Carnegie Mellon vs UVA where would you go?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS got in these two schools and we are debating too. DS has lot of hobbies and spend about 75% of his energy on school work (All As, not show off). I feel he has great potential and hasn't tried his best. If we choose CMU, he has to work hard in order to keep up with other intelligent and hard working kids. [b]If in UVA, he could just have another 4 years' easy life without pushing up his limit. Does my thought make sense?

That is a weird assumption. No one likes that parent who thinks their kid’s shit doesn’t stink. Stop it.

[/b]


+1 I have a child at UVA. He works like a demon. All the time. And now, at home, all the time. He's not in a frat. He's not a partier. He has a wonderful set of friends and had a great time/ He has had stellar academic experiences and relations with professors and the result of those experiences let to internships and letters of recommendation that got him into the top university of the world for grad work. College is what you make of it. You can party anywhere.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's really nothing wrong with choosing UVA over CMU because you think it will be an easier lifestyle. Not everyone has to have the absurd level of drive that leads to kids working 60 hours per week on schoolwork, and then after graduation continue working 60-80 hours per week on a heavily time consuming profession i.e. top firms in tech/finance/consulting.

Let's just surrender it all to China.

No, we beat China by creativity and innovation. Those do not come by long cruel work hours, instead by invoking free mind and intense curiosity.

Let's hope you are right. It looks like their universities are RAPIDLY gaining in technical fields.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:15% of CMU undergraduate students are international
MIT=11%
Yale =11%
Stanford = 14%
Hopkins= 12%
University of Chicago= 14%

The usnews says CMU has 22% international student body while UVA has 5%.

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-universities/most-international

The numbers above are those listed on each university's website for undergrads. Once you add in grad, some surpass CMU in international.
Not terribly surprising UVA would not be a draw to international graduate students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS got in these two schools and we are debating too. DS has lot of hobbies and spend about 75% of his energy on school work (All As, not show off). I feel he has great potential and hasn't tried his best. If we choose CMU, he has to work hard in order to keep up with other intelligent and hard working kids. If in UVA, he could just have another 4 years' easy life without pushing up his limit. Does my thought make sense?

Not much sense at all. Not sure what field your kid will pursue. If it's gender studies or some such nonsense, then school will be an easy lift wherever he goes.

But you say he spends 75% of his time on hobbies, and still gets A's. Presumably he tested well enough to get into two pretty well-regarded schools.

If you're suggesting he needs to spend 75% of his time on school work, then have him study engineering or physics or something along those lines. I imagine he'll find plenty of students at either school doing the same.

The only real choice you need to make is whether you want your kid to have a normal, sunny, all-American kind of college experience. If you do, then the choice is UVA.

If you want him to be a nerdy grind at a dreary relatively cheerless place, your best bet is CMU.



When you make this decision, recognize that it will reveal as much about you as your kid.

I'm sorry that CMU is too difficult for your child. It definitely isn't for everyone. We have a child at CMU that loves it. Very active social life, clubs etc. Academics have always come easy for him, this is definitely the norm at CMU. If you had to manage your kid through HS, getting As in APs was challenging for them, and they had to take the SAT multiple times to get the desired score -- CMU isn't the best choice for your kid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS got in these two schools and we are debating too. DS has lot of hobbies and spend about 75% of his energy on school work (All As, not show off). I feel he has great potential and hasn't tried his best. If we choose CMU, he has to work hard in order to keep up with other intelligent and hard working kids. If in UVA, he could just have another 4 years' easy life without pushing up his limit. Does my thought make sense?

Not at all.

why? So the kids should just choose whatever the easier one?

Sorry UVA said no.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS got in these two schools and we are debating too. DS has lot of hobbies and spend about 75% of his energy on school work (All As, not show off). I feel he has great potential and hasn't tried his best. If we choose CMU, he has to work hard in order to keep up with other intelligent and hard working kids. [b]If in UVA, he could just have another 4 years' easy life without pushing up his limit. Does my thought make sense?

That is a weird assumption. No one likes that parent who thinks their kid’s shit doesn’t stink. Stop it.

[/b]


+1 I have a child at UVA. He works like a demon. All the time. And now, at home, all the time. He's not in a frat. He's not a partier. He has a wonderful set of friends and had a great time/ He has had stellar academic experiences and relations with professors and the result of those experiences let to internships and letters of recommendation that got him into the top university of the world for grad work. College is what you make of it. You can party anywhere.

This can certainly be true but its also true that compared to UVA, CMU can be far more challenging and time-consuming academically. There's a set of universities that are generally considered to be very tough, and engineering at CMU, Cornell, MIT, Berkeley tend to fall into that. For example, CMU CS/Engineering is probably more challenging than Harvard's, so to say UVA will be comparatively easier life than CMU is not a knock on UVA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS got in these two schools and we are debating too. DS has lot of hobbies and spend about 75% of his energy on school work (All As, not show off). I feel he has great potential and hasn't tried his best. If we choose CMU, he has to work hard in order to keep up with other intelligent and hard working kids. [b]If in UVA, he could just have another 4 years' easy life without pushing up his limit. Does my thought make sense?

That is a weird assumption. No one likes that parent who thinks their kid’s shit doesn’t stink. Stop it.

[/b]


+1 I have a child at UVA. He works like a demon. All the time. And now, at home, all the time. He's not in a frat. He's not a partier. He has a wonderful set of friends and had a great time/ He has had stellar academic experiences and relations with professors and the result of those experiences let to internships and letters of recommendation that got him into the top university of the world for grad work. College is what you make of it. You can party anywhere.

This can certainly be true but its also true that compared to UVA, CMU can be far more challenging and time-consuming academically. There's a set of universities that are generally considered to be very tough, and engineering at CMU, Cornell, MIT, Berkeley tend to fall into that. For example, CMU CS/Engineering is probably more challenging than Harvard's, so to say UVA will be comparatively easier life than CMU is not a knock on UVA.

Sure, but PP said that UVA would be a “breeze” for her kid and he would just have easy life and he would be so far ahead of the other kids that he’d have no one to keep up with or compete with. I get that schools can have different levels of rigor and am not denying that, but that kind of comment just makes you seem extremely obnoxious and adds nothing to the conversation.

[Anonymous]

Found this

https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/carnegie-mellon-university-3242/reviews

CMU is not for everyone, it is TOP and it challenges you to the limit, specially on technical degrees (CS, Data Science, Data Analytics). The curriculum is extremely rigorous and demanding, it requires a non-stop working to succeed. I did my master degree there and received very good job offers after graduation. The downside is that CMU is so demanding that you don't have much time to explore the city and do extra activities.

CMU is a very academically rigorous school due to both the coursework and the culture. The coursework is very technical. The culture of the school is to push yourself to your limits, which helps students learn what type of workload they're capable of maintaining. When I was at CMU I double majored in business and statistics (a very popular option), and was working two jobs (one internship and one on campus job) in addition to balancing greek life, business competitions, and a girlfriend. In terms of work capacity, I determined that to be roughly my upper limit. I'm thankful I had the opportunity to learn that while in school. I've seen peers from other schools learn their work limits on the job which isn't always pretty. It can be stressful, but by graduation time most students from CMU can handle almost any type of work environment. It's a great school for developing grit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DS got in these two schools and we are debating too. DS has lot of hobbies and spend about 75% of his energy on school work (All As, not show off). I feel he has great potential and hasn't tried his best. If we choose CMU, he has to work hard in order to keep up with other intelligent and hard working kids. [b]If in UVA, he could just have another 4 years' easy life without pushing up his limit. Does my thought make sense?

That is a weird assumption. No one likes that parent who thinks their kid’s shit doesn’t stink. Stop it.

[/b]


+1 I have a child at UVA. He works like a demon. All the time. And now, at home, all the time. He's not in a frat. He's not a partier. He has a wonderful set of friends and had a great time/ He has had stellar academic experiences and relations with professors and the result of those experiences let to internships and letters of recommendation that got him into the top university of the world for grad work. College is what you make of it. You can party anywhere.

This can certainly be true but its also true that compared to UVA, CMU can be far more challenging and time-consuming academically. There's a set of universities that are generally considered to be very tough, and engineering at CMU, Cornell, MIT, Berkeley tend to fall into that. For example, CMU CS/Engineering is probably more challenging than Harvard's, so to say UVA will be comparatively easier life than CMU is not a knock on UVA.

Sure, but PP said that UVA would be a “breeze” for her kid and he would just have easy life and he would be so far ahead of the other kids that he’d have no one to keep up with or compete with. I get that schools can have different levels of rigor and am not denying that, but that kind of comment just makes you seem extremely obnoxious and adds nothing to the conversation.

But that depends on the student and the major. For many students, a school like UVA would indeed be a breeze. This is because the programs may not be very rigorous in certain subjects and because the curve is steeper as the academic floor (the academically worst-performing student) is lower.

[Anonymous]

I know of one CMU comp sci engineer in my social circle. He was one of the inventors of the Google Chrome suite of products and retired before his 40th birthday. When he was recruited out of CMU around 2002, he already had a bunch of offers from Silicon Valley (despite this being right after the bubble popped).

CMU is crazy hard. But it's on par with Standard, MIT, and Cal Tech.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know of one CMU comp sci engineer in my social circle. He was one of the inventors of the Google Chrome suite of products and retired before his 40th birthday. When he was recruited out of CMU around 2002, he already had a bunch of offers from Silicon Valley (despite this being right after the bubble popped).

CMU is crazy hard. But it's on par with Standard, MIT, and Cal Tech.

This. If you are into CS, CMU is a no brainer. You earn back the cost difference in a few short years.

[Anonymous]

UVA.

[Anonymous]

I attended UVA Engineering School. A huge chunk of my cohort (Rodman Honors Program) attended TJ and other high ranking high schools. I can assure you that everybody was working their asses off and absolutely burnt out from the workload. Nobody would have considered it a "breeze".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I attended UVA Engineering School. A huge chunk of my cohort (Rodman Honors Program) attended TJ and other high ranking high schools. I can assure you that everybody was working their asses off and absolutely burnt out from the workload. Nobody would have considered it a "breeze".

It would not surprise me that this is correct for engineering students. Pre-med, Physics, and other fields are also probably going to be difficult regardless of where you go. One of the big differences in these schools is probably that a much higher percentage of CMU students are in difficult STEM fields than at UVA. UVA tends to be on the lower end for comparable universities for percentage of students majoring in STEM.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I attended UVA Engineering School. A huge chunk of my cohort (Rodman Honors Program) attended TJ and other high ranking high schools. I can assure you that everybody was working their asses off and absolutely burnt out from the workload. Nobody would have considered it a "breeze".

It would not surprise me that this is correct for engineering students. Pre-med, Physics, and other fields are also probably going to be difficult regardless of where you go. One of the big differences in these schools is probably that a much higher percentage of CMU students are in difficult STEM fields than at UVA. UVA tends to be on the lower end for comparable universities for percentage of students majoring in STEM.

Citation please. You or someone else keeps saying this but I disagree. My DC is in aerospace engineering at UVA. The competition is fierce, and, yes, lots of Rodman Scholars.