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<p>Well, to be somewhat blunt, being a non-white/Asian/Indian student will definitely make her a bit of an odd-bird out at CMU. I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, as I don’t think CMU is a negative atmosphere at all for minority students. My handful of African-American friends at CMU never seemed uncomfortable in our groups, though I do think your daughter should be ready to be the only non-white/asian/indian person in the room quite often. I think she’d be even lonelier if she was Hispanic, though, as I don’t recall knowing any Hispanic people my whole time there. :(</p>
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<p>I think CMU has a general problem of not attracting engineers/CS people to do tours, as what they love about the university might scare off some of the non-technical majors. :p</p>
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<p>I think during the school year you’d see a few girls, but in the computer labs you walked by (most likely the ones in Wean Hall) it’ll be mostly guys, since that building is dominated by technical fields (Physics, Materials Science, Math, and CS are the main space-fillers, I believe). If you venture over to Baker/Porter hall’s clusters, you should find more girls as there’s more humanities housed in those buildings.</p>
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<p>She’ll be living with all girls on her hall (possibly entire dorm) freshman year, so she’ll have plenty of opportunities to meet people outside her field then. Outside of that, there’s also tons of active student organizations where she can meet people. I don’t recall any of my female friends in engineering complaining about not knowing enough girls; it was pretty much always the guys.</p>
<p>She shouldn’t have problems meeting people to do work with in CS; they have a few of their own specialized classes where you get to meet people and do things, so I’m sure she’ll be able to find someone (guy or girl) to do projects with.</p>
<p>As for the attractiveness issue at CMU, it’s really not that huge of a deal. It’s a stereotype for the school, just as being really smart or if you’re in CS/engineering means you’re good with computers (all not necessarily true). As long as your daughter’s got a good personality, she won’t have a problem making friends and meeting people.</p>
<p>Also, late-night homework sessions was one of my favorite things at CMU. There’s just something really rewarding about working really hard on an assignment for twelve hours straight, finishing it, and then going out for pancakes at Pamela’s or Eat 'n Park to celebrate while the sun was coming up.</p>
<p>And, just to keep things straight, I absolutely loved CMU. I got rejected from my top-choice school (Caltech) and can’t even express how happy I am that I was. I still keep in touch with a couple of my professors via e-mail, I’ve been to a few of their houses for parties/cookouts, and due to my department’s small size, I felt like I was going to a school of 15 instead of 5000.</p>
<p>If you’ve got any questions about CMU you don’t want to ask here or anything, feel free to PM me. :)</p>