<p>Hi. I'm a junior interested in CMU, especially MCS. I was just wondering what reputation MCS has compared with CIT and SCS, since I've heard and read posts about how excellent CIT and SCS are. On the contrary, there doesn't seem to be much about MCS.</p>
<p>Thanks~</p>
<p>Great research being done in chemistry and biology. A lot of computational fields with groundbreaking use of computer science in these fields. But MCS will work you just as hard as JHU and Cornell, if not harder. I was a chemistry dual degree with business when entering CMU but left it to pursue Computer Science (HCI). Main reason I left was I realized to achieve my goals of a future job primarily in healthcare management, the amount of work for chemistry was simply not worth it. </p>
<p>If your premed, as a lot of my friends are, I would not recommend CMU simply because of the difficulty without the premed reputation. A lot of people regret coming because their GPA here might be a 3.4-3.7, which is stellar for CMU but top med schools these days wont give you a second look under 3.8. At the same time a lot of these guys could have gone to Pitt or PSU and recieved much higher marks. </p>
<p>But if your looking into a science as a field then absolutely pursue CMU. Not only will you learn from a set of great professors, and learn all the recent developments in the field (because our professors are contributing to a lot of it), but you will have valuable opportunities to research in some very high tech labs.</p>
<p>I am a physics major (doubling in CS), and its an excellent department (physics being the smallest subset of MCS). The department is small, so you will get to know most of the professors. Its cool when the professor greets you with your name. Even though we are not famed, the curriculum will prepare you very well for graduate school(1) I have talked with grad students 2) I correlated it to the physics graduate placements trends, which showed most went to reputable grad school and jobs). The quality of education is in par with the SCS, but different people may have different opinion on this.
Good luck in choosing!</p>