<p>While many of CMUs students gripe and moan about the workload and the social life, or lack thereof, at the university, they always put up with it because of the good education that they are getting from it, and honestly, it's what you make of it. If you're complaining about a lack in the social scene, start something yourself.</p>
<pre><code>Founded in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie, the university has really come a long way, ranking 22nd in the nation amongst national research universities in the 2009 edition of U.S. New & World Report for its undergraduate program. And in the most recent release of the Top 200 World Universities by Times Higher Education, Carnegie Mellon was ranked 20th overall and 7th in technology.
Compared to many state universities, it is not a very large university, with an undergraduate student population of about 6,000, which is a good size that students wont get too lost in, but does not have to get tired of seeing the same people day in and day out. The university also has a number of student organizations on campus which provide students the opportunity to find peers with the same or similar interests as themselves, and at some point, saying that Im going home, is referring to ones dorm room instead of just their home with their parents. Another perk about CMUs population being smaller is that the campus isnt too bigtaking perhaps 15 minutes at most to get from one side of campus to another, and with ones student ID, its pretty easy to get around Pittsburgh as well using public transportation. The extra technology benefits like having wireless everywhere on campus are pretty nice too, with CMU being such a technology oriented school and all. With that, I'm in H&SS, which doesn't get as much attention as CIT and Tepper, but I still enjoy it, and have had some really good professors.
</code></pre>
<p>Basically, I strongly suggest you all to come and visit and hopefully find what I've found here.</p>
<p>i like the small atmosphere of cmu. you run into your friends or people you know very frequently. sure there are a lot of people here who love to study but hey its a good school for a reason.</p>
<p>My son is not having any trouble with the workload so far as a freshman. He knows he is there to study and he works hard, but he also has plenty of time to do other things. He joined a frat and is very busy with the frat social life which includes things like poker night and watching the Steelers in the Super Bowl together. He has also enjoyed activities in the city of Pittsburgh like fireworks displays during one of the city’s celebrations. The school is large enough that there are people who enjoy a variety of activities from intramural soccer to Magic Card games.</p>
<p>does Carnegie Mellon suffer from the lack of having a more diverse student population because they don’t have as many schools/ departments as say an Ivy? I mean its known for the nerdier stuff and whay I’m trying to ask is does it feel more like a nerd school or just a regular college?</p>
<p>I think it’s a rather strange marriage between a nerd school and an art school - but RacinReaver could say better than I how much the two halves interesect. (Mathson did have a sleeping bag weekend with three drama majors and one comp sci major, however I’m pretty sure all his current friends are in comp sci or engineering - and they all hang out in the Linux cluster.)</p>
<p>Well, even the art/music/drama people are nerds of their own kind. I had an art friend and an architecture friend, but that was mostly because they lived on my hall freshman year so I hung out with them a lot then. In later years they tended to stick a lot more with their own class group (mostly due to all the time they spend on projects).</p>
<p>I wouldn’t worry about the lack of diversity of majors a whole lot. I mean, are you more likely to find an engineering major that likes Shakespeare or an English Lit major that likes thermodynamics?</p>
<p>Well count me as an art/history and lit type who spent my college years hanging with scientist. I’ve always really liked science, I just didn’t want to do it myself. I ended up marrying a guy who does cancer research and I still find what he does endlessly fascinating. Architecture for me was a nice combination of art and math and physics.</p>
<p>What I see as a parent who’s son attend the SCS program is the really fantastic internship opportunies that he is able to obtain. While my student is a good students all his SCS student friends are also getting great internships. Companies know that CMU students are smart, work hard and learn what is necessary to be in the workplace. When my son was looking at schools this was one of this school’s selling points. It is not media hype, many of their programs are highly respected and their students find great internships and employment opportunties upon graduation.</p>
<p>a current math major here laying it down for the folks at home. cmu has excellent academics. you will learn a lot, and probably be more familiar with computers than you want to be. in fact, there is such an emphasis on technology that scs students are considered better than other students. the heirarchy follows more or less like this: scs, cit/cfa, mcs/tepper, hss. students and teachers alike secretly acknowledge this ranking, which leads to segregation. but maybe that’s ok since it makes things more competitive amongst students. and cmu is a very competitive school. maybe not to the point of stealing notes or sabotaging tests, but definitely to the point where students refuse to help one another in order to keep their respective average higher. awesome! that being said, internship opportunities are great. but be forewarned they are hard to get, b/c again, you’re competing against everyone else at cmu, and they are very very smart.</p>
<p>but quite possibly the worst thing about cmu is the food. pittsburgh has little variety to offer in terms of food (almost all things are fried to death before served), and the campus food doesn’t help. there are only 1-2 campus eateries that i would go to, and that gets old quite quickly.</p>
<p>last note, pittsburgh’s winter lasts forever, so bring a coat.</p>
<p>I’d say this is about as far from the truth as possible. Almost all of my homeworks, labs, and projects were collaborative with friends and the general feeling was we were there to learn, and not to compete. I only remember one person that actively tried to sabotage other people in homework and such, but after sophomore year everyone had caught on and nobody would work with her after that.</p>
<p>One of the things I loved about CMU was the belief that everyone there was smart enough to land a great job, get into the grad school they wanted, or whatever, so instead of fighting amongst each other, we should try to make all of us as good of candidates as possible.</p>
<p>Agree with RacinReaver… D2 is in CIT and immediately found classmates to form study groups. Students study hard…but they also know when/how to play. Lately, she has been spending many hours at the library in order to keep on top of her classes…so she can enjoy herself on Fridays and Saturdays. D2 is a city dweller…and is loving CMU. She has also been in contact with one of her professors and will be working in the lab shortly. Can’t complain… :)</p>
<p>I actually am a double major in global politics and business. </p>
<p>Umm, it is decent in that all your classes are really small and you have plenty of interaction with your professors. As a matter of fact, you might even have more interaction with your professors than you even did in high school. Although, I dislike the mathematical, economic, and computers focus of the program and wished it would focus more on political science classes instead. But this is cmu which is all about math and computers, so that is not surprising. </p>
<p>As for statistics and economics, both programs are very top-notch possibly top 10 or top 20. Again, you do take many very difficult math classes for both majors and you even are required to take computer programming in java so be prepared to work in both departments.</p>
<p>D is a HS junior. Has full load of AP & Honors classes etc, with a 4.0+ GPA. Scored 2350 SAT and ACT score awaited. Has a reasonable load of ECs, etc. Ranks 9/450. So, you get the idea, a very competitive & driven kid. Interested in Architecture.</p>
<p>Yesterday, went to CMU (Junior Visit day). Very disappointed. Apart from their bragging about technology (I’m an IT professional, so I do recognize how big CMU is in the IT world, SEI and all), there was little else that was impressive. The tour was mediocre and they seemed to have a certain conceit about “being Carnegie Mellon”.</p>
<p>2 of the 4 students that gave tours and in the student panel, transferred out of Architecture into other schools. That raised a big red flag for me. When asked about it, they gave pretty standard response that once they enrolled, they found architecture turned out to be something else than they expected (how they got admission into architecture in the first place, beats me).</p>
<p>The other BIGGER red flag was the number of students who actually enrolled compared to those that got accepted. On an average, less than 1/4 of the students that were offered admission actually enrolled. Tepper was the worst with about 77 students enrolled out of 400+ that were accepted. May be I am new to this process, but what is going on?</p>
<p>CMU is a great school, but it IS second choice for many. My son for example is at the School of Computer Science. His first choice was MIT, but he didn’t get in. He’s very happy at CMU and it may well be an even better fit for him than MIT as it happens. I suspect many engineers also may have academic powerhouses like MIT or Caltech as first places, while many of the business kids may have put Wharton first. </p>
<p>As for Architecture, I don’t think anything you can do in high school will prepare you for the reality of what an architecture program is like. I was an undergrad at Harvard, but I have never worked so hard as at my first year in architecture school. I would guess that the drop out rates at CMU are not that different from other architecture programs. Getting into architecture school is NOTHING like being there. Many all nighters, critique sessions that are designed to bruise your ego, often the feeling that your professor encourages you to take a design in one direction only to have that direction questioned at presentations. It’s brutal and not for the fainthearted.</p>
<p>I’m surprised about your tour experiences, I thought CMU had by far the most impressive tours of all the schools we went to. (However we went for the accepted students days which were somewhat more targeted perhaps.)</p>
<p>I think that CMU also loses in a lot of admission face-offs due to their financial aid package often being pretty lackluster. I know I almost didn’t attend as an undergrad since I was offered around $8,000 more at RPI, but luckily CMU wanted me enough they matched the offer.</p>
<p>I can see a lot of students also liking CMU, but then after visiting not falling in love with the techy culture, Pittsburgh, or the hard work the school requires.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This happens in a lot of fields. Half of my friends in Materials Science & Engineering came to CMU planning on doing Chemical Engineering. After taking the ChemE intro, they realized it wasn’t at all what they were interested in, and instead went with Materials since they realized it’s what they were wanted to do. Likewise, another one of my friends came in planning to do materials, but decided to switch into math since engineering wasn’t quite what he thought it was.</p>
<p>Every, EVERY school I have encountered during my admissions process has had this quality. MIT had it at their presentations in my city. The University of Arizona had it whenever they visited my school. All of the colleges out there flaunt “what makes them so great” because at the end of the day they are fighting to get students. I agree, it is bad if a school is saying come to them just because they are who they are. However, it is essential that they at least advertise their best qualities as bait to get you to come (or simply apply), but sadly that is very difficult to do without sounding conceited.</p>
<p>Honestly, when i visited CMU during a sleeping bag weekend in the fall, I thought that most of the presentations were complete crap (except SCS–Free food ftw). The part of my visit that was actually valuable and shed a great light on the school was spending a night in the dorms with a host and experiencing a slice of college life.</p>