When did Pitt become this area's safety school? Why no CMU as a top pick?

[Anonymous]

Have you toured Pott? It was great!

Some of us have enough money that Pitt is preferred to GMU - it is the better school.

I was seriously impressed with Pitt, and Pittsburgh. My kid certainly preferred Pitt to FFX.

[Anonymous]

We started looking at Pitt when we realized 3.75 gpa was not getting DS into VT (and definitely not UVA or W&M). And for DS, Pitt was a million times more appealing than JMU (which wasn’t a lock either but he didn’t apply). He was toying with premed at the time and was just wowed during the tour and with the city. At the Cathedral of a Learning, he was agog. The top students we know who applied were awarded substantial merit $.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have you toured Pott? It was great!

Some of us have enough money that Pitt is preferred to GMU - it is the better school.

I was seriously impressed with Pitt, and Pittsburgh. My kid certainly preferred Pitt to FFX.

Ditto. The city of Pittsburgh is definitely on its way up. And, an affordable place to start post-college life if your kid wants to stay there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Carnegie Mellon's acceptance rate is less than 14%

Regardless of whether your kid is applying to an Ivy League school or not, its no one's safety.

And it's acceptance rate is much lower than that for Comp Sci.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have you toured Pott? It was great!

Some of us have enough money that Pitt is preferred to GMU - it is the better school.

I was seriously impressed with Pitt, and Pittsburgh. My kid certainly preferred Pitt to FFX.

Our kid picked Pitt over JMU, GMU, VCU, and CNU (got into all of them). UVA, W&M and VT seemed unlikely.

It was a good experience - the Oakland neighborhood is great for students and the students were generally down-to-earth. Kid decided on his own that he wanted to get a part-time job while studying, which probably helped him land a full-time job after graduation as well.

[Anonymous]

This is the OP. My question about CMU was why it isn't a school that you see top students apply to. People will list the Ivies, Swarthmore, Duke, etc, but you rarely see CMU listed as a reach school. It is an amazing school, and relatively close by. It is one of the most expensive.

I guess what surprises me here is all the love for PITT and not for CMU.

Pittsburgh has a handful of small colleges for students drawn to Pittsburgh. Students generally have the opportunity to take some classes at other college's in the city. Duquense, Chatham, Point Park

[Anonymous]

Top Students interested in Engineering apply to CMU, middling students interested in Engineering apply to Pitt. Many students like Pitt, or use it as a safety, but significant merit aid is unlikely for out of state applicants, so few commit.

[Anonymous]

What is CMU?

[Anonymous]

A good friend of mine who is now a CIO of a large bank in his 30s went to CMU, hated it, transferred to UVA, and loved it. He then went to VT for grad school which was great as well. Right or wrong, I have to say that he influenced me in terms of my thoughts on CMU.

[Anonymous]

Doesn't CMU have one of those "where fun goes to die" reputations? With a 4% acceptance rate to their college of engineering, and 25% or more of their students university-wide with SATs over 1560 and ACT of 35/36, it's just not an option for most people.

Pitt is easier to get get into than VA Tech and Maryland, but it also attracts plenty of students who are better than "middling" and they have a pretty high threshold for merit consideration.

[Anonymous]

CMU = Carnegie Mellon

[Anonymous]

Alternate theory: There are a lot of Pittsburgh transplants in the DC area. They left in the early 1990s when the economy there was still awful and they couldn't find jobs out of college. But they've maintained connections there and a love of city, so now their kids are considering it. The happy epilogue is the city is now roaring back economically so when those kids graduate, they might be able to stay.

[Anonymous]

I think you don't see people discussing CMU for the same reason you really don't see them discussing MIT. The DCUM crowd doesn't seem to produce hard core elite science types.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Rolling admission, easy app, good merit scholarship, and stats driven process. That was our reasons. CMU is hard to get it and stingy with merit money. No safety.

This.

Reasonable distance from home.

State school which means DC TAG money.

City of Pittsburgh seems to love Pitt, and it is a nice city for DC who grew up in DC.

The Cathedral does take a little getting used to

Are you talking about the Cathedral of Learning? What about it is hard to get used to?

It's a skyscraper. With classrooms. That looks like an Art Deco office building inside. Great idea for in a city but to those of us who went to larger more rural/suburban universities, 30 stories of classrooms and offices is different.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is the OP. My question about CMU was why it isn't a school that you see top students apply to. People will list the Ivies, Swarthmore, Duke, etc, but you rarely see CMU listed as a reach school. It is an amazing school, and relatively close by. It is one of the most expensive.

I guess what surprises me here is all the love for PITT and not for CMU.

Pittsburgh has a handful of small colleges for students drawn to Pittsburgh. Students generally have the opportunity to take some classes at other college's in the city. Duquense, Chatham, Point Park

CMU:

1. how on earth do you know where other kids apply? I certainly don't know much about that for my kid's friends.
2. CMU is pretty hard to get into and a school for a stemmy kid. CMU and Pitt kids aren't the same. My kid didn't apply to CMU because even if by some fluke he got in, he'd be outclassed.