Carnegie Mellon University

Before being seduced by the academics at Carnegie Mellon, prospective students may want to consider an aspect of the school that current students are all too familiar with...

“There are more guys than girls, so you'd think it’d be great for girls, but actually people at CMU are really eclectic and you may only be attracted to .0007 percent of the opposite sex. Come to CMU and see why. There’s a saying on campus: ‘Sex kills. Come to CMU and live forever.’”

Did you know?

• Carnegie Mellon assigns “unit” values instead of “credits” to each of its courses in order to represent the amount of work that is required by a particular class. One unit equals one hour of work, so a nine-unit class means that you’ll have approximately nine hours of work a week. Most classes are between nine and twelve units.

• “Teachers and academics are awesome! If you come here, you’d better be serious about learning, because you will get swept away if you aren’t. Pretty much everything we do here is good. All of our sciences kick butt, and our drama and theater programs are really exceptional, too. We are cool like that; we have both nerds and artists. It makes things interesting.”

A quote like this one could make or break your college career—for a student who does not yet know what they would like to major in, knowing that CMU has so many strong programs could make a student lean in the direction of this well-reputed school (according to Academic Strategy author George Keller, the school’s academic rigor can be compared to that of Stanford’s), rather than choosing a state school he or she believes may provide more versatility, but for which the student is over-qualified for. According to Carnegie Mellon students, that versatility is readily available, in addition to a quality education. And with every campus doing its best to sell itself to prospective students, it’s refreshing to hear this information from CMU students themselves, knowing they speak honestly and without bias.

Find out if Carnegie Mellon truly has something for you, straight from the students' mouths.

Visiting campus isn't enough.

Read our Carnegie Mellon University insider guide and discover what it feels like to be on campus for 4 years.

Discover if Carnegie Mellon University is Right For You.