<p>I have heard a surprising amount of prospective students worried about the very high male:female ratio, and also the competitive atmosphere. Can any current students comment on how scarce the women are on campus and how competitive it for grades?</p>
<p>Ok, well the male:female ratio is improving every year-and is balanced out by the fact that the people who don't care about the male:female ratio tend to stay in (i'm talking about the immense number of students who would rather program on friday and saturday nights-true story) while the ones who do go out and socialize at a higher rate. Therefore the number of men who are actively seeking female companionship (friendship, relationship, otherwise) tend to be somewhat in harmony with the number of women available.</p>
<p>if clarification for that some what convoluted analysis is needed do ask.</p>
<p>It's true, you have to work really hard for grades, but i wouldn't call it "competitive" I'd rather call it "how much work are you willing to put in"</p>
<p>Ie-when I studied for my econ test two weeks ago, it wasn't on my mind that there are 5 million smart kids in my class that I need to actively supress and beat out-but rather it was on my mind that i'd have to put in at least 10 straight hours of studying time dedicated solely to the material on the test during the week preceding the test in order to get as clsoe to 100% as possible.</p>
<p>Hmm... so student life is all up to the student. The male to female ratio is very major-dependent, so you should combat this by meeting people from every major, probably best done by meeting everyone who lives near you, as the school makes a conscious to mix it up for freshmen. There are quite a few people who prefer to stay in on weekends to do work or whatever, and that kind of surprised me, coming from a public high school. However, you can find several good parties every semester - just don't count on a good one every weekend (you can probably find a bad party every weekend). To clarify, the male:female ratio is like 5:4 across the entire school, but the effective ratio will be much higher if you're in engineering or CS, so don't think your intro engineering class is a good sample space for CMU (I made that mistake my first semester). There is A LOT to do in Pittsburgh, if you look around. The action really is not on campus on weekend, although some of the school-sponsored late-night events are actually fun.</p>
<p>As far as competition.... nobody at CMU will go out of their way to make someone else worse off. However, people here DO enjoy being successful, and the classes are hard, so students tend to work hard - really hard. You can get by without working too hard, even get A's but if you're looking to be the best in your class (as many CMU students were in high school) don't expect to be able to do that and have a lot of fun. Really, I don't recommend working too hard. Just work hard enough to get an A. The time spent over-achieving is better spent taking a break and having fun.</p>