<p>I’ll be honest; I’m from Houston and the only people I know there who had heard of CMU before I mentioned it were a couple of CS teachers I had and another teacher who went to school at Pitt and always wished he could be a CMU student. But honestly, I don’t care if random people I know recognize the school- while it would be nice if my dentist had some response other than “oh, that’s nice” when he asks me where I go to school, it’s not that important. And everyone who needs to know that CMU is a good school already knows that (employers and grad schools). If you want name recognition from random people, CMU isn’t the best choice of schools- but you already knew that.</p>