
Why choosing Carnegie Mellon over Harvard? - sinopec
http://www.pixelstech.cn/article/1376017789-Why-choosing-Carnegie-Mellon-over-Harvard-
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Jun8
This post is uninformative BS, but the question of which of the top
universities is "better" is interesting, we've been discussing this a lot with
a colleague lately, he has a son who can pretty much go anywhere with his
scores. His question is: should he send him to a good-good university, e.g., U
of Michigan or one of the good-great ones like Harvard. In one case the son
will get scholarship in the other most probably not.

In my younger, naive days I used to. believe that the most important aspect of
a university is the quality of professors, research, etc. I now believe that
after a certain threshold is passed all of them are pretty much equivalent,
give or take epsilon. So how to choose among this equivalence class? Choose
the one with the best possible network! That's why Harvard and Yale
unbeatable, and depending on where you want to go Stanford. The alumni
network's distribution within the American workspace is key, not only because
those will be your future classmates but also because that's how will perceive
you. Why so many important people from Harvard Law School, just because it's
hard to get into?

This may be a simplistic approach but at least it gives you actionable items
for your decision, I think. BTW, I'm no expert either, I got my degrees from
Purdue. _My_ decision process was simple: choose the only American university
that gave me admission and TAship.

~~~
mjn
_His question is: should he send him to a good-good university, e.g., U of
Michigan or one of the good-great ones like Harvard. In one case the son will
get scholarship in the other most probably not._

Which one will give the better scholarship depends strongly on your family
income. If you're from a well-off family then U of Michigan will probably end
up a better deal (lower tuition + merit scholarships). But if you're from a
less-well-off family, then the prestigious private universities typically have
more generous aid, due to their huge endowments and insulation from state
budget crunches. For example Harvard waives all tuition _and_ provides a
living stipend for students whose family income is < $65,000, which is more
generous than U of Michigan's scholarship policy. Between $65k-$150k there's a
sliding scale so you'd have to make a more detailed comparison; above $150k
you pay the full Harvard tuition.

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rayiner
I'd never advise someone to go to school for "academic rigor." In engineering
world its often cover for bad teaching and "gotcha" exams. Moreover, nobody is
impressed. If you decide halfway through that you'd rather do management
consulting, nobody is going to value that 3.6 at CMU over that 3.8 at Harvard.
Engineers won't value it because they want to see your work. Graduate programs
want to see your publications and research proposal. The only ones who care
about the signaling aspect of college will be the ones who don't value the
extra rigor.

~~~
joshu
"You have to have had at least a 3.5 GPA to work here. Oh, you went to CMU?
You graduated? That's good enough" \- interviewer I had at Goldman Sachs.

~~~
hga
MIT addresses this by doing GPAs on a 5.0 scale:
[http://web.mit.edu/registrar/gpacalc.html](http://web.mit.edu/registrar/gpacalc.html)

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MattLaroche
The article is a very thin wrapping over the first answer on
[http://www.quora.com/Why-would-someone-choose-Carnegie-
Mello...](http://www.quora.com/Why-would-someone-choose-Carnegie-Mellon-over-
Harvard).

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seanmcdirmid
Quora blog spam? Anyways, we know MIT is actually harder...

To be fair, quora is impossible to use behind the GFW: choose a google login
(that goes through YouTube) or a Facebook login. So copying quora content
makes sense.

~~~
ethanbond
Why do "we know" MIT is actually harder?

~~~
hga
_Everyone_ at MIT, no matter what the major, has to do a term of multivariable
calculus beyond the AP BC material, plus a term each of calculus based
mechanics and E&M (physics). There are also less intense biology, chemistry
and lab requirements, and a very serious "Communications"/writing set of
requirements. See
[http://web.mit.edu/catalog/overv.chap3-gir.html](http://web.mit.edu/catalog/overv.chap3-gir.html)
for the gory details.

Last time I checked, which was decades ago, Harvard required proof that you
can do algebra.

MIT is not, however, a flunk out school. It believes that every admit can do
the work, and the pattern is that people who've chosen an appropriate major
make As and Bs, unless they have personal problems, which of course are
statistically inevitable. No legacy admits if they can't do the work (which
means few in practice), every minority in the student body deserves to be
there (at least in my personal experience).

~~~
ethanbond
Oh, I thought you meant that we know MIT is harder than CMU. I'm hesitant to
say that MIT is easier than Harvard, too, but for a different reason. I go to
a CMU/MITish type school and I know lots of kids that can blow right through
calc, diff eq, etc., but couldn't do an elementary analysis of, for example, a
piece of legislation or historical account.

Also, if the average person is making As and Bs, you have pretty bad grade
inflation (but then again I'm coming from one of the least inflated systems in
the country).

~~~
hga
I've looked closely at MIT's grading over the years and except for a bit in
the '60s that I attribute to the draft, there's no sign I could see of grade
inflation.

What MIT does is grade on mastery of the subject, not on some curve that
_might_ be appropriate for a "flunk out" school but not for one like MIT that
can admit the very best in the world. A bit of time with Google indicates
Harvard also doesn't grade on the curve.

Going further in what I said above, last time I got figures a few years ago,
MIT thought about 3,000 of its applicants can do the work (back when there
were 12-13,000 applicants/year). So once that bar has been passed, they can be
fairly selective about who they admit for the class target of around 1,100,
and in my experience in the '80s by and large those admits can "do an
elementary analysis of, for example, a piece of legislation or historical
account" (although very few seemed to know history ... then again that's a
life long interest and study of mine).

Harvard being Harvard I _would_ expect the student body to be better at
"do[ing] an elementary analysis of, for example, a piece of legislation or
historical account" than MIT's student body, but Harvard, along with MIT (and
CalTech, which has significantly stiffer general graduation requirements than
MIT) are special cases.

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rotskoff
CMU Average Freshman Retention Rate: 95.5 % Harvard: 98 %

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EGreg
This is silly. Even if this was true, then most people would want to choose
the school where they can also focus on making connections, enjoying college
life, and forming memories that will last a lifetime. Emerging stronger in
terms of academics is just one factor, but by far not the only one.

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ekm2
Totally random and probably useless fact depending on your views:

CMU was the top school in the North American region at the 2013 ACM ICPC World
Finals

[http://icpc2013.ru/competition/live.xml](http://icpc2013.ru/competition/live.xml)

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auctiontheory
I assume this article refers to CS at CMU, or it would make even less sense.
(There are much harsher academic environments in the world than CMU!)

I'd venture to guess that 10-15 years into the real world, very few Harvard
grads say "I wish I'd gone to CMU," while probably quite a few grads of CMU
(and other engineering programs) wish they were better networked.

In his New Yorker interview, Michael Saylor made a similar contrast between
MIT (his alma mater) and Harvard. In his view, Harvard grads did better in
life because they had learned to develop relationships, and had more of them.

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dblock
American universities are great - you buy your education and you really have
to try hard to get kicked out.

I went to college in Switzerland. The group that was doing CS was maybe 75
students on day one. There's a very simple criteria to be kicked out of the
faculty: fail any exam 3 times. 7 have graduated with me 4 years later.

~~~
adamnemecek
Cool story bro, Switzerland is so much better than the US. Please, go on and
tell us about all the other ways in which Switzerland surpasses the US. /s

And I say this as a non-American.

