Right, because you can’t work hard in a non- hyper competitive environment and succeed in CS after college. Makes sense.
My child is in SCS, will be graduating in May, and has been really happy the whole time. In fact, so happy has wanted to stay over spring breaks.
Ok, so I think there’s a spectrum with regards to a quality education in undergrad CS. My H hires CS undergrads out of college, and they run the gamut from not being able to pass the programming competency tests (I won’t mention the name of the school but it is a for-profit one) to not being able to offer the kids enough money and bennies because EVERYONE wants them (Georgia Tech).
I think it’s important to know how hard you can (and want to) grind, and to define what “success” means to you personally. I don’t think “hyper competitive” is a requirement for a quality CS degree, but some people thrive on it and that’s good for them.
Also, 3 suicides in four years, all Cmu Cs is concerning.
I’ve heard the “where fun comes to die” stereotype a lot for CMU. Is this type of environment mostly for CS or CMY as a whole? I’m interested in business which is still really preprofessional but I’m still worried about this seemingly cutthroat and “lack of fun” environment.
I don’t think CMU has a cutthroat environment. In fact, many of the class assignments are group projects, forcing students to learn how to work in teams. This can be problematic for some, particularly those who have succeeded in the past by outworking their peers and now become stressed when they have to rely on others (and the project grade can be determined in part by factors outside their control.) Students often have time management problems on their own, and it only gets worse when the grade depends upon the group’s collective time management skills.
Another factor is that nearly all of the CMU students were in the top 5 or 10% of their HS graduating classes, and for the first time in their lives some of those people are going to be just average or below average. Some people have a hard time dealing with that. There are kids who fear the day they have to bring a report card containing a ‘C’ home to their parents. I do think this lends itself to CMU feeling like a competitive environment, because more than half don’t want to be in the bottom half.