Carnegie Mellon University is not one of eight Ivy League schools. But thanks to its outstanding reputation, it's generally viewed as a "New Ivy" institution.
When you apply to Carnegie Mellon, you apply to a specific college or program, such as its College of Fine Arts or the Tepper School of Business — and your chances of acceptance vary based on the individual school’s selectivity. The university has an illustrious alumni list, including Oscar-winning actress Holly Hunter, Nobel Laureate John F. Nash Jr. (the subject of the movie “A Beautiful Mind”) and the founders of Duolingo.
Although the school can be expensive, it performs well in various measures of return on investment. Young alumni earn a median salary of more than $130,000, placing the university among the best in the country, according to the College Scorecard.
Carnegie Mellon is rich in tradition. Each spring, student teams have designed and built "buggies," which look like a cross between a soapbox car and a luge racer, for a race called the Buggy Sweepstakes. Another well-known custom draws students outside in the middle of the night to paint a campus fence that serves as an announcement board for student groups. Tradition dictates the hours the fence can be painted — between midnight and sunrise — and that students must then stand guard to keep other groups from claiming the fence for their own message.
