Carnegie Mellon University Top Questions

CMU is a great school for really buckling down on academics and a great social environment.

CMU in a few words: Weird CRAZIES work tired stress!!! passion interest hard worth it.

CMU is a real community. People strongly identify with their separate colleges and majors, which separates us from many other campuses.

CMU is really about finding what you want to spend the rest of your life doing. If you want a real college experience.. DON'T COME HERE. This is the real deal. This is about really getting good at what you are going to persue. There's no sliding by, no falling under the radar. If you don't succeed, you won't want to stay. This isn't somewhere to come and party your four years away. We work hard, THEN we party hard. You'll meet some great people and some awful ones too. You'll find that most people here are out for themselves, and being able to go home for the summer is a blessing not a bother.

Pittsburgh is neighborhood-oriented, so there are lots of places to go in the city to go shopping or hang out. CMU is in an area with restaurants that have half price menus after 11PM, which is awesome. A downside to the area is that besides these restaurants most of Pittsburgh is closed after 9PM. CMU has some of the worst food I have ever tasted, but it's been getting progressively better. The dining system gives you flexibility, which means you get more choice as to what you can eat.

yea

This is coming from the perspective of a Electrical/Computer Engineering student who transfered into CMU his junior year. I have been living off-campus ever since being admitted to CMU and therefore have never experience the CMU dorms and apartments. Academically, CMU is a great place, however I have learned to mainly have my social life in the city of Pittsburgh.

It's like you are paying a bunch of money to go to a place you've been to before. And also the place sucks.

CMU is alright if you know the right people, its just hard to do that. You pretty much have to ignore more than half of the student population to have fun and have to try pretty hard to have a good social life. Getting a girl here is the worst because if they're moderately good looking, there are 5 other dudes hitting on her. In general the school is just awkward.

The Greek system is really interesting here. Houses have distinct personalities, and rush is difficult here.