Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley - Strange Application Requirement

I saw something interesting on Carnegie Mellon's Silicon Valley site for their MS Software Engineering program: CMU Silicon Valley - MS Software Engineering.

The first note in the application requirements says the following:

An undergraduate degree from an accredited institution (from ABET [Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc.] or Middle States Accreditation)

I thought this was extremely bizarre how the only R.A. colleges they will accept would those accredited through Middle States. Then it occurred to me that Carnegie Mellon actually doesn't have ABET accreditation for their computer programs and they are accredited through Middle States. I guess that's a way for them to allow undergrads from Carnegie Mellon into the program, though by these requirements it means that Stanford and Cal Tech undergrad degree holders would not qualify. I don't think I've seen any other example where a graduate program would only accept undergrad degrees from one specific RA accreditation agency.

I'm fascinated by this...what is the purpose behind this? Even Carnegie Mellon's extremely hardcore Masters of Software Engineering Program based out the main Pittsburgh campus does not have these requirements.

Maybe this is old news, but I thought it was interesting enough to post here. Does anyone have any other examples of this kind of admission requirement?

 

I suspect the application requirements were written by someone who didn't know what they were doing (which is common with accreditation issues, even within academia), and that "Middle States Accreditation" actually means "Regional Accreditation" generally. There is no reason whatsoever to prefer MSCHE over any other regional accreditor -- especially for a program located in California, thousands of miles from MSCHE's territory.

Lots of schools in California wouldn't qualify -- ABET accreditation is widely regarded as optional for computer science programs, and no school in California would be accredited by MSCHE. But I seriously doubt that CMU really intends to establish a program in Silicon Valley, and then disqualify graduates from local schools like Stanford, UC Santa Cruz, Santa Clara University, or Cal State East Bay from attending. Nor I do think that they are really trying to attract graduates of Delaware State or Slippery Rock State College (which are Middle States Accredited) to a program based in Mountain View, California.

I think you're overanalyzing the situation. It's just a dumb mistake.

 

CalDog, you're probably correct. Hopefully it's just a careless mistake.

LOL