Carnegie Mellon University Top Questions

Come visit!

School environment is an important thing to consider.

Look into the tuition of the college...that will determine where your future paychck goes.

There isn't necessarily a perfect fit for everyone. Make the best with what you find and make an effort to be social. Students have a tendency to stay cooped up in their dorm at Carnegie Mellon, but I would advise them to find a club or activity to branch out and find their niche. Most importantly, however, I would suggest that you work hard and make the best of your resources; professors are there for a reason and readily available to help anytime. Good luck.

Don't stop looking until you find a college that makes you feel excited about what you're doing, and allows you to become a valuable asset within your feild. College is a place where you learn about yourself, what you want, what makes you tick, what keeps you up all hours of the night in joyful anticipation. College is the place where you become the person you will be for the rest of your life-- choose wisely, but don't ignore that feeling that tells you "this is the place for me". When you get on campus, be an active advocate for your own growth-- when people realize you are serious, intelligent, and driven, innumerable doors will open. Most importantly, consciously evaluate what you want, and act on those ambitions. Those who succeed are those who know what they want and never stop until it's theirs.

Try to talk to students that are in the program you want to pursue candidly, not setup through a professor (that can be a skewed image of real student life). Try to do sleeping bag weekends and use them to get an actual feel for daily life, not just partying or what the campus looks like, etc.

Meet with professors, advisors, deans, and their sister. But also be sure to see what the students have to say about the school and its campus. I would STRONGLY recommend that the prospective student take a few days out of the school year and stay with a current student and attend a few freshmen level and upperlevel classes. I would STRONGLY recommend that the prospective student considers the various activities and social/academic clubs that are on campus. I would put together a list of survey questions and go around asking students walking by if they could give a little bit of their time to answer your questions. But most importantly, I would STRONGLY recommend that the prospective student eat the food first before deciding anything - and first impressions are everything. No joke. Without a meal plan that is healthy, delicious, convenient, and stable the prospective student can struggle to function as a student and as a member of society.

For finding the right school, make sure you pick one that when you visit you feel comfortable with. One where you can see yourself going. Don't go to school so close to home that it is easy to run home every weekend, but don't pick one so far away that it is difficult to spend holidays with the family. Make sure that the school is large enough that if you change your mind about what you want to major in you don't have to change schools in order to do so. And pick one in a good sized town, so that you don't spend all your time on campus. Take a class every semester simply becasue it sounds interesting and not becasue it is related to your major. Join a club or play sports, something that you enjoy and that isn't related to class work. Get an on-campus job, even if you don't need the money. Explore the town outside your campus. Make sure you leave campus and do something totally fun at least once a week. At least once a day, go outside and look at the sky and be a kid.

Choose a school that's good at more programs than just one. You never know what you get interested in once you actually get to the school

Pray. I don't care to whom, or what, but pray and decide who you want to prepare to be. At college you will have choices and choices and more choices, and sometimes all you can do is pray to find the right answer. Trust your gut on where feels right. Try to learn about rankings, scores and required courses early, then forget them. Try to be exited about your future--that's what college is about, your future. Enjoy your friends, keep them, ask them for help and kindness because if you work hard eventually you will fail and will need kindness. But most of all, pray.