Carnegie Mellon vs UVA where would you go?

Anonymous
Not PP, but you can compare percents for majors in section J of the Common Data Set (though for a STEM total you'd need to add up the majors you consider STEM).
https://ira.virginia.edu/cds-2019-20
https://www.cmu.edu/ira/CDS/pdf/cds_2019-20/j-degrees-conferred.pdf
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
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.

Anonymous wrote:Not PP, but you can compare percents for majors in section J of the Common Data Set (though for a STEM total you'd need to add up the majors you consider STEM).
https://ira.virginia.edu/cds-2019-20
https://www.cmu.edu/ira/CDS/pdf/cds_2019-20/j-degrees-conferred.pdf

For engineering by itself, UVA 11%, CMU 27%
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


Are they talking about the university - both undergrad and graduate students? I don't know where PP's 15% comes from exactly but s/he's specified undergrad.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
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.

Anonymous wrote:Not PP, but you can compare percents for majors in section J of the Common Data Set (though for a STEM total you'd need to add up the majors you consider STEM).
https://ira.virginia.edu/cds-2019-20
https://www.cmu.edu/ira/CDS/pdf/cds_2019-20/j-degrees-conferred.pdf

For engineering by itself, UVA 11%, CMU 27%


UVA
4.15% CS
11.72% Engineering
1.54% Math/Statistics
2.80% Physical Sciences
6.58% Biological/Life Sciences
26.79% Total

CMU
11.55% CS
27.46% Engineering
10.10% Math/Statistics
4.23% Physical Sciences
4.61% Biological/Life Sciences
57.95% Total

CMU has 2.2X as many in these fields on a percentage basis.

Someone on this forum did this comparison for a bunch of schools. UVA was toward the bottom in percentages. It was lower than quite a few schools that don't have engineering.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
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.

Anonymous wrote:Not PP, but you can compare percents for majors in section J of the Common Data Set (though for a STEM total you'd need to add up the majors you consider STEM).
https://ira.virginia.edu/cds-2019-20
https://www.cmu.edu/ira/CDS/pdf/cds_2019-20/j-degrees-conferred.pdf

For engineering by itself, UVA 11%, CMU 27%


UVA
4.15% CS
11.72% Engineering
1.54% Math/Statistics
2.80% Physical Sciences
6.58% Biological/Life Sciences
26.79% Total

CMU
11.55% CS
27.46% Engineering
10.10% Math/Statistics
4.23% Physical Sciences
4.61% Biological/Life Sciences
57.95% Total

CMU has 2.2X as many in these fields on a percentage basis.

Someone on this forum did this comparison for a bunch of schools. UVA was toward the bottom in percentages. It was lower than quite a few schools that don't have engineering.


Just to add some additional additional context. Duke has 48% of majors in the fields above (compared to 27% at UVA).
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
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.


It wasn't a comment about the difficulty of these programs at UVA or your DC's program. It was simply a comment that UVA tends to have a lower percentage of students in STEM fields based on data in Common Data Sets. Here is a list of top 20 national universities plus top 5 national LACs plus selected publics (Berkeley, UCLA, Michigan, Texas, UVA) ranked by percentage of students in CS, Engineering, Physical Sciences, Bio/Life Sciences, and Math/Statistics:

University Total
Caltech 98%
MIT 89%
Stanford 50%
Duke 48%
Princeton 47%
Harvard 46%
Swarthmore 44%
Cornell 44%
Rice 42%
WashU 41%
Michigan 41%
Pomona 40%
Berkeley 36%
Brown 36%
Williams 35%
Northwestern 34%
Amherst 34%
Texas 34%
Wellesley 33%
Yale 33%
UCLA 33%
Notre Dame 33%
Dartmouth 32%
Vanderbilt 31%
Penn 30%
UVA 27%

If you take out engineering (which not all schools have), it looks like this:

University Total less Engineering
Caltech 62%
MIT 54%
Harvard 42%
Pomona 40%
Swarthmore 37%
Williams 35%
Amherst 34%
Wellesley 33%
Duke 33%
Stanford 32%
Princeton 30%
Brown 29%
Cornell 27%
Yale 27%
WashU 26%
UCLA 26%
Michigan 25%
Berkeley 25%
Dartmouth 24%
Rice 24%
Northwestern 21%
Texas 21%
Notre Dame 20%
Penn 20%
Vanderbilt 19%
UVA 15%

Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
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.

Anonymous wrote:Not PP, but you can compare percents for majors in section J of the Common Data Set (though for a STEM total you'd need to add up the majors you consider STEM).
https://ira.virginia.edu/cds-2019-20
https://www.cmu.edu/ira/CDS/pdf/cds_2019-20/j-degrees-conferred.pdf

For engineering by itself, UVA 11%, CMU 27%


UVA
4.15% CS
11.72% Engineering
1.54% Math/Statistics
2.80% Physical Sciences
6.58% Biological/Life Sciences
26.79% Total

CMU
11.55% CS
27.46% Engineering
10.10% Math/Statistics
4.23% Physical Sciences
4.61% Biological/Life Sciences
57.95% Total

CMU has 2.2X as many in these fields on a percentage basis.

Someone on this forum did this comparison for a bunch of schools. UVA was toward the bottom in percentages. It was lower than quite a few schools that don't have engineering.


Just to add some additional additional context. Duke has 48% of majors in the fields above (compared to 27% at UVA).



Uh, at almost 80K a year. No thank you
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
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.

Anonymous wrote:Not PP, but you can compare percents for majors in section J of the Common Data Set (though for a STEM total you'd need to add up the majors you consider STEM).
https://ira.virginia.edu/cds-2019-20
https://www.cmu.edu/ira/CDS/pdf/cds_2019-20/j-degrees-conferred.pdf

For engineering by itself, UVA 11%, CMU 27%


UVA
4.15% CS
11.72% Engineering
1.54% Math/Statistics
2.80% Physical Sciences
6.58% Biological/Life Sciences
26.79% Total

CMU
11.55% CS
27.46% Engineering
10.10% Math/Statistics
4.23% Physical Sciences
4.61% Biological/Life Sciences
57.95% Total

CMU has 2.2X as many in these fields on a percentage basis.

Someone on this forum did this comparison for a bunch of schools. UVA was toward the bottom in percentages. It was lower than quite a few schools that don't have engineering.


Just to add some additional additional context. Duke has 48% of majors in the fields above (compared to 27% at UVA).



Uh, at almost 80K a year. No thank you


This has nothing to do with cost. It has to do with the majors students choose when they go there. More UVA students could choose to major in these fields, like at the schools listed above, but they don't.
Anonymous
The UVA student population is focused more towards humanities, social sciences and business than STEM. Not sure why that is a contentious point.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:The UVA student population is focused more towards humanities, social sciences and business than STEM. Not sure why that is a contentious point.


It wasn't a point of contention, it is just a point of difference when you look at top 20 plus top LAC schools. See list above. I made the original comment just to point how how different the student bodies at Carnegie Mellon and UVA would be from a major standpoint.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
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.

Anonymous wrote:Not PP, but you can compare percents for majors in section J of the Common Data Set (though for a STEM total you'd need to add up the majors you consider STEM).
https://ira.virginia.edu/cds-2019-20
https://www.cmu.edu/ira/CDS/pdf/cds_2019-20/j-degrees-conferred.pdf

For engineering by itself, UVA 11%, CMU 27%


UVA
4.15% CS
11.72% Engineering
1.54% Math/Statistics
2.80% Physical Sciences
6.58% Biological/Life Sciences
26.79% Total

CMU
11.55% CS
27.46% Engineering
10.10% Math/Statistics
4.23% Physical Sciences
4.61% Biological/Life Sciences
57.95% Total

CMU has 2.2X as many in these fields on a percentage basis.

Someone on this forum did this comparison for a bunch of schools. UVA was toward the bottom in percentages. It was lower than quite a few schools that don't have engineering.


Just to add some additional additional context. Duke has 48% of majors in the fields above (compared to 27% at UVA).



Uh, at almost 80K a year. No thank you


This has nothing to do with cost. It has to do with the majors students choose when they go there. More UVA students could choose to major in these fields, like at the schools listed above, but they don't.



You suggested Duke as a player in this thread. Duke is almost $80K a year.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:The UVA student population is focused more towards humanities, social sciences and business than STEM. Not sure why that is a contentious point.


Alternative view is no one would want to go to UVA undergrad for STEM.
Anonymous
Not necessarily, its just UVA's inherent strengths are in humanities, business, and social sciences.

For STEM, UVA's worth it for in-state tuition. Not so for out-of-state.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:Not necessarily, its just UVA's inherent strengths are in humanities, business, and social sciences.

For STEM, UVA's worth it for in-state tuition. Not so for out-of-state.


STEM (the STE part) has been UVA's Achilles' heel for decades. I think it has gotten better, but it is still an Achilles' heel.
Anonymous
Their Math doesn't seem to be ranked very high either.

Engineering probably won't get much better because there is already Virginia Tech.
Not sure about Tech but I'm assuming VT would get first dibs on that as well?

Science is something they definitely have a chance to improve upon; they have a pretty good medical school and there's no reason to not have research in sciences filter across. UNC has amazing natural sciences despite not having an engineering school at all (which is in NC State)
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