Carnegie Mellon University

Located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Carnegie Mellon University was founded in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools.  It was officially renamed the Carnegie Mellon University after merging with the Mellon institute of Industrial Research.  The 140 acre main campus sits on 140 acres in downtown Pittsburgh.  During the 1970s and 1980s, the university’s growth soared from an annual research budget of $12 million to more than $110 million.  The university earned a reputation for innovation in the fields of Robotics and Software Engineering.  President Richard M. Cyert (1972-1990) pioneered the “Andrew” computing network, which linked all the computers and workstations on campus, setting the standard for educational computing and establishing Carnegie Mellon as a leader in the use of technology in education and research. 

One of Carnegie Mellon’s most famous faculty member was Professor of Computer Science Randy Pausch.  His book, The Last Lecture, based on a lecture he gave in 2007 after he learned he had pancreatic cancer, quickly rose to The New York Times Bestseller list.  A famous alum is John Forbes Nash, Class of 1948, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics and the subject of the book and film A Beautiful Mind.  Carnegie Mellon is a prestigious east coast engineering school with 93% of its student body at the top 10% of their high schools, rated first in the country for the field of Computer Science.  So it comes as no surprise when we found the campus filled with slightly awkward geeks consumed with studying in their dorm rooms.

Students who applied to Carnegie Mellon University also looked at MIT, RPI, and Cornell University.  For more information on Carnegie Mellon University, visit http://www.cmu.edu/index.shtml

Carnegie Mellon University is located at 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA  15213 (412)268-2000