Carnegie Mellon University

Date: May 20 2005
Major: Business - Management and Administration (This Major's Salary over time)
Carnegie Mellon is an over-priced four year commitment to hell.

Had I prepared a formal report, I could probably compile a 20 page essay about why you, as a potential undergraduate student, definitely should not attend this school.

At the time of this writing, here are the most notable negatives about this "college":

1. SOCIAL LIFE. Actually, CMU isn't really a college. It's a 24-hour study group. There is no college experience at this school. More specifically, there are hardly any parties, social events, extracurricular activities, community events, school organizations, or anything else intended to put a smile on your face. Sure, the student life committee lists over one-hundred student organizations, and the athletic department boasts a whopping 10 different university sports teams. But the student organizations only meet once-a-month - for a couple hours. The athletic teams are division three and are some of the worst in the division.

2. DATING. In high school dating was fun, humorous, a learning experience. In college, dating is supposed to be fun, humorous, a learning experience. At CMU, dating is non-existent. The official male-female ratio is somewhere around 60-40. But not even the girls should get exciting about this seemingly favorable ratio. Of the 60% male student population, only 10% are physically attractive. The other 90% of the males are any combination of the following: fat, have tons of acne, never get sunlight, are unable to articulate words clearly, wear thick glasses. The same tends to be true for the females. In fact, CMU students have coined a phrase called "CMU Goggles" which refers to the fact that: once you attend CMU for a couple years, you develop CMU Goggles through which you start to find ugly people more attractive because you have no choice but to date ugly people.

Guys listen up. There are hardly any attractive girls at this school. 40% of the student population is female. Of this 40%, you will only ever see one-tenth of them walking around campus. And of this one-tenth of the female student population, only another one-tenth will be semi-attractive enough to date.

Girls listen up. 60% of the student population is male. Even better: if your major concerns any of the sciences, mathematics, or engineering curriculums, most of your classes will have a 95% to %5 male-female ratio. But do not be fooled. There are hardly any attractive males at this school. Ony of my female friends once said

look at all the gross guys at that table!

Trying not to be shallow, I will not refer to the physical characteristics of people during the remainder of this rant.

3. OUTRAGEOUS PRICES

The school just wants your money, or should I say, your parent's money. The entire school is flooded with outrageous prices. $3.00 for a slice of pizza, $1.50 for a can of coke, $5.00 for a blank notebook, close to $4,000 for a dorm room for one semester, $50.00 for a CMU sweatshirt, $50.00 for your first student ID, $25.00 to replace your student ID every year, $30.00 for the "discount" bus pass, the list goes on and on. And don't forget about tuition.

In fact, I could never figure out why tuition was so high. The professors, in my opinion, are not anything special. The computer labs, campus buildings, grass fields, dorm rooms, classrooms, study halls, libraries are all sub-par. The sports facilities, student records office, and art/humanities facilities are all a big disaster.

By the way, I must point out before I forget, how big of a disaster the sports facilities are. There is no workout room. If you want to lift weights, you need to enter a small room with glass doors located across the hall way from the dining center. In other words, when you a buy a slice of pizza for $3.00, you can sit and eat and watch sweaty people work out at the same time. The pitiful swimming pool is also located next to a rancid dining area. So while you swim, you can watch people eat hamburgers, and vica versa.

4. CAMPUS LAYOUT

Thinking of bringing your car on campus? Not gonna happen. Only about 5,000 parking spaces are available on campus. The waitlist for a parking pass is several thousand names long. Campus staff gets first picks. Then people with disabilities and graduate students get their passes. Most senior undergraduates never receive a parking pass even after being on the waiting list for four years.

If you are fortunate enough to obtain a parking pass, it will cost you $1,200.00 per semester or more. There are some secret routes to obtaining a parking pass, such as faking a disability or joining Greek life. But all of the passes are very expensive.

5. THE CITY OF PITTSBURGH

I grew up in Chicago. Then I moved to Cleveland for high school. When I first moved to Cleveland, I didn't like it because the city was not nearly as glamorous as Chicago. But now that I know what Pittsburgh is like, I am in love with my Cleveland hometown. This is because Pittsburgh is by far one of the worst big-cities in the nation.

Tall buildings, tunnels, big businesses, and mega malls are all well and good, but they are hard to enjoy when the weather is aweful. In Pittsburgh, it snows heavily from early November to late April. Once the snow clears, the weather is beautiful for about 3 days, and then it becomes aweful again. Pittsburgh during the fall and spring is plagued by constant cold winds, rainstorms, or both. Once summer gets here, it is burning hot and you wish it was winter all over again. Most dorm rooms don't have air conditioning.

Back to the topic of Pittsburgh - what an aweful city. There is literally no place to eat, drink, socialize or just hang out that is within walking distance from CMU campus. CMU conveniently forces you to eat on campus.

Wanna go to Giant Eagle? You're either going to need to take the bus or have access to a car. Taking the bus is a very bad idea; you will probably catch a disease if you ride the bus. The first time I rode the bus (using my expensive bus pass from CMU), there were 3 homeless people riding. Everyone else on the bus was poor, dirty and uneducated. The bus is filthy, and anyone who cares about their own health gets off asap.

Crime in Pittsburgh is supposedly low. I don't think so. The CMU Campus Police sends out e-mails every week detailing how another female student walking home by herself was mugged. During my tenure at CMU, I knew of at least 10 different friends who either had their cars stolen or seriously vandelized. There are also countless cases of mysterious strangers coming onto CMU campus and approaching female students or stealing from dorms and buildings.

6. ACADEMICS

Nothing special here. The biology my professor taught me at CMU was the exact same biology they were teaching when I visited a friend at a public college. Not even the computer science, math or business courses are especially different from regular colleges.

Want to have the best grade in the class? If you're reading this article, you're already falling behind. That's because you're competing with other students who never see any sun.

On my first day at CMU as an undergraduate computer science student, the advisors sent an action plan to all of the computer science students to make sure that we saw the light of day. I could not believe it. Are there really students who never go outside?

Yes there are, and plenty of them. The action plan required that we spend certain hours of the day outside. Otherwise, we would automatically fail the intro programming class.

Most of the students study all day and all night. They study while they eat, read while going to sleep, and have no friends. This doesn't leave much time for showers, and believe me there are a lot of students with extremely low hygene.

Studying, academics, and book knowledge is all they care about. Scoring a better grade than one of these full-time-book-worms is certainly possible, but hardly likely.

Don't get me wrong - I love knowledge. It's awesome to be able to write computer programs, name the characteristics of biological molecules and calculate the curvature of a roller coaster. But these students are extremists. They have no social skills. Most students at CMU are unable to carry a conversation due to their lack of people skills and knowledge of the real outside world on the streets.

SO, WHO SHOULD GO TO CMU??

Remember those "geeks" in high school with the thick glasses, tall white socks and skinny/fat arms? If you are one of these guys (you know who you are), please go to CMU.

Remember those real people with real lives who care about themselves and each other and look forward to an exciting and fun life? If you are one of these guys or girls, (you know who you), please do not go to CMU.

Unfortunately it took me three years at CMU to realize my parents' money was going down the drain. I was a good student - 3.0 cumm gpa - but it was hell. And I was missing out on the fun that all my friends were having at their colleges.

College is supposed to be the most fun and memorable experience of a lifetime. CMU in no way represents or attempts to create such an experience.

CONCLUSION

I hope that my opinion has helped. Do some research and check the facts for yourself. How many dorms are air-conditioned? How much do the hot pockets sell for at the student store? Ask current students - are the extra curriculars fun?

There are tons of negative aspects of CMU that I did not mention above. For example, there are countless negative experiences everyone has had with the student records office (called the Hub at CMU). There is also a low student population which makes CMU just like high school because you see the same people walking through halls everyday. And the more minutes I spend typing, the more negative aspects about CMU I can think of. Unbelievable.