Engineering: Carnegie Mellon or Georgia Tech?

SpacePope
Wed, 31 Mar 2010 17:30:54 +0000

Oh noes, here comes the burdell man to spill propoganda about his school!

Ok, seriously though, while Georgia tech and CMU are both great for engineering, CMU is without a doubt better. Ignore the rankings, they’re just opinion polls, and everyone in the south votes for Gatech because its one of the souths relitivly few good engineering schools.

CMU has much higher quality of life: Pittsburgh is a nicer place to live than atlanta, less crime etc. Also the gender ration is 60% male, versus 70% male at tech, witch is much more balanced. The professors at CMU geniunly care about their students, whereas the professors at tech, like those at any big state school, dont really. Also, the undergrad research opertunities at CMU for ece are unparalleled, and Gatech doesnt really come close. Even though the research in some areas of ee may be better at gatech, the professors at CMU actually go out of their way to involve undergrads in the work. Also, starting salaries at CMU for ee are higher than those at Gtech; around 67k vs gtechs 60k, although this may be due to geography (georgia is much cheaper than pittsburgh). The students at CMU are also generaly smarter and more pleasant because CMU’s admissions requirements actually look at what you are like as a person (gtech, like most state schools, doesnt really) and has higher sat standards.

Also, CMU is definatly more prestegious than GAtech. GAtech carries a lot of perstiege in the south, but at all of the big technology centers up north (witch is most of them) carnegie is considered to be a peer to schools like stanford and MIT. CMU is also more well known to more different kinds of people because it has awesome programs in arts, buisness, humanitees, and engineering, not just engineering like GAtech, so more people will have heard of your school/looked at it when they were applying for college and been impressed with it, than those looking at gatech.

I’m saying this despite the fact that Im very likley going to gatech next year :P