Johnson vs Tepper vs Ross (Impact Investing / Consulting)

Johnny! Appreciate your honest feedback. I also read about your experience in Johnson in another post. Would like to learn from you more about Johnson if you are eager to share (check inbox). ;p

Congratulations on your admits.
Tepper‘s main industry and placement is consulting and tech.

Johnson’s main focus is finance and consulting.

Many people assume that Tepper would have a very strong connection with tech because of it’s highly ranked computer signs programs, but it’s not the case in reality. The tech heavy engineering and development roles that graduates from Carnegie Mellon go into, don’t overlap in general with p.m. roles that much, moreover, if someone graduated from computer science at Carnegie Mellon, they would probably be getting their MBA at Stanford. Most of the time they do not because they make more money out of undergrad than business school graduates. Just the reality of today’s world. You can definitely connect with those of them working at Facebook and Google and Tesla but they wouldn’t have anything helpful to tell you about the recruiting process since their steps and ladder is very different from the business side of things.

On the other hand, Johnson is very strong in finance and particularly New York. There’s a connection between those two since New York is so finance heavy or has been until the whole pandemic thing. Now it’s more decentralized but likely coming back to normal in the next year or two and definitely by time you graduate. One of the reasons Johnson is ranking high is their average salary, it’s usually meaningfully higher than many of the other schools because of such a heavy placement into New York City. This is more of a quirky fact rather than anything you should be reading into it. You can ignore this. 😂

The two programs are pretty similar in the sense of their student bodies in people they attract and sane people apply to both since they’re ranked about the same. If you are considering finance, I feel Johnson would be a great choice. This is not really VC in Palo Alto type of finance but you’re more likely to find somebody at Blackstone or Goldman from Johnson rather than Tepper, The more likely would be someone from HBS or Wharton or Columbia.

For Johnson, there are regular trips to New York for recruiting and a lot of people will drive for a couple days of recruiting trips multiple times per year. So obviously you will be living in a college town which I can’t really tell you much about since I never lived in one. I did like Pittsburgh when I visited but that was years ago and it’s nothing like it used to be when I was there so my advice would be helpful either.

I feel you could go either way.
Ross would definitely be a step up to the next tier in this year is cracked top 10 in US news ranking so you have the top 10 bragging rights at least for another nine months. Ross is also primarily consulting school with tech as a second placement industry. Ross has a much broader and more national name however. Cornell has a national name but not Johnson. 🤷‍♂️

I feel you could achieve and they could fail at your goals at either program. 😂
I’m not sure that your concerns about being in the college town and trying to stay in New York as much as possible are valid. You can definitely go to New York for the winter break and the summer internship but you will be so overworked and half so little time during your first year freaked out about recruiting and missing out that you won’t have much time to worry about anything else. Second year once you have a internship and the job lined up, probably but that’s not a long time and it’s not like he would be so much better off in Pittsburgh. In terms of West Coast presence, both schools lack at that and not necessarily strong so I’m not sure that that’s really a downside exclusive to just Johnson. My data is probably dated a year or two but I remember both Tepper and Johnson placing heavily on the East Coast with Debora being a bit more mid Atlantic, whatever that means 😇

I don’t think I would have a lot of concerns going to Johnson personally.

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