<p>Hey all,</p>
<p>I'm a New Yorker and I've been admitted at both UIllinois @ Urbana-Champaign and CMU. I was admitted at UIUC in December and have since gotten a $50k scholarship to go there. I got into CMU today, but i doubt I'll get any merit scholarships from them. </p>
<p>CMU is notoriously expensive and stingy with merit money... but paying for the CMU tuition is not completely out of the question for my fam's financial situation(though saving money is always good). Both are good engineering schools... my question is, is there anything that would justify the ~$100,000 price gap of going to CMU instead of UIUC? Living on the east coast, i'm one of probably 2 people in my HS that applied to UIUC, so CMU def has more prestige, but what else about CMU makes them better?</p>
<p>Additional info:
I got in as a Computer Engineer at UIUC
I got in @ CIT (though waitlisted for the EE & CE major though that doesn't really matter) at CMU</p>
<p>I think UIUC is just tooooo huge compared to CMU and for undergrad, you don’t want that. Although for EE or CS, UIUC is ranked higher than CMU, but as you said, the prestige academic atmosphere in CMU, cannot be measured with money. I think in CMU you will receive a better rounded education. $100,000 is sure a lot of money, but eventually you are gonna spend it, either on house, cars or 10,000 times for junk food in McDonald’s. So if it’s not too big a deal for your family, I suggest you to use the money in exchange of better education that will benefit your whole lifetime.</p>
<p>yeah its a hard decision, i turned down full tuition and 2k per year in a school i could succed in and also make more money during co-op, BUT i dont regret it at all, and i look forward to going to cmu 
also you can always look for scholarship applications to fill out (filled out about 6 so far each for decent money). (in for CIT & MCS)</p>
<p>Better Education? LOL</p>
<p>Honestly I doubt you’ll get a better education at CMU vs UIUC, UIUC is very highly ranked. You could make that case (maybe) for ECE but he was waitlisted for this anyway. If you want to work as an engineer then I’d say go for UIUC and save your cash. IF you want to say do analytics work or something at a big shot NY bank with your engineering degree, then obviously CMU would be a good choice.</p>
<p>Now this is assuming you like both schools. They are quite different. UIUC is a larger school in a cornfield and CMU is a midsize university in a more urban setting. You’ll also find many people from NY and people from NJ (some of whom may say they are from NY unless you really interrogate them :D) at CMU, whereas in Urbaba you may not. Socially, UIUC I suspect is probably a good deal more desirable for some students than CMU (and vice versa). I really find it hard to believe that you like each of the schools equally - honestly, read up more about both schools, because they are in very different settings. Both will give you a stellar engineering education.</p>