Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) MBA Program

Tepper School of Business

Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business has academic credentials that few other schools can match. The school has produced six Nobel laureates, which puts Tepper in league with the University of Chicago. Tepper is highly analytical, as quantitative rigor is integrated throughout the entire curriculum. The school’s former name—Carnegie Mellon Graduate School of Industrial Administration—invokes images of a program turning out leaders for the manufacturing sector. But this sells the school short, as the school is also well known in finance circles, where Tepper grads’ quant skills are also highly prized.

Although many schools have a minimum math requirement for applicants, Carnegie Mellon expects its applicants to have at least completed one college-level calculus course along with another high-level course in calculus, statistics, or linear algebra. Don’t worry, you can take a course part-time before enrolling, but realize that analytical skills are something that will have to come through in your application no matter what discipline you want to pursue. Also, more than half of each full-time class holds an undergraduate degree in a technical major. Make sure that you’re capable of keeping up with applicants that have computer science and engineering backgrounds (if you don’t have one yourself). These capability will mostly be represented in your GMAT score, your undergraduate studies, and your previous work experience.

The school’s emphasis on analytical abilities is apparent in its core curriculum. Required courses in Probability, Statistics, and Operations Management have the usual dose of quantitative lessons. But classes such as Financial Accounting and Managerial Economics also have a stronger analytical bent then you might find at other top schools. One unique feature of the program is its mini-semester system. Students have four mini-semesters in each of their two years at Tepper, instead of the normal two-semester system. Starting in the spring semester of their first year, students can begin taking electives, including ones in Carnegie Mellon’s other schools, which provide a great opportunity to tap into the university’s other top-ranked departments.

Tepper students can earn a General Management MBA, or specialize in one of seven other MBA Tracks including Biotechnology, Wealth and Asset Management, Global Enterprise Management, and Entrepreneurship in Organizations. Many of the tracks go beyond a typical course list to offer capstone projects and internship opportunities, making them ideal for students who know what they want out of business school and want to focus their MBA education on a specific career.

Carnegie Mellon also touts its practical, hands-on approach to learning, exemplified by its Management Game, first introduced in 1958. The game has evolved into a highly involved computer simulation that students tackle in their second year. Student teams each run their own simulated business, making decisions affecting operations, finance, marketing, and labor relations. Tepper students don’t just compete against each other, but against students at other top business schools around the world. Adding a level of realism to the game is the fact that each team is assigned a real-life board of directors, made up of local business leaders. Teams also practice contract negotiations with local labor leaders and consult with third-year law students at the University of Pittsburgh.

Close to half of Tepper graduates pursued careers in finance, with a third of those going into corporate finance, followed by investment banking and trading. Technology and Healthcare are also popular choices for grads, so think about your fit with the school if you are interested in these fields. Not surprisingly, Carnegie Mellon alumni are active entrepreneurs, and the school looks for entrepreneurship traits in its applicants. If you have entrepreneurial aspirations, be sure to discuss them in your essays and during your interview as part of the innovation dimension, discussed in Chapter 2.

Community is a big part of the Tepper experience. Tepper has always been one of the smallest of the top business schools, but over the past few years the school has made a conscious effort to slim down even more. While the class that entered in 2002 had about 240 students, the class that entered in 2006 had just 137 students. The benefits of the downsize are an even closer-knit community and a student-to-faculty ratio of just 5:1. As you would expect in such a small community, students get to know each other very well, and word quickly gets around about who is or isn’t a team player. Be sure to emphasize the teamwork dimension in your application, and also make clear to the admissions committee that you appreciate the value of such an intimate learning environment.

• Sloan (MIT)
• Purdue (Krannert)
• University of Chicago
• University of Rochester (Simon)

1. What are your short-term and long-term goals? How will a Tepper MBA help you to achieve these goals? (Please include any information regarding what steps you have taken to learn more about Tepper.)


2. Describe an instance in which you made an impact as part of a team or as an individual. How did this experience help shape you as a team member or leader and how will it enable you to contribute to the diverse Tepper Community?


3. Please answer two of the following three questions or statements. Please clearly specify which questions you are answering. Your two answers should equal a total of two pages or less.
   
   
   1. Describe an obstacle you have faced in your professional or academic life. How did you overcome this obstacle and how did it foster your development?
   2. Describe a time in which your ethics were challenged. How did you deal with the situation and what did you learn from it?
   3. One thing people would be surprised to know about me is . . .
4. (Optional) Is there anything else that you think we should know as we evaluate your application?

This and dozens of other top business schools are covered in detail in Your MBA Game Plan, the definitive guide on MBA admissions, now in its second edition.