The Curious Case of Carnegie Mellon Tepper (Button)

Who would do that?

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?

Hey Tarmac - glad to hear you had a great experience at Tepper! I just came back from their Welcome Weekend several days ago, and hopefully, can shed some light on your questions.

I definitely agree with you on your assessment of the students, I found the experience last weekend to be extremely energetic, well-organized, and community focused. Around 150 students volunteered to help out with the weekend, and many others participated in the International Festival they held on Saturday as well. One thing that really stood out to me - in addition to being very impressive intellectually, everyone there seems to get along really well together, and enjoys the tight knit community there.

Regarding the salary statistics from the finance perspective, their placement numbers (as of last week) look similar to many other top schools. If I recall correctly (and I might be a percent or two off), I think 68% had full-time offers and 61% had internship offers. The base salary of the full-time offers was about the same as last year actually, which was surprising to me, especially in this environment.

The other thing I would look at, their website has salary statistics and, at least last year, they actually placed pretty well in functions and industries other than finance. Their marketing base, mean and median, was actually higher than their finance base salary, and the spread across industries showed pretty strong diversity away from financial services as well, especially in consulting and technology.

All that being said, Georgetown is a great school too, and living in D.C. for two years would definitely make for an exciting time. Either way, hope that helps, and good luck with your decision!

Some other schools are in much worse places....e.g. Ithaca and Hanover. Then again, Pittsburgh is the love child of New Haven & Detroit

these are two great schools that i am hoping to put as my "targets". how do you think the two compare as far as consulting opportunities? and i guess to be specific lets say big 3 opportunities.