therisingpage

Your school will understand, especially if you're apologetic and explain that this couldn't be avoided. I think I've seen some posts around explaining how people went about explaining it, but I would write up a nice email explaining what has happened, that you'll be accepting the other offer (don't really need an explanation, but you could say more funding etc) and then ask them to 'release' you.  Congrats!

Personally, I'd try to defer the acceptances and work for at least a year. But that's just me.

I agree with @rising_star and also want to point out that any student is free to quit their program at any time, even before starting it.
So, you should not "fake-commit" to any school at any time. However, today, on April 15, you only have one offer and nothing is certain about the other two. There is nothing wrong with committing to this school today because you don't actually have any other offers. It would be wrong to take this offer with the intention of taking another offer that you already have. But at this point, you don't have any other firm plans so you can accept this current offer in good faith.
Then, if something better comes along later on, then there is also nothing wrong* with backing out of your offer and taking something different. (Nothing ethically wrong, but you'll have to be prepared that the people at this school will be unhappy that you quit their program and if you want to apply to PhD programs there, it might make it harder for you).
That said, the better approach would have been to ask for an extension and go with the above plan if they say no. But it's April 15 today, so it is probably too late to ask for an extension (you could try emailing right now though).

I think CMU MS Robotics is the better choice. You should contact the administrators you're in touch with at each school and ask them what percentage of students landed an RAship. Doing an RAship is essential if you want to pursue a PhD at a top program. The CMU MS Robotics will be 100% because it is a program requirement, with probably ~90% of the students receiving funding. Stanford's rate will be lower. You could try talking to faculty at Stanford now and seeing if any of them would be interested in taking you as an RA if you go there, but you will probably not get any firm commitments.
My statements about CMU treating their MS Robotics students the same as PhD students is still true. As an example, there are two different grad-level intro. to machine learning courses as CMU: 10-601 and 10-701. 10-601 is the more practical version, intended mostly for MS students. 10-701 is the PhD-level course for those interested in ML. The MS Robotics counts only 10-701 toward your course requirements (or you can take an AI course instead of the ML course).
Regarding the cold weather, that's a personal preference, but I personally don't think you should base your career on which school has better weather.

Hm, I can't say I'm familiar with that particular area. That said, it's really close to the heart of Regent Square (just slightly south on S Braddock) which is a pretty nice area. I drive through Frick Park on Forbes Ave sometimes and take the right on S Braddock so that's as close as I've been to your potential apartment. If I had to make a guess though this would be a safe area. When people talk about Wilkinsburg being dangerous, they typically think of the area closer to Penn Ave and especially north of Penn Ave towards Homewood.
 
You're welcome! Happy to give my two cents as more questions come up too. 
Unfortunately I'm probably leaving Pittsburgh in the fall for school, but I definitely intend to move back once I'm done. Pittsburgh is such an awesome place to live. But don't just take it from me...
https://fitt.co/pittsburgh/pittsburgh-best-city/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/18/pittsburgh-health_n_4339476.html
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/11/what-millennials-love-about-pittsburgh/383074/
http://time.com/pittsburgh/  (this is a fantastic video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9dxURkKoVU (EDIT: here's another good video)
 

I just wanted to reiterate this. I'm not originally from Pittsburgh, but I've been here for five years. I'm leaving this fall for graduate school, but when I am done I will probably look to move back, because Pittsburgh is a great city with a lot to offer.

Agreed that Squirrel Hill, Shadyside, and Lawrenceville are nice places to live and have lots to offer, but they are probably the most expensive neighborhoods in the city. Lots of good restaurants and bars in each of those, but Shadyside and Squirrel Hill have the edge in my book because there are more bus routes and they have good grocery stores. Lawrenceville is probably more interesting though.
I highly recommend looking at Bloomfield. It's basically between Lawrenceville and Shadyside, but generally much cheaper. This is Pittsburgh's "Little Italy" and there's a nice mix of older folks who have been there forever and young professionals. I've lived in Pittsburgh my entire life and Bloomfield the last 5 years. I work in Oakland and can walk to the office or take a 10 minute bus ride (54). Plus there's an awesome and massive Italian festival every summer :). 
I'd also suggest looking into Highland Park, Friendship, and Polish Hill (which will likely satisfy your desire for somewhere eclectic and with a sense of community).
I disagree slightly with the poster above regarding East Liberty, North Side/North Shore, and Oakland. There are some great areas of East Liberty and I know many people who live there. While there are certainly bad parts (i.e. high crime, crack houses, etc), sections are quite nice thanks to a ton of gentrification over the last few years. Stick to the areas that are closer to Shadyside, and avoid East Liberty near Larimer and Garfield. The North Side/North Shore are where the Pirates and Steelers play so there's a lot of action, but there are some nice areas (near the Mexican War streets) and I know that a number of graduate students and faculty live there. Plus the 54 starts its route on the North Shore and continues through Oakland. As far as Oakland, there are some fine places to live in North Oakland, but definitely avoid south Oakland unless undergrads, house parties, and slumlords are your thing.
I would personally avoid the South Side, but lots of young professionals and students live there. There are an insane number of bars here and it's pretty crazy on the weekends. I know some grad students who live in Greenfield as well (not as many amenities here as the other areas, but close to campus).  Areas to definitely avoid: Wilkinsburg, Larimer, Garfield, Homewood, the Hill District, Mt Oliver, and South Oakland. 

CMU is amazing, but Michigan is pretty amazing too. So if you feel like you fit better with Michigan, I don't think you will have too many regrets. Also "(-) Overall prestige: I know it is petty but I went to college in the North East and not many people know that Michigan is a good school.", don't choose based on what 'people' know or don't know. Haven't heard of someone in CS who didn't know that Michigan is a great school. At the end of the day (4-5 years), the people hiring you for positions will be people that are well aware of how good Michigan is.
Personally I would choose CMU, but I don't think you are crazy for wanting to pick Michigan.

I'm a "bad profile" applicant on paper. My GRE is okay (great V, ho-hum Q, decent AW), GPA is only a 3.2, academically suspended (flunked out) from undergrad twice, my only research experience was a tiny, unpublishable project. But when you read my statement of purpose you'll see that I have a 4.0 in all major coursework and a 3.8 over the past three years, my GPA is just shit because of my problems 10 years ago. My academic suspensions are a decade old. That "tiny research project" was my project (I did the IRB, wrote all grant proposals, collected all data, completed all statistical analyses, designed my poster, and presented it at a professional conference poster session).  My spring breaks were spent shadowing professionals and doing community service. One summer was spent studying abroad in an area specific to my top-choice grad school's aims. I wasn't employed in the field because I was  helping design lessons and editing the textbooks my undergrad used.
Of the schools I applied to I was rejected from the least prestigious and accepted to all three of the more prestigious programs.
When you boil everything down to a few numbers and when "research" can mean you did what I did or that you were the 14th author on a paper because a professor thought you should put your name on something you really can't compare yourself to what you see on gradcafe, especially when you also toss in the concept of program fit.

Yes and no.
First, yes, it is a good idea to do research into finding out what you need to achieve your career goals. A normal part of deciding to apply to / go to grad school involves things like going to career panels and hearing about your different post-Bachelors options and learning what various types of employers are looking for in general. Another good source for this information is to conduct "informational interviews" and talk to people in the various careers that interest you about how they got to where they are. For example, those interested in academia should be talking to professors in their departments! 
However, that should have been done prior to applying (you may have already done this?). Note also that you can really only get general information. You should not expect to be able to get answers to specific questions like the ones in your post because: 1) every individual hire/search will have different goals and 2) every individual on a search committee may have different perspectives. Therefore, no single person can answer the question you are seeking for a hypothetical job posting that is 5-10 years in the future. In addition, it would reflect rather poorly on you to appear as if you have no idea how to make this decision for yourself and you are seeking their input to guide your life.
If you have already conducted some research/informational interviews into tenure-track positions, then you probably already know that the best answer to your question is "all of the above". Program rank matters. Your advisor matters. Your individual success matters. As I said above, every hiring committee for every single position will be different. But a PhD is more than one singular career goal** and you need to choose what's best for yourself in the long run, considering all of your potential career options.
That said, I'm not saying you shouldn't seek advice. I'm just advising against contacting places you might want to work in 5-10 years and asking them which school they think you should pick (even if you don't phrase it that way, that's what you're ultimately doing, no?). Instead, this is the time to reach out to your existing network of people you already know and bounce ideas off them. Tell them your goals, what schools you're considering, why you're excited about each and what makes you nervous about each school. They can provide their perspective, which will be helpful because they know you, they have wisdom/experience in the field, and they have an outside perspective that you might not have considered since you probably have been thinking about this every day for the last few months. After you hear from those you trust, you will have to eventually decide for yourself. 
(** Note from above: Although tenure-track positions in academia are obviously one potential career outcome of a PhD, my opinion is that if this type of position is the only reason why you are pursuing a PhD, I would strongly urge you to either reconsider your career goals or reconsider your choice to go to grad school. As you might have seen from posts all over these forums, or from talking to people, or from reading articles on the Internet, the tenure-track position is the ultimate goal of many PhD-seekers but very few of us will get a chance at it. There are a lot of other things you can do with a PhD, and I would consider those too, in determining which school to attend (i.e. if you pick the school that best prepares you for a TT-position but nothing else, what will you do if you don't get a TT position?). It's up to you to determine what risks are acceptable, but you might consider a school that will prepare you for a wider breadth of careers over one that prepares you really well for just one track.)

Take heart.
Like @HopingForMFA said 23 is young, you've still got time on your side (even though it doesn't feel like it right now). Take this time to work, build your portfolio. Keep in touch with the professor who recommended you, watch the different projects that the Media Lab is working on. Then apply again when you are ready.
Don't give up! 

Something I've only learned with age is that success has more to do with perseverance than talent.
If you keep at it, you'll do okay. Just be more stubborn than everyone else.  

23, in terms of graduate education, is very young. It may not seem that way now, but it's true. People go back to school at all points in their lives. Also seconding @thelionking's advice about using this time off to get experience and better yourself as an artist and applicant. I'm sorry to hear about your accident, it's awful, but everything has a way of working out how it's supposed to. Who knows? You may use this year to grow even more than you initially planned. Best of luck!

This is actually very normal and typical in academia. Many postdoc and other positions have the same procedure. I'll address the two parts separately (asking if you're still interested and asking for other offers).
This is more normal for programs that only accept a few students, or for programs that have very qualified applicants and they want to get the most qualified ones. Let's use an example of a program that wants to accept 5 students and they have 100 applicants, 10 of which are really good. Ideally they would want to take their 5 students from this pool of 10. However, for whatever reason, they know that their candidates also have good offers from other places (either because the school itself is a top school or they are often a second tier school for top candidates). Let's say you are the #2 ranked candidate. For Candidates #1 through #5, they might want to check if you are still interested before issuing an official offer. An official offer might have a deadline to decide like April 15 so if you sit on that offer until April 15, then by the time you say no, it's likely that Candidates #6 through #10 already took offers elsewhere. So the school will either have less students or take on less desirable candidates (#11 onwards). Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to check in on Candidates #1 to #5 to see if you are still interested before going ahead.
The right thing to do? Be honest. Are you still seriously considering this school? If so, then say yes. If you have some questions before you can know if you're still interested, this is the right time to ask them. If you already have offers from the your top 3 schools so this school is no longer something you want, then be honest and say no. It would be a good time to withdraw your application too. If you say yes now but then get good offers that interest you more later, then it's okay to give them an early decline so that they can move down their list.
As for the asking for other offers thing, this is totally normal as well. If you want to negotiate your stipend, the only real leverage you have is offers from other universities. I am betting that this school has a set base stipend that they initially offer and there's a small pot of money that they can use to make their offer more attractive to their top candidates. So I would interpret this as meaning you are one of their top choices (or at least a top choice for this particular professor) and that they are willing to increase their stipend offer if stipend is what you need to take their offer over another one. 
Your offer letters from other schools are not secret nor confidential (unless otherwise stated?) and you are free to share them. If you are still seriously considering this school then wait to see their official offer. If you have offers from other schools with a larger number, send those letters to her so that she can negotiate for a higher stipend. However, only proceed with this step if you are prepared to take their offer should the negotiation succeed. The prof may have to use some political capital to get you more money and you only want someone to take this effort if you will take the offer.

This is cool
Just a friendly reminder to everyone using this tool and other similar tools: please be considerate of others and realise that every time you run this, you are basically loading up the webpage. So, please don't do something like set up a cron job or other automation tool to make a request every second. You can imagine if a large number of people were making a large number of requests per minute, it would ruin things for everyone! 

The python 2.7. users might want to try 'import urllib2'
Thanks for this @ChemiKyle!!
 

It's around the time when my field sees a large number of results so I wrote a python program to automatically check for updates on this page: http://thegradcafe.com/survey/index.php?q=Chemistry and notify me if schools I applied to have shown up since I last checked. The code is hosted on GitHub: https://github.com/ChemiKyle/Automated-Academic-Angst I figured I'd share it here, though it's probably not as pretty as would be made by someone whose undergrad actually involved programming courses (it's MIT licensed though, so people with actual talent can do whatever they want).
 
Happy waiting!

I realize this thread is from a while ago but I was just wondering how you guys liked CMU and Pittsburgh so far? I just got addmitted into and engineering Ph.D. program!

We have to stop saying that we need to "not sound political".  Being political and debating those opinions are a vital element of a democracy.  When we stop doing that we have problems.  We have Trump today because we stopped debating, because we all stopped being political.  Yes this is absolutely political.  Most of us are not xenophobic jerks scared of what the future holds, most of us fully support bright and talented people from all over the world coming into this country, most of us support saving the lives of thousands of families (who are in part forced to leave because of US interference in their part of the world).  This is a forum of educated people who will have differing opinions from my own, but I think we can offer our support to international students w/o disclaimers of not being political.  Supporting them is political, and that's ok.  
Otherwise I too stand with you all.  As a hispanic American I too have some uncertainty, but not nearly the kind that an international student must feel after this week.  

@angesradieux, if your sister is behaving like that now then it probably won't change when you move. Although my relationship with my sister improved immensely when we lived in different states. Sort of that "you don't appreciate what you have until it's gone". 
My dad won't care if I get into grad school. In many ways, he'll think it's stupid. Embrace the positive relationships you have in your life. Those will be the ones that carry you far. 
You're going to love grad school and the growth you get from it.

Hey I didn't really know where to post this, but I just wanted to give a shout out to every potential grad student out there who is dealing with waiting for decisions AND having their plans potentially derailed by the immigration order yesterday. I'm NOT trying to make this political - I'm just throwing out some support during what has to be a difficult time for our fellow "waiting gamers."

Hello there, all. This is my first post! Just a warning, there are a few poor quality puns/analogies peppered about. Please take this opportunity to exercise forgiveness, as I come in peace.
I recently joined the cafe to satiate my impulse to do something other than refresh my application statuses every few hours, or minutes. I've read several posts expressing the anxiousness and uneasiness of the waiting process, and I completely empathize. My own experience of this process has been mostly good, but a roller coaster ride no less. 
There are just so many ******* feelings!! For goodness sake. Like most of you, I'm weathering the gamut. One moment I'm fantasizing about my dreams coming true, imagining the apartment I'll live in, or what new cafes I'll seek out for long studying/work sessions. About how freakin' awesome it would feel to see that "We are pleased to inform you...", or that fat envelope in the post. I feel the excitement and giddiness in my chest. It feels like a wave of energy pouring over and through me!--Then, a bit later, I'm feeling that bowling ball in my stomach. I'm meticulously fine-tooth combing my (already submitted) applications in my head, looking for areas of weakness, while brushing past areas of fortitude and grace. Even if I don't find anything to corroborate my dread, my insides are still an abyss.
Now, with that said, for most of us the aforementioned are not uncommon occurrences or feelings. Knowing a little bit about the cognitive-emotional functions and processes of the brain and body, it seems quite natural--and it is. However, I think there can come a point when we step into a territory where we can easily overwhelm ourselves, and even accidentally (or via acts of self-degradation) slip into a hyper or hypo state, and stress out/depress not only our thoughts, or nerves, but our entire self. Our psyches, our subconscious, our biorhythms. We can sometimes take it to a place of what can only be described as temporary psychosis, and I'd like to now get to my point of telling you why none of us deserve to do that to ourselves!
We are freaking out, sizing ourselves up to anything and anyone, building ourselves up and tearing ourselves down, diving down the rabbit holes of what ifs, and am I good enoughs, because we CARE! We care a whole lot. We care parking lots. We care stadiums and amphitheaters. If each "refresh" or "login" or worry, or pang in the gut were an individual, we'd have colonized Mars already. We are here, marinating in our own electric nerves, because we care tremendously about some pretty incredible things. We fear because we care, and not just about getting in to our dream (or any) graduate program/university. We care about learning, and discovery, knowledge, research, and exploration. We care about addressing some of the most pressing issues of our society/country/world/planet, for the better (hopefully). We care about making a difference, solving problems, inventing solutions--people, we are ******* awesome, and I believe that is the bright underbelly of the waiting-and-dreading process. I want to take this moment to simply remind not only all you cool people, but myself as well. I think we deserve to acknowledge just how tremendous we are. If you must succumb to the whirlpool of waiting, what ifs, and borderline mania, at least let the bold text come back to you in the form of a reprieve, or as the eye of the 'hurrycane'. 
I could go on for far longer than anyone would read, about the benefits of acknowledging what a badass you are for getting this far and for giving a **** about something, but I will leave that for another post, should any fancy some brain science talk, strange analogies and metaphors for life, or simply if you'd like me to continue to talk you up. Because I will.
In the meantime, may this serve as a gentle reminder to acknowledge all the greatness you've harvested within and for yourself. Take a second (or 10min every day) to breathe deeply. Breathe in the acknowledgement that you care and can hardly contain yourself, because you're a G. A badass, legit, on fleek... You're positively superb. By pursuing learning, knowledge, reflection, growth and manifestation, we are not only expanding our awareness of ourselves and the immediate world around us, but we are expanding the universe's awareness of itself, and that is ******* incredible, and we really deserve to give ourselves more credit for it. 
I wish the very best of luck and good fortune to you all during this process/these times. And, no matter where you think/feel you are in your own progress of self, please know that you as you are right now is enough and is valid, and has no more or less worth than the you who you perhaps are hoping to embody at some future point. If that seems hard to believe, remember, our perceptions are our filters for reality. Therefore, as within so without. 

Phone just went beep - with the tone for my work/school email
Interview request by one of my primary POIs for Tuesday.

@beeblebrox, @prakashmurali, @.letmeinplz//
Looks like the message on the admissions portal was updated:
IMPORTANT MESSAGE
The application deadline for Fall 2017 has passed. You will not be able to access your application.
The application remains open for BIC Master of Science in Biotechnology Innovation and Computation until February 15th.
 
DO NOT INQUIRE about the status of your application.  Since you have uploaded your test scores and transcripts, the admission committees have all of the information necessary to review your application.  If any additional information is needed, we will contact you.
Your patience is greatly appreciated and we thank you for your cooperation.

@beeblebrox, @prakashmurali, @.letmeinplz//
Looks like the message on the admissions portal was updated:
IMPORTANT MESSAGE
The application deadline for Fall 2017 has passed. You will not be able to access your application.
The application remains open for BIC Master of Science in Biotechnology Innovation and Computation until February 15th.
 
DO NOT INQUIRE about the status of your application.  Since you have uploaded your test scores and transcripts, the admission committees have all of the information necessary to review your application.  If any additional information is needed, we will contact you.
Your patience is greatly appreciated and we thank you for your cooperation.