Seeking views on deciding applying early decision between Carnegie SCS and Cornell Computer Science

Colleges and Universities A-Z Carnegie Mellon University
1

I’ve spent the summer at Carnegie Mellon and visited Cornell as well. I am torn between these two choices for my early decision. I’m seeking views about:

  • Program Strength
  • Job Employment
  • Social Life Outside of Class
  • Peers, Culture, Community
  • General Prestige
  • anything else that may help me decide
2

Do not know if this is still relevant, but I will still respond. In terms of program rigor and prestige, I would say that even from an unbiased perspective, CMU SCS far outstrips Cornell. SCS is considered to be in the top 3 CS schools (MIT, Stanford, and SCS) in the nation, and we publish more papers a year per faculty than any other computer science department in the nation making it ripe for undergraduate research. Not only are freshman allowed to pursue research directly under world-class faculty, they are practically begged to look for these research opportunities by talking to professors. For job employment, freshman year internships are granted to about 20% of SCS freshman and about half are searching for them, so about a 40% success rate. For sophomore and beyond I have never met a student that looked for an internship and did not find one (maybe one specific internship, but they certainly ended up with at least one or two offers). I personally still have a good social life outside of class - I normally go to the gym at least an hour every day and have time to mess around and hang with friends during meals and at night/on the weekends. I definitely know that being a first year means I have more free time than a lot of SCS does, but for most of the people I know, they never have to lose sleep or too much social time for work. That being said, it’s all about time management, but you certainly have enough time to have a social life. The culture and community are both great, everyone wants to help you if you need it, all you have to do is ask. I have not met a single person yet that is overly competitive or arrogant, everyone is really awesome

Also, if you even considered Cornell to be on the same level as SCS, you should probably apply there instead.

3

“Also, if you even considered Cornell to be on the same level as SCS, you should probably apply there instead.”
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