Re: The Curious Case of Carnegie Mellon Tepper (Button)
[#permalink]
30 Apr 2009, 21:36
Here are some impressions I had, and for contrast, compared to Georgetown, which I also visited.
I visited CMU and interviewed there and was pretty impressed. I met about 10 different students in various tour/meet/greet settings, and sat in on a class with about 30 more students.
As far as the my impressions of the students, I honestly feel they are elite or perhaps near-elite in terms of personality or brain-power. Our tour guide 1st yr was a Columbia undergrad. Everyone just seemed bright, capable, socially skilled, modest but still confident, in other words, very little "insecure d-bag" factor. To contrast, you really don't see many candidates from super-elite undergrad schools at Georgetown. And gtown has just a touch more dbag factor.
Academically, I have moderate but real concerns I would have to slave over the coursework I might encounter at CMU, I would probably get my *ss handed to me in the quant classes. In comparison, I'm not particularly worried about Gtown classes, I feel like I would be at or near the top of most of my classes there. Of course no way to be sure, just impressions. I am sure that CMU is academically rigorous and could slap me around easily.
Now, what holds CMU back from the next level? I think their location just kills them. Not a single person liked Pittsburgh, out of all the students I met. Also, their strength, quant, also holds them back. Their unique academic personality combined with their small school size limits them a bit in that "universal appeal" factor.
Personally, I am not sure which school I would go to if I get into CMU, I will find out monday. I'm a big location guy, the appeal of living in DC for 2 years is so much higher than Pittsburgh.
Also, my main concern is this: if I have almost no interest in finance/quant/ibanking/analyst/operations as a career, doesn't that level out the overall strength of CMU vs gtown? I am not 100% sure what I want to pursue but I am definitely not leaning towards finance.
One last thing, as far as I can tell their extremely impressive salary figures get a big boost from the finance sector, which I presume will take a huge hit this year. Wouldn't their avg salary drop precipitously?