While admission decisions at CMU SCS, GT CS, and Northwestern are all correlated with one another to some extent; the 3 admission systems all also have noteworthy differences from one another. Some things that are unique about CMU SCS include:
-CMU SCS admits have historically had some of the highest stats I’ve ever heard of, including among groups at other colleges with similar selectivity. This may suggest a greater emphasis on stats than most other highly selective, holistic colleges. Some example specific numbers as listed on their website are below. Of course this apparent emphasis on stats may change this year, with being test optional.
25th-75th Math SAT – 800 to 800
25th-75th Math ACT – 36 to 36
ACT Composite – 35 to 36
Mean UW GPA – 3.95
-Across all US colleges, >80% of students in CS are male. Highly selective colleges often don’t show such an extreme imbalance as >80% male, but males still drastically outnumber women at the overwhelming majority of highly selective colleges in CS/Eng. However, the gender balance at CMU SCS is currently 52% male / 48% female. CMU appears to be trying to balance gender among SCS students. There may also be some gender difference by race in order to achieve this balance. For example, Asian SCS students are 38% male – the only race in which men do not outnumber women. In contrast, URM SCS students are 90% male – a higher % male than occurs among URM CS students at most other highly selective colleges.
Northwestern and other colleges that do not admit by sub-school may try to balance gender across the full college, but rarely do so within specific majors. This may result in certain demographic groups getting more or less of a boost at CMU SCS than elsewhere.
-CMU is one of the few highly selective colleges that marks volunteer work and work experience as “very important” in their CDS. Their website also makes a point about mentioning volunteer work service to the community. I have no idea how much this reflects in the actual decisions.
I could list many more, but the point is there appears to be some noteworthy differences between the admission process used at CMU SCS and others, including Northwestern. Being a private college, CMU SCS may have more in common with Northwestern than GT (public), but none of the 3 are colleges I’d choose as examples of expecting a high correlation coefficient between admission decisions.