<p>How would you say the humanities at CMU stack up to say, those of a small liberal arts college (like Bates or Oberlin)?</p>
<p>Humanities at CMU has an excellent reputation. You’ll find if you decide to go on in graduate work–that many of your professors will have written the texts you’ll start reading. I don’t think Richard Florida is still at CMU anymore…but Professor Tarr is still there last time I checked. The thing is, you won’t be getting a traditional education and you have to be careful about the texts you read to be sure that you get the same substantive background as students from other schools. I do just fine against the Harvard and Oberlin grads at my current program but I did notice a difference in their depth of understanding for some of the basic philosophical materials, like Foucault, Marx and Derrida. However, I did not take a lot of philosophy at CMU, except for Political Philosophy and Political Economics.</p>