I won’t make it to this year’s SI visiting day due to work. What I’ve noticed from the SI Facebook page is most of the people admitted are straight from undergraduate. This concerned me somewhat, because when I visited Indiana’s program it was a mix of undergrad and folks who had worked for several years.

As well, the career information surprised me somewhat. I, too, am HCI-oriented and to see that one of the more highly regarded careers out of HCI was “analyst” at the company I am currently employed (the same position I started at 3 years ago) it makes me wonder what exactly the HCI program is offering that differentiates it from straight Informatics.

It’s clearly an excellent program from what I’ve heard. More and more I’m hearing people compare CMU to U of M. BTW, I’ve talked to more than one person who attended the CMU program and the words “awful experience” have come up more times than not.

Sorry Lev and I never got around to our song and dance routine! If you’re wondering about whether SI539 is too easy for ya, you’re free to checkout everything we’ve done with the course:

http://wonderfullyflawed.com/course/

Cheers,
Trek

P.S. you missed out at the japanese restaurant - it was amazing and not just fish!

I’m a fellow CS major and SI admit who unfortunately wasn’t able to attend the Michigan Visit Days. In your blog post you said “He also discussed the differences between the mentalities of the professors at Michigan vs. those at Carnegie Mellon, who both have very highly respected HCI programs but very different way of approaching it.” Could you possibly elaborate on that a bit? Currently I’m deciding between a few schools including Michgian and CMU so I would love to hear what was said about the difference in mentalities. My e-mail is selcukgl@uiuc.edu if you’d rather e-mail me.

Thanks so much!