mathmom

Mathson pronounced them all fine, but both he and his younger brother enjoyed Caltech the most. They liked the honor code, the pranks, the fact that there were no multiple choice tests and the pizza. (Best lunch food of any campus I've been to - I had grilled salmon made to order.) I thought Mathson would have fit right in there. I thought for out-of-state Berkeley was not worth it. Too many big classes, too many impacted majors, no guaranteed housing past freshman year. I didn't see my son as being ready for that kind of independence. I liked it though. Might be better for grad school. I loathed Stanford. Younger son hated it too. It just seems to country-clubby to me, and too separated from the town. That's my prejudice though - Mathson did apply and it would probably have been his second or third choice if he'd been accepted. (MIT was his first choice - he didn't get in there either.) In the end he was choosing between Harvard and Carnegie Mellon - and Carnegie Mellon's computer science department completely wowed him over. They've got some incredibly charismatic professors who do the presentations, and because they are a stand alone school - they do those presentations - unlike most of the other schools we visited. He's very happy there.