Carnegie Mellon Reputation

Demon_Thermos
Sat, 11 Apr 2009 15:44:01 +0000

Well, one thing about CMU is that it doesn’t have the long-standing national reputation that the Ivies, MIT, and Stanford do. Only in the last decade or so has it started to shift from regional to national. Before, most of its students were from PA. And it takes a while for that national reputation to get rooted.

I’m from the west coast, so many people were unfamiliar with it, but the ones that were were always extremely impressed. My favorite example: a coworker asked my mom at work where I’d decided to go to college, and my mom answered Carnegie Mellon, and this lady got all wide eyed, ‘Wow!! Carnegie Mellon! I thought only geniuses went there!’. For those who know what it is, mainly in academia and tech-related fields, it’s most definitely something to brag about.

Another other issue I think might play a part in turning people off is that it’s in Pittsburgh. If you haven’t spent any time in Pittsburgh, you’d most likely imagine it as a bleak dirty post-industrial steel town, I sure did, but then once you arrive, you’re met with a beautiful, clean, thriving city with booming industries, great atmosphere, and pretty much the lowest unemployment rate in the county. CMU and Pittsburgh are both well-kept secrets in the realms of amazing universities and amazing cities.

As for Ivies, don’t listen to the people who only recognize Ivies as the best schools or thing they’re the way to go. Ivies tend to be overrated (‘The hardest part about Harvard is getting in’ - true fact) and build their reputations up on name. CMU builds its reputation of its programs, which is why the circles that know CMU well tend to be the industries that those programs serve. I’ve also heard a high school admissions person mention that if you add .8 to your CMU GPA, you’ll get your equivalent Harvard GPA. CMU actually works you and doesn’t grade-inflate, and pushes you out with a very practical, career-oriented education, which is why everyone likes hiring from CMU. And if you want to go Ivy, do their graduate programs. Because they focus more on their grad programs than undergrad anyway.