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The best thing about CMU is that when you graduate you know you will have a job, especially if you're an engineer, but employers just seem to really like our students in general. If I could change one thing it would be the workload -- it really can be too much at times. The school size is about right, though by the time you're a senior you will feel like you know everybody, which is sort-of nice but it can feel a bit like high school again. We have Pitt next door and a few other colleges around but it still doesn't feel much like a college town. CMU's administration is really concerned with helping students cope with the workload, I haven't given it a lot of thought but I'd say they do a great job helping kids enjoy their college experience. Most frequent student complaint: too much work. No big controversies on campus that I'm aware of, that is one unique thing about CMU, students are pretty self-absorbed so there's not a lot of campus-wide issues that really dominate discussion. An experience I'll always remember is singing karaoke at one of the campus cafeterias on Friday nights -- I don't know if they still have that, but it was a lot of fun.

Academics at CMU can be a great experience. Professors are at the top of their professions and they genuinely care about teaching and making sure students are doing well. Plus there are so many neat classes you can take to fill your general requirements -- my favorites have been economics courses which I took on a whim and now I think econ is something I may dedicate my career too. Classes themselves are usually very small, but in classes I have been in, most students are very shy so there is not a lot of participation. Students often work together on homework and I have never seen any competition at all among students, probably because there is no class rank and hardly any professors give curved grades, or assign a fixed amount of students to get an "A" a "B" and a "C" etc.

The education at CMU is geared towards both getting a job and pure learning. Professors teach skills you need for employment, but they give you more than that as well. With only a few exceptions my professors have been phenomenal teachers, they have graded reasonably, they have prepared fun, interesting lesson plans, and they have taken the time to get to know their students, even in big classes. One economics teacher even went out to lunch with his entire class of some 400 kids in small groups.

The student body here is diverse, but you'll find like a lot of places the races don't mix. The Asian kids are in their corner often speaking a different language, and the black kids are in another corner and then the athletes all stick together too with their respective teams. The only time you really mix groups is in class when you'll work with anyone if they can make studying or your homework easier. The other thing about the kids here is that they are universally dorky -- there are some normal kids who play sports and don't play Dungeons and Dragons, but my friend here told me this and I think it is true -- whenever you are around a CMU kid who you think is cool, just remember where they go to school and give them some time and they'll do something to give themselves away. Students are not political at all. Financial backgrounds-no clue, mostly wealthy I assume but it's hard to tell. They always are talking about how much they will make, it is like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that students talk about to make all of the long nights studying and the lack of girls here all seem worth it.

There really isn't a popular sect, if I had to pick a group it would be the men's basketball team, but they certainly don't own the campus. Athletics events are getting more popular and now you can get a really good crowd at a lot of games. The big thing though is intramural sports. Everybody plays and it is the talk of campus, especially flag football and basketball. People love it. There are lots of great speakers but they are not well-attended. It's not if you're awake at 2AM on a Tuesday, but when you're awake on a Tues. at 2AM and you are STUDYING!!. People party every weekend and it's mostly drinking and hanging out -- frat parties aren't so big these days since the school has really cracked down on them for serving alcohol to minors. If you don't drink, there are free movies, cheap shows and lots of other kids like you too hang out with. I think there are also a lot of kids that don't socialize, don't date etc. They hang out in their rooms doing work or playing computer games, and many of them have never been to a party or kissed a girl. I'm friends with a lot of these people and they are not embarassed about it, it's just who they are.

The most common stereotype about CMU is that it is a dorky school for workaholics with no social lives. People also think the students here are all Asian engineers and weird drama people. Plus I heard somewhere that in a survey the girls at our school were voted the ugliest in the country.

I think for the most part we are a school of workaholics. Everybody here is very smart and very dedicated to whatever they're studying. We are also almost always stressed out. The one thing people don't realize is you can have a pretty good social life. There are lots of parties on the weekends, a fair number of attractive girls and even though a lot of guys have no idea who Peyton Manning or Tiger Woods are, there are still a fair number of normal college guys who like to drink beer and watch sports and go to parties to meet girls.

It can be a tough school, but just as a summation, I think it's a pretty neat place to spend college, even if it means less drinking and girls and more late nights studying. You'll meet some really incredible people, and if you stay in contact with them maybe they'll look after you when they're rich.