Only computer science students are interested in it. Which is why the Carnegie Mellon Computer Science acceptance rate is like 5%.
But I’m a little confused at it’s reputation:
Adult: What school do you want to go to?
Me: Carnegie Mellon
Adult: Oh are you into the arts? That’s what CMU is famous for.
Costa Rican freshman at Yale: Where do you want to go?
Me: Carnegie Mellon
Costa Rican freshman at Yale: Oh, I don’t know that school. I’m so obsessed with Ivy.
Teenager: What school do you hope to get into?
Me: Carnegie Mellon
Teenager: For computer science? Thought so. My sister wants to go to Carnegie Mellon for CompSci. But it’s sooo hard to get in.
Anywho, I think Carnegie Mellon deserves a little more recognition. Have you seen the movie Big Hero 6? Even Disney does research at CMU. I think CMU may be slowly getting more popular.
@NROTCgrad - If you take a look at the degrees that people graduated with from Stevens in 2013, you see that out of 507 bachelors degrees granted , there were a a total of 7 in fine arts, 3 in social sciences, and 1 in general literature. The rest were in STEM type fields or the business school:
@dadinator Stevens is, yes, a STEM centered school. It just is not as STEM centered as Rensselaer. In fact Steven is engineering centric.
What I am saying is that even STEM majors can get a more well rounded education at Stevens than at RPI. Stevens offers real classes in humanities and social science, while RPI’s offerings in those fields are actually still heavily skewed toward STEM. In other words, an engineering major at Stevens will have a more balanced education. RPI is more for people who are only interested in science and technology; which is rather rare. Thus, RPI gets less interest from students. However, I admit, that RPI is probably stronger in the STEM subjects.
Rensselaer also has a better business school than Stevens. My purpose is not to diss RPI, but to point out why it should not be consider underappreciated.
@NROTCgrad - For the Fall of 2013, Stevens had 5,000 applicants with the enrolled class having SATs of 640 -720 for Math and 570 - 670 for Critical Reading.
For the Fall of 2013, RPI had 16,000 applicants with the enrolled class having SATS of 670 - 768 for Math and 620 - 720 in Critical Reading.
But you believe that the type of student that would be interested in RPI is “rather rare” and that “RPI gets less interest from students”?
@dadinator
OP indicated that RPI was less appreciated than Stevens. Perhaps that was based on the fact that RPI has a yield of only 20%, while Stevens’ yield is approaching double that at 35%.
Plenty of students apply to RPI. They just are not likely to attend. My guess is that the more that students looked at Rensselaer, the less they liked it. That was my experience.
I was more saying that RPI is unappreciated by prospective engineering majors where I live. I have yet to meet another RPI applicant from my area, but personally know 20 who applied to Stevens.
I’m not trying to put down Stevens or any other school. I’m just curious about local trends in the college search process.
Liberal Arts Colleges don’t really get a lot of love where we live. Carleton, Hamilton, Colby, Claremont Colleges, ect haven’t had applicants from our school in years (that is until I came along…)
Also, people rarely venture outside the metropolitan area
I’d say that around a third (or more, probably more) of my graduating class is seriously considering liberal arts colleges. I’m not really in that circle, so I’m not really able to weigh in. However, I will say that most of the kids are focusing on the ones that are in USNews’ top 10 LAC’s, for what that’s worth
I’ve heard of Harvey Mudd- more than a lot of other colleges- and I’m on the Southeast coast. Although I really haven’t paid much attention to conversations about it.
Anyone got any over-appreciated/unappreciated colleges in FL?
in my neck of the woods – east coast - nobody is talking about Rice. And even the LACs don’t get much attention…at D’s schools, lots and lots of kids going for Vanderbilt, GA Tech, uChicago, Penn, UNC-Chapel Hill, BU, Georgetown…but very little talk around Davidson or Williams or Amherst…