<p>I’m just wondering if CMU is traditionally a fall-back school for Ivy league rejects? It just seems like Carnegie doesn’t get much praise in the prestige department in comparison to the ivy leagues - though it may deserve it.</p>
<p>What are your thoughts?</p>
<p>CMU tends to be a more pre-professional school, while the ivys tend to be more liberal artsy, and I always thought ivy leaguers tended to go for schools more in those areas, though that is just my opinion</p>
<p>Can you explain what you mean by “pre-professional”</p>
<p>more career foucsed, though I think I’m coming off as meaning easier</p>
<p>Though it may be more career focused, I still think a fair share of people go to graduate school.</p>
<p>Though I would not doubt that there are a number of kids who applied and did not get into an ivy league school at CMU, there doesn’t seem to be that focus there. I knew kids who preferred Cornell or MIT, but did not hear much other talk. A number of kids got into Penn and preferred CMU to that.</p>
<p>well, you asked my opinion so I gave it 
happy hunting</p>
<p>as far as my circle of friends, those who want to go into engineering see cmu with higher regard than ivies in general. they also have the view mit, caltech > cmu (from a pure academics view), but mit/caltech are impossible for the majority…and cmu is difficult but attainable.</p>
<p>Couldn’t you say the same thing about every non-ivy school except perhaps MIT, Stanford or Caltech, maybe a couple others. I don’t see how that would be unique to CMU; it could be argued that JHU, Chicago, Georgetown, Notre Dame, Northwestern etc could all be called fall back schools and that isn’t bad company.</p>
<p>possibly, but cmu is top notch…</p>
<p>Some schools have gotten the reputation of being backups for Ivies. I don’t know how true the rep holds these days, as I am seeing a lot of kids applying ED to those schools, as their first choice, and the statistics bear this out. However, I would say the schools offering ED2 these days, could be called fall back schools in that I notice that they are getting a lot of traffic with that option from kids who were deferred or denied from their first ivy or highly selective first choice school. Not to say that these schools are not highly selective themselves. But a number of kids at S’s school who were not accepted to Brown, Yale, etc, Wesleyan was an ED2 choice. I know two kids who were deferred at Harvard who went ED2 with Tufts.</p>
<p>just saw your edit…i definetely agree with you. i guess each school has its niche…jhu is seen more highly than cmu by my friends who want to eventually go into med school, for example :)</p>
<p>see HYPSM don’t have enough slots to deal with the applicant pool, so basically the quality of CMU has been on the rise (my dad tells me his degree carries more weight year after year). Graduating from CMU def. does not shut any doors to you.</p>