Pittsburgh is a city of confluence, intersected by three rivers—the Ohio, Alleghany, and Monongahela. As the city’s hills rise away from these three mighty bodies of water, the various streams of Pittsburgh life merge—the artistic culture of Pittsburgh with its industrial past and its technological future. One of the places that best exemplifies the mixture that is Pittsburgh is Carnegie Mellon University.
Sitting along the coast of the Monongahela, Carnegie Mellon is well known as one of the best technical schools in the U.S., producing generations of engineers and computer scientists. It also has one of the top drama schools, producing talents such as Zachary Quinto and Ted Danson. If this weren’t enough, Carnegie Mellon also hosts one of the country’s top MBA programs in its Tepper School of Business.
The school’s quantitative focus becomes clear when looking at the Class of 2020. Before getting to those statistics, let’s start with an overall view of the 236 people who make up the class. Thirty-four percent of students are internationals, coming from 32 different countries. Twenty-eight percent are female, and 27 percent are from U.S. minority groups.
Of the Class of 2020, 39 percent completed an engineering major as an undergraduate. The next largest major among the incoming class is business, with 27 percent. Twelve percent had studied economics, followed by humanities and social sciences at 10 percent, and mathematics and physical science at six percent.
In addition to their undergraduate education, the professional background of the students also gives credence to Tepper’s reputation as a quantitative hub. The Class of 2020 has a considerable amount of professional experience, averaging 5.6 years. In terms of the fields they come from, 22 percent of the latest class come from the financial services field. The next largest field is technology and new media, making up 19 percent of the students. The next three largest fields are consulting and manufacturing at 10 percent each, followed by government at eight percent.
Although many Tepper students come from technical backgrounds, it is important to remember that they are at Carnegie Mellon, a school that considers drama to be as important as robotics; they are not just simple number crunchers. They come from interesting, diverse backgrounds that might be glossed over if seen as quants.
The following five profiles will give insights into the interesting people who have decided to spend a couple of years in the hills of Western Pennsylvania.
