Where should I get my undergraduate degree: CMU, Rice, Umich, UIUC, UW-Seattle or UNC-Chapel Hill?

Focus less on making the right decision and more on making your decision right. All of these schools are great options and you can turn any of them into the best - or worst - experience for you. Meet students from each school, visit the campuses, try to envision yourself there. At the end of the day, trust your feelings and make a choice - then make that choice the best one by cultivating your own best possible experience wherever it is that you decide to go. To quote  (because why not?), the future is not set. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves. All that said . . . Go Rice! :-)

CMU. It's where you want to go. The hypothetical tactical advantage of any school can't beat that. (And there isn't one, as long as cost is not a factor here.)

A short answer: choose Rice. Here's why. As a graduate from Rice who's doing PhD at Cornell, I can tell you one thing that high school graduate often overlooks: endowment per student. This is the key component that decides the quality of your college experience. It translates to what facilities you get to enjoy, what societal level students are from, etc. Think about it this way: why does the school have so much endowment to begin with? The alumni are on average richer and more likely to donate because they love their experience there as a student. To give you a personal example, I got the international student scholarship that covered my full tuition, and I made my oath that I will pay back at least that much plus interest when I start making money. Why? Because I love Rice so much! But at Cornell, I frequently hear people say "I'm not gonna give a penny to Cornell when I leave", and that is exactly what is on my mind. There are many reasons why my experience at Cornell isn't as great, and I think almost all of them stem from the fact that Cornell is poor (only 1/3 endowment per capita compared to Rice). To make my point more concrete, I'll tell you a couple things that I don't like about at Cornell. These things could be easily improved with more money. Indeed I am a materialistic person and of course you may care about different things in life, but you will definitely find other problems with a school of less endowment. 1. My office computer has nothing except Office installed on it, because my department (Johnson Business School, the richest in Cornell) is too poor to pay license fee for other software. At Rice, each school computer has a complete set of all academic software you can think of (Matlab, Stata, Mathemtica, etc.). 2. Gym is horrible. It is the 2nd worst among schools I've been to (the worst that I know of is Columbia). How bad? If you've been to 24 Fitness in the US you know what I'm talking about. There are only 2 indoor full-court basketball courts dedicated to recreational use, and there are 3000 incoming freshmen per year. One of the courts in Helen Newman Hall has terrible floor that is sort of hollow, meaning the ball doesn't bounce like it should on a normal floor. 3. VPN is almost useless. I can't access online library through VPN. I can't log on to Facebook in China through Cornell VPN. I can do both with Rice VPN. 4. Many good professors in my department left because this town in the middle of the mountain makes everyone depressed. I'm not kidding. All bridges here have extra protection because the school doesn't want students to jump off them, which occurs about once per year recently. If you believe CMU is gonna be much better than Cornell then you might need to think twice. Rice has about 740k endowment per student, Cornell 240k, and for CMU the number is about 79k (data in 2012). Honestly I can't imagine how CMU can give student a better experience than Cornell or Rice. ---------------------------------------------- What I'm doing here is trying to provide you with a different perspective. I understand that when you're facing this big decision in your life, you try to evaluate each option by speculating on what result you'll get. In this case you're probably trying to imagine what kind of person you will become after you graduate from college, or how the college experience can prepare you for what you want to do in the future. But before you think about the result you'll get, why not take a moment and ponder on what experience you get from the process of college life and education? When I look back on my past 7 years, I notice my path was nothing like I imagined when I was 18. I wanted to be money-hunger banker working on Wall Street, but later I decided since I had enough to survive and live a respectable life, more money contributes very little to my overall happiness. My passion lies in finding things out and disseminating my knowledge to one who seeks it (like what I'm doing now--writing on Quora). That is why I'm on the track of being a professor now. Like my friend Tham Wei-Yang has pointed out, it is quite likely that you will pick a different path and become someone you never thought you would become after college. In my opinion, CMU is only better for you if you feel certain that you want to be a programmer, either work in the industry or be a professor. If you are not so certain about your future career, I think Rice is a better choice. There is simply more resource at Rice. You'll definitely enjoy better facility, amenity, student resource, and probably meet better people (better in the sense that Rice is more prestigious in American people's mind. Also Rice students are on average richer than CMU students, and that connection can be important). One last piece of advice. If you don't know what you want to do in the future, majoring in math/applied math is very good, because you can pick up any subject related knowledge pretty fast with a good math background. But if you major in for example chemistry but end up working on electrical engineering, it would be much tougher.

Well to be honest, that is a decision which you have to make. Here are some ways you can go about making your decision: 1. First go through the curriculum of the major you got accepted into. Going through the curriculum will really give you great insight about what are the learning opportunities for you. 2. Read the profiles of professors of the respective department and try to understand the research each one is doing. So that you get a rough idea about what are the research opportunities for you. 3. You can also get in touch with some current students and get their perspective. Because they will help you give a clearer picture of what goes on. 4. This may not be really important(But i v seen that it matters to some), you can do some research about the weather, place etc. Being a CMU alumni, i can only speak about CMU. The offers you have are great, and you sure will have a lot to learn there. CMU is a really, really great place. You will see that you are constantly surrounded by great minds, who are hardworking and not just smart. All the universities you got into are great universities, but you have to make sure it is great for you :-)

I am a PhD student in STOR at UNC and I think our department is awesome. But at the same time, I am a Pacific Northwest native and I think that the location of UW cannot be beat. I was born in China and visit family in Beijing every 2-3 years, so I understand how much of an advantage it can be to be close to home. At the same time, if you are not going to pursue a graduate degree then the name recognition of your college matters, and I would echo the CMU alums in saying that their reputation is top-notch. But as far as a place to live and grow, I think Seattle is the place to be.

I am in the Applied and Computational Math Sciences (ACMS) program at UW Seattle. I would say it's far less established than the other programs you have mentioned here. I don't know how the programs at the other schools work, but ACMS doesn't have any classes of its own. Instead, it is a degree that consists of a combination of MATH, STAT, and CSE (Computer Science and Engineering) courses. Some relevant reading: