Carnegie Mellon University

In brief

Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, formed in 1967 when the Carnegie Institute of Technology merged with the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research. By our measure of academic influence, it ranks #22 in the United States and #47 in the world. It admitted 11.7% of applicants for fall 2024; admitted students had a median SAT score of 1535 and a median ACT score of 34.

Andrew Carnegie funded the Carnegie Technical Schools in 1900; they became the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1912.

Where Carnegie Mellon’s influence is strongest

Carnegie Mellon’s influence is concentrated in computer science, engineering, and economics. Its strongest broad fields, by US rank in our data, are:

• Computer science: #4 in the US (#4 in the world)
• Engineering: #11
• Economics: #13
• Business, chemistry, and criminal justice: #16 each

Within those fields, Carnegie Mellon is a national leader in several specialties:

• #1 in the US and the world: robotics, software engineering, computational biology, computational finance, and information systems
• #1 in the US: cybersecurity

By comparison, Carnegie Mellon sits further back in religious studies (#87), anthropology (#128), and nursing (#161).

How we measure influence: these ranks come from the citations and recognition earned by a school’s faculty and alumni in each discipline, not from surveys or admissions statistics. See our methodology.

Notable people

Twenty people connected to Carnegie Mellon have received the Nobel Prize, including the economists John Nash, Herbert A. Simon, and Robert Lucas and the chemist Paul Flory. Thirteen Turing Award winners are connected to it, among them Allen Newell, Raj Reddy, Manuel Blum, Shafi Goldwasser, Edmund Clarke, and Geoffrey Hinton. Carnegie Mellon-connected figures also include the painter Andy Warhol, James Gosling, creator of the Java programming language, and the actors Holly Hunter and Ted Danson. Our full lists of Carnegie Mellon’s most influential alumni and faculty appear below.

Frequently asked questions

Is Carnegie Mellon hard to get into? Yes. It admitted 11.7% of applicants for fall 2024; the middle half of admitted students scored 730–770 on the SAT reading section and 770–800 on math.

What does Carnegie Mellon cost after financial aid? Tuition is $68,776 for 2025–26. The average net price for aided students with family incomes of $48,000–$75,000 was $17,816 in 2024–25; it ranged from about $4,293 for incomes of $30,000–$48,000 to $56,003 for incomes above $110,000.

How do Carnegie Mellon graduates do? 94.3% of students who started in 2019 graduated within six years, and 98% of first-year students return for a second year. Ten years after starting college, former students had median earnings of $125,257.

What is Carnegie Mellon best known for academically? By our influence data: computer science, engineering, and economics, plus specialties such as robotics and software engineering, where it ranks first in the world.