<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>There is nothing that justifies paying $100,000 extra to go to CMU, especially since UIUC is the better engineering school. I am not sure why you think CMU is more prestigious, but unless you are in Computer Science, UIUC is arguably better in almost all the other areas of engineering, it isn’t that much of an edge. You will get a nearly identical education as far as companies are concerned and grad schools are concerned, and there is honestly no reason to pay an extra $100k to go to a school where you will getting the exact same education with the exact same, if not slightly more prestige.</p>
<p>The fact that there were only a couple people from your high school that applied to UIUC says more about where you live than how good the school is. For one, people tend to stay in the general region they grew up in when they go to college (as in midwest, southeast, New England, etc). Most people on the East Coast are barely even aware that there is a middle part of the country, so the fact that there are even a couple East Coasters applying to UIUC is pretty significant since those people are willing to leave their beloved eastern seaboard to come to the middle of Illinois for an education.</p>
<p>Honestly, go where you think you will be happiest since they are both wonderful schools, but it better make you pretty happy if you pick CMU over UIUC… like $100k+ worth of happy.</p>
<p>I absolutely loved my undergrad at CMU, but for $100k I say there’s no reason not go to go UIUC.</p>
<p>Often, Big,scholarships come with conditional GPA maintenance. Be sure that you are aware of all conditions.</p>