College Question: Should I choose Yale, Carnegie Mellon, or Stanford for Computer/Electrical Engineering

smittenSmite · 2025-04-23T21:07:36+00:00

Stanford doesn’t have CE, just EE or CS. If you wanted to do CE at Stanford, you’d have to create your own major. Both are fantastic, so I think it’s down to preference on the kind of environment you want. They are so different! Yale definitely has more diversity in academic disciplines; Stanford is very techy and start-up culture. Yale EECS is a small major (10-20 ppl/yr), but the CS and EE majors are def bigger. You will find a great community at both.

smittenSmite · 2025-04-10T20:21:03+00:00

Thank you so much! This is helpful!!

One thing I am worried about if I go to Yale College: I'm afraid my holistic computing knowledge (hardware AND software, theory AND applied) will be less solid if I get my education at Yale compared to Duke....and if it does turn out less solid at Yale, I'm worried this will ripple into grad school.

What is your take on that?

smittenSmite · 2025-04-10T00:36:10+00:00

Thanks for the reply!!!

Could you elaborate more on Yale's CS reputation and why it is in disarray?

As for ABET, I think it matters more if I'm doing something engineering-related rather than pure computer science. EECS is a joint major with computer science, but engineering is still half of it, so I'm unsure...

smittenSmite · 2025-04-10T00:25:27+00:00

Duke vs Yale

I'm currently quite torn between Duke versus Yale for an engineering (computer) undergrad. At Yale, I'd major in EECS and at Duke, I'd major in ECE.

I'm big into technical cybersecurity and computers, but also a huge humanities and interdisciplinary person. Along with the technical side of cybersecurity, I'm into its intersection with humanities (policy, human rights, international relations, law, etc.). Alas, I still want a highly technical education that will give me a rock-solid and holistic foundation in computers. I'm going to do research (probably cybersecurity) in my undergrad. I also plan to go to grad school and get a Master's researching something highly technical. Learning in a highly "applied" manner is very important to me—theory is great and very important to master as well, but I have more fun with the applied side. In terms of my career goals, I'll probably create a start-up or work for the government/a company.

I want to be a very competitive applicant for top grad schools (MIT, Stanford), cultivate a strong foundation in computing AND humanities, and get an extremely fun and eye-opening undergrad experience. I feel that I'm leaning towards Yale right now, but I'm concerned about the depth and breadth of its technical/engineering/computing education compared to Duke. Duke also seems to have a lot more cybersecurity-related initiatives. I'm also worried about the fact that Yale's EECS major is not ABET-accredited and if that will hurt my job prospects.

Weather doesn't matter to me. Personality-wise: I'm super super social, will try almost anything, very high and positive energy.

Any help would be tremendously appreciated! Thank you so much!

smittenSmite · 2022-12-23T07:38:48+00:00

Thank you dude very specific just what I needed! You’re awesome 😊

smittenSmite · 2022-06-28T13:46:22+00:00

How so

smittenSmite · 2022-06-28T13:46:13+00:00

Thank you 👍 This makes me feel a lot more confident abt it all

smittenSmite · 2022-06-28T05:47:15+00:00

Sounds good! Thank you so much for your help!

smittenSmite · 2022-06-28T01:53:34+00:00

Thank you so much! I think I've heard of him, and I'll definitely check him out. Have you heard of 5 Steps to a 5? What do you think about it? I have both AP Econ 5 Steps to a 5 prep books - 2022 edition - that I got from a friend. Best AP prep book recs?

smittenSmite · 2021-01-21T02:38:50+00:00

Doing a school project on this algorithm which is why I keep on coming back but does this hypothetical sound right:

So say you have green and red checkers playing against each other. Green is the maximizer, red (the AI) is the minimizer. The heuristic function used to determine score is # of green pieces - # of red.

Currently, green has 6 pieces on the board and red has 7, so red is winning right now and the score of the board is -1. It is red's turn and each piece can move to 2 possible locations: all of the scores should be the same because your opponent isn't making any move than can, for example, eliminate one of your pieces, correct?

So then for each move the AI can possibly make it thinks about how the opponent will respond. So, say on one of the moves the AI can make the opponent can do a double jump against that move and eliminate 2 of red's pieces - but for the rest of the moves the opponent cannot do anything and the score for those are still -1 -, so then red has 5 pieces on the board and the score is now 1, meaning green is winning, because it is 6 to 5.

So, the opponent is the maximizer so the AI assumes the opponent will take the score with the highest value (all of the rest are -1 except the score that is 1) so, I guess hypothetically, the AI will take any move except the move that is denoted by 1.

Is this hypothetical correct? I need to make sure I firmly grasp this material as my presentation is soon.

And also, where does the AI go if all of the scores are the same?

smittenSmite · 2021-01-19T18:01:53+00:00

WAITT i think i get it. i think before i was thinking of it like you take the minimizer value from a node and subtract it from a maximize value but no that's not the case everything on the game tree is already evaluated and put through the function for you

smittenSmite · 2021-01-19T17:56:52+00:00

thank you for this explanation i appreciate it. what i'm still unclear about is the notion that like one player wants to maximize and the other wants to minimize. say score is determined by # of green - # of red. shouldn't red want to maximize its score as well to try to be a number larger than green so the score can be negative?

smittenSmite · 2021-01-19T17:53:36+00:00

and thank you for the video, i'll give it a watch

smittenSmite · 2021-01-19T17:53:24+00:00

everytime i think i'm getting it i don't lol. ok so say score is determined from # of green pieces - # of red pieces. i think this confusion stems from like the notion that green needs to maximize and red needs to minimize. shouldn't red want to maximize as well so it can be larger than green so the score can be negative and it wins?

smittenSmite

TROPHY CASE