Carnegie Mellon or University of Texas at austin....where to go?

According to US news report, CMU is approximately 20 spots ahead of UT in the nation's best universities. However, CMU and UT are very close (both are top 15) in the graduate business and graduate engineering rankings.

CMU costs around 49k, while UT costs me around 37k.

**Which college should i choose to go to, considering that i have gotten into both of their engineering schools?
also, consider job opportunities in the Pittsburgh (CMU) or Austin (UT) area.
im planning to go into chemical engineering, hopefully, that will help you answer the question. If you need any more info feel free to ask.

Well, first of all, congrats on getting into both.

Which field are you planning to specialise in Engineering? Electrical Engineering, Electronics Engineering, Civil Engineering, Industrial Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Software Engineering-Have you decided on your major yet?

EDIT:For Chemical Engineering, I would recommend University of Texas at Austin. UT-Austin is ranked by US News as having among the Top 10 programs in Chemical Engineering, but Carnegie-Mellon is nowhere among the Top 10. The Chemical Engineering description really helped. Now, this individual program ranking should erase all doubts and reservations about the close proximity in the graduate business/engineering school rankings. Plus, not only the Chemical Engineering program at UT-Austin more reputed, its a lot cheaper too.

http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/grad/eng/chemical

Hope this helped!

ADDITIONAL EDIT:
Here are the US News rankings for undergraduate engineering programs 2008
http://www.universityportal.net/2008/03/americas-best-undergraduate-engineering.html

As you can see from the list, both Carnegie-Mellon and UT-Austin are jointly ranked at No.9

For undergraduate Chemical Engineering, UT-Austin is ranked higher in the US News Rankings 2008 at No.9 above Carnegie-Mellon whose undergraduate Chemical Engineering program makes it into the list only at No.14
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/382751-usnews-2008-engineering-ranking-compilation.html

You also mentioned you were also interested in a business major. I couldn't find the US News Undergraduate Business Rankings for 2008(they re premium content), but according to the 2007 rankings, UT-Austin still finds itself ahead of Carnegie-Mellon. UT-Austin is ranked at No.5 while Carnegie-Mellon is ranked three places further down at No.8
http://www.edinformatics.com/colleges_universities/undergraduate_business.htm

Thats for US News Rankings. If you look at the latest BusinessWeek Rankings(a pretty much well respected rankings, especially in the business sector) for undergraduate business programs, UT-Austin's McCombs B-school improves its rankings from 11 last year to 10 this year, whereas Tepper, Carnegie-Mellon's B-school drops down to 22 from 21 last year.

BusinessWeek Undergraduate Business Program Rankings 2008
http://bwnt.businessweek.com/interactive_reports/undergrad_bschool/

Carnegie-Mellon may be rated higher overall in the US News University Rankings 2008, but that doesn't necessarily mean its undergraduate chemical engineering/business programs are better than UT-Austin. To quote an analogy, if I wanted to study engineering and asked to choose between Harvard(undoubtedly the number one university in the world) and MIT, I would pick MIT over Harvard any day because i know they have the better engineering program. Again, I would choose Wharton(UPenn) over Harvard if I wanted to study business. Or Yale over Harvard I wanted to major in Law.

Despite all the superior individual specialty program rankings, UT-Austin is still a lot cheaper. You wouldn't want to graduate with a lot of student debt, do you? Its your call.

With all this data, if you still have second thoughts or doubts or reservations about going to a UT-Austin for undergrad chemical engineering/business, you would be better off going to Carnegie-Mellon. Irrespective of what the rankings say, it is important to be comfortable with the college that you go to, otherwise you might find yourselves losing interest and perhaps even dropping out midway. The college that you go to could move up or down the rankings over the next few years, so as I said before, it is pretty much important to feel comfortable with whatever you plan to do. They re both very good universities. I'm sure you couldn't go wrong with either.

All the very best for a wonderful future ahead.