Erm, is CMU actually cheaper than an Ivy League university? I was under the impression that they are fairly expensive and do not provide nearly as much financial aid as at least the top Ivy League schools like Harvard or Princeton.
At the very least, CMU has a far smaller endowment (an order of magnitude smaller) than most of the universities it competes with. I imagine this has a real impact on how much financial aid it can offer.
Also, no love for Berkeley? We're public and have a pretty good CS department :). Admittedly being out of state makes it rather expensive and harder to get in, but I imagine that's the same at UIUC.
Yeah, Berkeley is great, I didn't mention them since when I graduated HS (a while ago) they were harder to get into from out-of-state than some of the Ivys
For better or worse, that's still true, at least for engineering. I think the acceptance rate over all (for both in- and out-of-state students) to the EECS major is actually below 10%.
However, getting into CMU CS is also similarly difficult.
University of Illinois
Carnegie Mellon