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Location: Canada
Schools: York University (Schulich) - Class of 2015
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Re: Tepper 2012 - Calling All Applicants
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31 Mar 2012, 09:03
I did the campus visit/interview on Monday and since there’re quite a few international applicants on here, I decided to spend a few minutes detailing my long weekend trip to Pittsburgh along with my take on the Tepper school of business. I hope it’ll shed some light on the city and the school especially for those that haven’t visited.
Saturday
The participants: 3 Torontonians who took Monday off work to spend a long weekend in Pittsburgh.
The drive: 6 hours + 1 hours of shopping at Outlet Mall for snowboarding goggles and dress shoes + 3 hours for food, washroom breaks, getting lost and border crossing.
The Anime Convention: As we pulled up to our hotel, we noticed throngs of people in costumes. Turns out Wynham Grand was hosting an anime convention and the lobby was packed with people dressed up as their favourite Japanese characters. Surrounded by such inspirations, I decided that I will be Monkey D. Luffy for my next Halloween. We dropped off stuff in our hotel room and quickly left the cosplay peeps behind to look for some food and drinks.
The food: Lots of sandwich and burger joints in Pittsburgh, of the ones that we tried, Primanti Bro was the best.
The drinks: German Wheat Beer!! best place for a drink imo was Hofbräuhaus, though my friends thought highly of Penn Brewery.
Sunday
The informal campus tour: After a late breakfast and a few drinks at Fat Head, my friends and I decided to check out Carnegie Mellon in the afternoon. The campus was quiet and peaceful. We meander about for 20 minutes before arriving at the Tepper School of Business. The entrance was locked so we sat around and waited for an opportunity to sneak in. We didn’t have to wait long before a student came by, swiped his card and held open the door for us (student friendliness +1). After infiltrating the building, we set out to explore. The classroom doors weren’t lock so we checked a few out, they were all similar in size and were all equipped with an answering panel and a display panel for each seat so that the prof can see the student’s answers (I would hate to be the one getting the wrong answers and get singled out, at least when it’s hand raising, one can hide amongst the mass).
Along the hall that leads to the classrooms, there are 8 portraits of Tepper’s Nobel Prize winners line up neatly in 2 rows (or 4 columns depending on how you look at it). From the care and the location of the portraits, the sense of pride that Tepper has in its past was obvious to me while the additional space available for more portraits is indicative of the school’s future ambitions.
After paying our respect to the Tepper legends, we set off in search of the admission office, the famous room 231. We made our way down the hall, past a room playing Bollywood music in what I presume to be preparation for the International Festival. We went up a stairs, and started walking in the direction of incrementing office numbers. The hallway ended when we reached 230. Confused and disoriented, we started looking around to see if we had missed a room. Sensing the chaotic nature outside of her office, a friendly prof asked us if we needed help. After hearing our plight, she nicely instructed us on how to get to the admission office, which happens to be on the other side of the building (prof friendliness +1, in office meeting with a group of student on a nice Sunday afternoon +1). After reaching room 231 and satisfied with knowing how to get there from the main entrance, we left Carnegie Mellon to check out the Strip District (not that kind of strip district).
Monday
The wait: I got to the admission office 15 minutes early. I was greeted by Carol, having previously talked to her to schedule my interview, it was nice to be able to put a face to a name. I grab my information package and sat down in the waiting room with the other applicants. Pretending to read my brochure, I began to scout my competition (I was educated at U of T after all). The applicant population was a diverse mix between domestic and international however it seems that some of the applicants missed the memo about wearing suits for an interview. I began to feel good about my chances.
The class visit: Each applicant was led from the waiting room to a class by a Tepper’s students. I was paired up with a first year student by the name of J****y (Jdawg). He took me to his Applications of Operations Research class. It’s the second class into the new mini semester and I struggled to keep up. Terms like shadow pricing was way over my head. Luckily Jdawg was there to explain foreign concepts which allowed me to understand the material that was being taught. I was there for the first of the two hour class before being ushered by Jdawg back upstairs to the info session.
The info session: was ran by Tepper’s Admission Director, J***s (BigJdawg), he brought in a first year student by the name of J***n (Jdawget) to give the applicants a student’s perspective. We started going around the table to introduce ourselves. As suspected, it was a pretty diverse mix with 4 domestic applicants and 4 internationals (a Chinese, an Indian, a Greek and a Canadian. Yes you had to know that. Now if you ever have a question that will make or break your admission status such as “Name the nationalities of the international applicants at Tepper School of Business in the Information Session on Monday March 26th, 2012 at 11:30 am EST”, you have the inside ‘track’ on the answer). BigJdawg managed to go about 4 slides in before the crowd got restless and started asking questions. BigJdawg reveled in the surge of impatience and curiosity and his enthusiasm spurred the room to pour on more questions. By the end of the hour, I not only knew the difference between a ‘track’ and a concentration but I also knew answers to trivia questions such as “which park did BigJdawg took his wife to for dates when they were younger” (if you have BigJdawg as your interviewer, this is your ice breaker. You’re welcome)
The lunch: Jdawg came by at the end of the info session and we made our way to the cafeteria. The tight knit community of Tepper is quite evident at this point as everyone seems to know each other. Jdawg was in a perpetual state of greeting as we walked through the building. There was a huge crowd outside by “the fence” protesting about something. I was hungry so I kept on walking to lunch without taking a closer look. The food was typical caf food, but the lunch was an awesome opportunity to gain firsthand account of the students experience at Tepper. I talked to a few of the applicants as well and they all have some pretty neat experiences.
The interview: I had my interview with K***y (Kdawget), it was very casual, more like a chat than an interview. Material covered included my goals and aspirations, my professional journey, my strengths and weaknesses, my hobbies, a situation that demonstrated my leadership skills, how my friends would describe me, and bidirectional fit (how I fit into Tepper and how Tepper fits around me, otherwise know as “what do you bring to the table?” and “why Tepper?”). We also talked about a variety of other topics including professional sports, Niagara Falls Outlet Mall, Primanti Bro, Hunger Game, Battle Royale, CN tower, running a marathon and about the identity of the Tepper mole who fed me ice breaker info about my interviewer. In total, the interview took about 45 minutes.
The real campus tour: I didn’t feel like walking about the campus again for the second day in a row so I opted out.
The casino: Smokey and small. Coming from Toronto where indoor smoking was banned years ago, it was a bit strange to walk into a Casino and see people puffing up left and right. We won some money and used it to buy food, beer and gas for the ride home.
The duty free shop: Bought our legally allotted amount of alcohol like all good Canadians do before crossing the border.
The thoughts and recommendations: The city of Pittsburgh itself is nice and friendly but is a bit lacking in multiculturalism. If you’re like me and are used to eating dim sum for breakfast, sushi for lunch and butter chicken with naans for dinner then you’ll find the selections there rather sparse, but if you’re the sandwich and beer kinda person then you’re in luck. Living cost is low, between free subway (yes, we parked our car and went in for a ride) and cheap food and drinks (about ½ the price of Toronto) I expect most people to be well under the estimated cost quoted by the administration.
Do a campus visit, important factors such as a tight knit community and collegial classmates are not apparent on paper and you really need to be there to understand what all the fuss is about. If you do decides on doing a campus interview, schedule it in the afternoon so that you have a chance to attend class, sit in the info session and talk to the students during lunch. This will not only get you acclimated into the school environment but also give you materials to talk to your interviewer about.
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