u/Complete-Wolverine25

I want to get a new pair of sony XM headphones. Right now, I have my older brother's 6 year old XM4's, and my main issues are that the noise cancellation is not perfect (I have a few siblings and pets that make enough noise to still be distracting) and that when wearing it for long periods of time, the areas right around my ears where the earcups touch my head hurt and I have to take it off for a few minutes.

I plan on studying in a dorm or library where it'll usually be pretty quiet, and will need to be able to have them on for long periods of time. I usually use my Airpods for everyday listening to music and the xm4s when studying because they have better noise cancellation, so I don't care if one is worse for daily use outside of studying. The case size does not matter for me, as my backpack is large enough where it can comfortably hold both. I also have a relatively small head, which Idk if it contributes to the discomfort.

The XM5's are currently on sale at 270 dollars while the XM6's are 450 dollars, so its a 180 dollar difference. If the XM6's dont provide 180 dollars worth of comfort and noise cancellation improvements, I would go with the XM5's. Sound quality is not a problem for me, as I can't really distinguish between audio quality past the level of my airpods pro. I also want to buy one that will last for all 4 years of college (and ideally even longer). Which would be the better choice for me?

I'm committed to CMU for ECE, and I'm incredibly grateful and happy with my choice (honestly feel really lucky considering my other results but that's normal from what ive heard to get into only one reach). The only thing that bugs me a little bit is that on commitment day, there were maybe 5 people that were not my friends/other engineering/cs kids that knew what CMU was, and all of them happened to be in orchestra or theater. Everybody else who saw my shirt asked me what it is, where it's located, etc. Even some people going into MechE and EE and ChemE that applied to schools like Gatech and Purdue and Boulder didn't know what CMU was. Is there a reason that CMU is not as well known as similarly good schools like Gatech and Berkeley outside of STEM and performing arts circles? Also on a side note, is there a reason it's ranked low even though its CS and AI and engineering departments are ranked high? I'm less concerned about us news rankings since I can't do anything about it, but im just curious.

I'm sure employers know it very well considering CMU's internship programs and placements but I'm just wondering amongst people that go into fields like medicine, business (even though Tepper is really good, many of the kids going into business at my state school had never heard of CMU), psych, polisci, etc like Purdue, Berkeley, and Georgia Tech are

edit: also can we get andrew Mellon out of the name, go back to carnegie institute of technology, i keep getting ragebaited about going to fruit university

I'm an incoming freshman for ECE this fall, and my intended fall schedule is:

- 18100 Intro to ECE

- 76101 Interpretation and Argument

- 15122 Principles of Imperative Computation

- 21241 Matrix Algebra

- 99101 Core

In the spring, I'm intending for my courses to be:
- 24101 Fundamentals of Meche

- 26127 Concepts of math

- 16281 General robotics

- 36219 Probability theory and random processes

- 76271 Intro to professional technical writing

FCE's say that on average, these semesters are around 48-49 hours a week in coursework. My question is, what does that look like, and what's the best way to transition from HS to college for this? In HS, I pretty much spend zero time outside of school doing homework apart from writing essays or studying for tests in the 2-3 days leading up to them. I also want to do CMU Racing as I did FTC in high school, which took up about 20 hours out of my weeks. Is this schedule doable, and what advice do you all have for making this transition? Are there any classes to watch out for that are deceptively hard/time consuming?