<p>a lot of people seem to complain about the academic rigor…which i assume is mainly from maybe research projects?</p>
<p>im planning on majoring in chemE and minor in a language
if i decide not to go to a different college[UCSD]
[initially was BME but then double major with a minor would be too much]</p>
<p>is that too much on my plate?[assuming i want to have a social life/intramurals]</p>
<p>My roommate and my other roommate’s boyfriend are both ChemE/BME double majors, they both have good social lives with activities and they aren’t dead yet, so I’d say it’s doable. They are also very academically inclined and are very good at managing their time and using it efficiently. Lots of their work comes from lots of lab work and research, so you better like lab.</p>
<p>would you say carnegie is more hands-on than other schools in terms of education[labs/research]?
i’m choosing between a public university[ucsd] which would be the safer choice, but will i be sacrificing a better education at carnegie?
and how do the students at carnegie like the school?</p>
<p>Honestly ucsd might be better for premed. They do have an adviser there to help you, and students do get in, but if UCSD has a more structured pre-med program from the start that could be better for you. However, keep in mind that most students start out in pre-med and end up leaving because of the rigor/pressure of the coursework in addition to the other duties that will be expected of you on your free time, such as volunteer work on weekends, extra work in hospitals after classes end, etc…</p>
<p>Chatam, which isn’t too far from CMU, has an excellent pre-med program and obviously, so does U-Pitt. Carnegie offers an excellent education in many different areas and people recognize the name.</p>
<p>It’s worth thinking about and will depend upon your personal needs.</p>
<p>I just came back from a visit, so I can provide an anecdote:</p>
<p>My host showed me his “textbook” for the honors section of his Concepts of Mathematics class. My heuristic for how good the class is was deciding that, if I flipped to a random page towards the end, the less I could follow along, the better (i.e.: I would actually have to take the class to learn the material). My heuristic was very well satisfied, as the pages I flipped too were so dense with unfamiliar notation I could barely understand a sentence (despite being an uber math-nerd with several university-level math classes behind my belt).</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Great Theoretical Ideas in Computer Science, a required-class for second-semester SCS freshman, was described as “Concepts on steroids” – I was told that very few received an A in that class, and those who did could become TAs the next year (and reap favors from the professors which made it dramatically easier to get internships at companies like Google).</p>
<p>well im actually going into bioeng: biotech
not premed
but i wouldnt be surprised if i ended up going into nanotechnology/chemical engineering
at UCSD
and for CMU im in CIT so im plannin on chemE or BME double major w/ somethin else…
both schools offer flexibility in terms of majors; UCSD moreso because it is public and CMU is less due to the fact that i can only pick from CIT majors</p>
<p>my counselor has a great point that CMU offers more diversity and how private edu is unmatched to public edu/ i will grow as a person moving from CA to PA</p>
<p>but the thing is i have already lived in japan for 7 years and US for 10 years and i plan on studying abroad/ living abroad in the future. I realize going to a public california school= full of californians; but is that really a big disadvantage?</p>