Engineering: Carnegie Mellon or Georgia Tech?

gtgblows
Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:22:21 +0000

Tombor here’s last question you need to consider before you decide between Georgia Tech and CMU: (I am giving you advise as unbiased as I can be even though I graduated from Georgia Tech)


If you truly want to be an Electrical Engineer, There’s no doubt you will have great education in both colleges. In CMU, there are only handful of engineer program that are in top 10 list in the nation. Some engineer catagory ranking in Georgia Tech is in top in the nation where as CMU, computer science and ECE department ONLY. So if you plan on Electrical Engineer in software side or Computer Engineer, I strongly suggest you go CMU but remember, you won’t be able to change to other engineer major within CMU that offer better programs than Georgia Tech. So make sure ECE or CS is your major when you plan on going to CMU.
Georgia Tech gives low GPA standard. I think that hurted me when I applied to Berkeley and Stanford for graduate school. This is something you should consider if you are planning on going to graduate school. I don’t know how CMU GPA standard is but being private school, I bet it is high like Stanford. In Georgia Tech, here’s requirement for honors(I am comparing top public engineer schools just to tell you how unfairly Georgia Tech gives out GPA):


3.15 Honor
3.35 High Honor
3.55 Highest Honor

Honors at Berkeley:
College of Engineering
Highest Honors 3.927
High Honors 3.811
Honors 3.672
Minimum for Semester Honors 3.672

Although graduate school knows the name of Georgia Tech, 3.927 GPA highest honor from Berkeley vs 3.55 Highest honor from Georgia Tech … top of the class and number gap is THAT HUGE… Is it wrong assumption to think that graduate admission tend to see higher number in GPA for higher chance for admission? So in short, ask yourself this question: will you have better GPA coming out of CMU which will help you get a better chance at going to top graduate school?