princeton. You don’t find issues 1) and 2) at Princeton, and 3) Stress is perhaps less prevalent.
The CS major at Princeton is an interesting major. The dept. wants to give access to the dept to anyone that is interested at Princeton, as opposed to gating it as CMU does. So they created many different paths through the department. There are easy paths and hard paths. The CS program is less structured than it is at CMU. There are no guard rails. You can skip a bunch of classes and take mostly grad classes if you choose and are capable at Princeton.
“At least” the top 20-30% of the CS class at Princeton are competitive with the top 20-30% of the class at MIT, Berkeley or Stanford in CS.
Maybe about 10% of the class goes to CS academia. They get to do a lot of research with significant 1-1 access to profs. My son would have had 5 semesters + one summer of research by the time he graduates. A top 5 CS grad school is a likely outcome for the top 10% of the graduating CS class if they choose.
There are comparable industry options from Princeton as there are from CMU in just tech, and there are more non-tech options even after a CS degree from Princeton than from CMU – e.g., quant trading, IB, Consulting, Policy etc…
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great post!
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Your post has a lot of unsupported generalizations to make Princeton look better than it is. Do you have any supporting data for any of these claims, that Princeton is better than CMU in CS Theory and CS Systems?
“At least” the top 20-30% of the CS class at Princeton are competitive with the top 20-30% of the class at MIT, Berkeley or Stanford in CS.
That’s not true from my experience, I have a decent idea of what Stanford and MIT look for in CS, and they do not look at what I call straight-ahead factors like academics. Not only do you have to show you’re one of the best stem students in the country (awards et al) but also how you are different from those winners. What do you mean by competitive anyway, that they all scored the same on a standardized test?
Your point on stress is a good one but your point on CMU CS students also would apply to Princeton kids that are in Engr or CS, tried for the MITs of the world. The Stanford/Princeton cross admit on Parchment (yes not the best, but the closest we have to this kind of info) is 71% choose Stanford, which seems about right.
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I didn’t say that Princeton is better than CMU at theory. I said Princeton is good at theory and systems. In the sense that you won’t see any differences in depth of coverage.
Many things we say cannot be explicitly supported because of not a lot of the data is collected and published.
I am saying this from grad school admissions, ease of job placements etc., and conversations that my son has had with friends in other schools. You may choose to ignore whatever you don’t believe.
The yield of Princeton EA is some 95% plus. My son did not apply to MIT. MIT was his first choice until after he visited it in junior year. Then it slipped to #4 on his list. There are many kids like this. He applied to Stanford but did not get in. At the time of application he said the odds of taking Stanford if he gets in were 30%. If he were more serious, he said he would have applied to Stanford EA. That did not happen. He said he was not going to bother tailoring the application to them. They can offer or not, if they didn’t think he was a fit. He said they are a little too commercial and are obsessed about startups.
I am not trying to sound neutral. I am not obligated to be neutral. After all, CMU was #7 on his early list. Eventually he did not apply after the EA season. I didn’t want him to put it on his list.
Princeton is a fantastic place. One would be lucky to go there :-).
I asked my son if he had any regrets over not applying to MIT or Harvard at the end of sophomore year. CMU did not enter the conversation. He said he is more sure at that time that it was the correct decision.
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Fair enough, I see what you’re saying! Also it’s SCEA for Princeton and Stanford, I think.
Incidentally Princeton theory is stellar because 1) they have a long history of people like Turing, and more importantly, 2) the adjacent Math department is stellar – the math department has a 100 faculty (without even counting the attached IAS) while only graduating 35 undergrads a year. There are enough probabilists, combinatorists etc in that bunch that cross over, collaborate and work on TCS type topics. They are all available to guide undergrad seniors in theses etc. Profs are paid extra for every student that signs up for independent work with them. Labs are given more money than otherwise if the labs take undergrads as research assistants etc. Whenever my son signed up for independent work (and he has done this for several semesters so far), the prof allocates an hour of face-to-face time every week with him. Some 7-8 kids got together during the freshman covid summer (because their internships got cancelled) and got a prof to offer then a reading course on Lie Algebras, ungraded, and I am sure the prof got paid for it. The kids did not pay any tuition for this. Money is freely available. If there are three requests for an article from a journal that the university library doesn’t have, that journal is permanently subscribed to. When you first join, the university assigns you a dedicated librarian to search for you. As you move up into sophomore year, and need specialized library help, there are specialized librarians in sub areas of math or Russian or whatever else to search for material for you. There are some 4 members of the administration that reach out and ask kids whether they want to apply for scholarships like the Rhodes, Marshall or the Fullbright, unsolicited. And then they help the kid custom taylor an application to these things. It just boggles my mind how much money the university has to throw at undergrads.
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Sure, and don’t forget Turing’s mentor at Princeton, Church, also Einstein and Von Neumann who were associated with Princeton. But are these and things like the Fulbright relevant to the OP, that’s kind of my point. The OP is 50/50 for that reason, based on all you posted, wouldn’t Princeton been an obvious choice?
The OP “wants to be an entrepreneur and/or industry leader that solves a major problem in the world using computer science.”
That would clearly indicate CMU is better, it’s more cutting-edge in CS, has more of a start-up culture, but it does cost more and maybe more competitive, so that’s why I would probably go to Princeton.
Let me add a bit more to the perspective on the startup culture…
Part of the complaint that my son has with the Stanford startup culture is that they do startups for the sake of doing startups – many of them really solving small bore problems in life, such as “snap” etc… He has talked about problems like crop insurance in Africa as an example, as an important problem that needs solving. And Stanford believes in throwing technology at all problems, which I guess is what the OP wants to do.
Princeton on the other hand thinks of govt as a legitimate tool for change, given their long experience in that space. Technology has its place as a tool in solving problems, but it is one among many.
But stepping back, a good broad education is more likely to expose you to real problems that need solving than a more technology leaning education and technology leaning student community at CMU SCS. A Princeton education will give you a broader exposure to these issues as well issues about policy/ ethics etc as they pertain to using technology to solve problems. The general campus vibe is a student community that is sussing these issues out rather than just solving the technical problems.
Certainly the community is less successful and less interested in the startup culture than a place like Stanford. Not sure how this compares to CMU.
A list: List of top Princeton University Alumni Founded Companies - Crunchbase Hub Profile
Of course Amazon is a Princeton startup through a finance job along the way for Bezos. There is a large finance vibe on campus whoever the kid be – even sometimes philosophy type majors :-). Often going through finance for a few years gives you personal seed capital to do a startup. Sam Bankman-Fried is a good example, even though he is not Princeton.
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That’s right, OP didn’t get into Stanford which was probably their first choice, so OP is totally ok with boring startups since their goal is to get into Stanford for master’s. For that CMU is better but it cost’s more, so it’s hard to argue for it against Princeton.
By the way, if the goal is to get into a Stanford masters, I don’t think it makes a difference whether you go to CMU or Princeton. You will get there from either place. In fact you can get to Stanford in a hurry from Princeton – you can finish the undergrad in 3 years under advanced standing if you come in with 5s on AP Mech, AP E&M, AP Chem, and (I think) AP Calc BC