Carnegie Mellon University

I was a business major here. You will be surrounded by some very intelligent people...both in a good way and a bad way. One thing I had to do to survive in this environment was to develop an immunity against being surrounded by rich, snobby kids (if you're one of them, by all means please go to this school--a perfect fit!). This school is prominently known for its research rather than eduction. Professors may be smart, whether they are good professors are a very different question.

In terms of the workload, I hear that it is great prep for the real world from many friends who have graduated. But what you will experience very often is that teachers will assume that everyone is so smart, and would just throw hard material at you and assume that you will understand everything---they forget to teach the material.

The biggest drawback is the administration. They are very poor in terms of offering classes that business majors needed to take(for example, a good majority of us are finance majors and one year they never offered corporate finance class). They make minimal effort in checking in on its students. As a senior, I see many people without jobs and the school not really supporting them in the job search process. To be liked by the administration, "sucking up" is required in my opinion. Unfortunately, I feel numbers back up my argument as student satisfaction rates are low and rankings are dropping. My impression was that Tepper in general cared less about the undergrads, and wanted to only focus on developing the MBA programs here.

Overall, you will be surrounded by many eccentric (drama majors screaming, singing, and prancing down the streets and hallways) and "geeks" (by all means I do not use this as a negative term), but you get used to it after a while. It is a racially diverse community, which is a very big plus, but with some negatives. I felt that the community was very clustered, which made the school lack a sense of unity.I feel that the overall undertone is negative, but I did try by all means to project an accurate reflection of my (and a number of people's) experience.

4th Year Male -- Class 2008

Useful Schoolwork: A-, Social Life: D-

Here is not good. Even no professor is avaiable for some core courses. Some people from company come here to teach, however, they know nothing about teaching.

1st Year Female -- Class 2007