CMU has 11th Highest Tuition in the US

CMU's newspaper "The Tartan" has an article about Carnegie Mellon University's tuition being the 11th highest in the nation:

Tuition is on the rise, according to a new College Board list citing Carnegie Mellon as having the 11th highest tuition in the U.S. (...) Tuition costs are not the only concern for prospective students. Ranked 11th as the college with the highest tuition, Carnegie Mellon is also ranked 11th by the College Board for the highest total cost. Factoring in room and board, the estimated total cost for the 2008–2009 year is $49,200 according to the College Board website.

That is even higher than the so-called "Ivy League" schools:

Interestingly, the Ivy League schools were not featured on either list in a ranking higher than Carnegie Mellon. Neither Harvard, Yale, Stanford, nor the University of Pennsylvania were listed in the top 25 highest tuition or total costs. Harvard placed as the 118th most expensive college in tuition and 108th in total cost.

Will these people be able to pay off their college loans before they retire?

October 14, 2008Fred Wenzel

Wireless Noise

Carnegie Mellon's wireless network makes me sad: I get about 20 KB/s of constant noise (all day, every day) from, mostly, Windows computers announcing their presence to the outside world via broadcast packets.

In the "network" window, this looks like that:

If this is a secret ploy with the intention to empty everybody's laptop batteries as fast as possible, it's working! :) Then again, unlike University of Karlsruhe, CMU puts power outlets into every seat when they drop a bucket of money to renovate a lecture hall. At my home university--with the exception of the new library--laptops have to be mostly powered with their owners' love and respect: Places with appropriate power connections are rare.

September 25, 2008Fred Wenzel

Steel Beam Signing

Today I signed the steel beam for the Gates Center, the big, new, not-yet-shiny computer science building on the CMU campus (now called the "Gates-Hillman-Complex", after the Hillman Foundation donated additional funds).

It's a white painted steel beam that will be built into the building later. Very neat idea!

Here are some pics:

If you happen to be affiliated with CMU: The beam is available for all students, faculty and staff to sign on September 25-26 from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. It is located behind Cyert Hall on Cyert Drive (access is available from Forbes Avenue).

September 18, 2008Fred Wenzel

Career Fair

Just coming back from a career fair at CMU's University Center, where I went to say hi to the people who manned the Mozilla booth. As I hadn't come to engage in recruiting discussions, I neither carried a resume binder under my arm, nor was I dressed in a black suit like every other person who went there.

Quite amusingly, while the students dressed up in order to show off their seriousness, all of the recruiters were dressed casually in t-shirts or polo shirts and jeans in order to show how relaxed they were. Funny sight.

Lucky as I am, I also got a USB stick from the Cisco booth (thanks Rob for giving me yours, since you got the last one!)... It has 1GB, that'll make for a great new root drive for my Slug (which currently runs on 512M). By the way, why can OS X's Disk Util.app format an ext2 partition, but OS X can't mount or read it? Very odd.

Oh, and just in case anyone was wondering how high the percentage of international students at CMU is:

July 25, 2008Fred Wenzel

Sad

CMU professor Randy Pausch died last night from pancreatic cancer. Even beyond academia, his inspiring "last lecture" made him famous worldwide.

June 09, 2008Fred Wenzel

CMU Escort

I begin to like this: Today I used the CMU Escort to get home from school. It's basically a night shuttle bus that takes you from campus (there are bus stops) to any street corner within a 1.5 mile radius from campus. That can be veeery convenient (need I mention it is free for ID card holders).

No, dear night owls, they won't pick you up at your favorite bar when you're too drunk to find your way home on your own -- but if you happen to remember where campus is, they would probably pick you up there.

All in all, this makes it easy and safe to get home even when the regular buses are done for the night, which happens more or less early, depending on the bus line.

fredericiana