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| Carnegie Mellon University Graduate School of Industrial Administration |
OVERALL 1998 RANK: 14 BW corporate rank: 15 BW graduate rank: 5 BW 1996 rank: 17 |
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1999 Profile Update School Profile School Statistics Graduates' Comments: The elective courses are outstanding, taught by professors who have the rare ability to explain cutting-edge management concepts in a way that is intuitive and interesting to MBA students. The Management Game is a sort of crash course to "the real world." It was a very rigorous experience, where we learned how to apply class concepts and analytical tools, as well as the art of teamwork and leadership. However, there is more to the MBA experience than the education itself. The administration suffers from inertia, which is ironic considering our renowned strength in technology. Improvements are being made, but not fast enough for this day and age. --Marketing Analyst Management Game is a computer simulation of an industry and is a required course. Each second-year student is drafted to a team and "runs" a company for about two months. The experience with board meetings (with outside boards), cooperating with teammates in other functions (i.e. finance, marketing, product development), and being held responsible for the bottom line of a company was invaluable. --Controller As a finance major, I enjoyed taking courses in the Computational Finance Dept., which is unique to our school. The administration just changed (Dean and Assistant Dean) and I believe the school is on the right track now. The school learned from its mistake of not emphasizing communication skills and is now pushing courses in this area. --Finance The administration is very responsive to the needs and requests of the students regarding elective courses. Deputy Dean Sowell solicits elective requests through the club presidents and normally responds by offering the elective courses that the students want. The operations/production management program at GSIA is extremely strong. The operations faculty skillfully combines both academic analysis and real-world situations (as a result of their experience as operations consultants). --No job track given My experience, both as a competitor and organizer of the case competitions and other events improved my analysis/presentation skills as well as my organizational skills. The student-run clubs are very popular and active. Clubs are available for nearly every concentration or social interest (such as the Wine Club). The administration distributes and receives important feedback through the clubs as well as through open-school meetings. The opportunity that I had as a leader of a club greatly improved my managerial skills over the last two years. --No job track given The Career Opportunity Center is excellent. For students interested in operations/production management, for consulting or industry, there are several reputable companies that recruit at GSIA. The COC is very efficient in how they coordinate the presentations and interviews of the many companies given the limited time and space available at GSIA. Most students, like myself, need not perform an outside internship or career search due to the depth and breadth of companies that the GSIA COC attracts. --Sr. Demand Planner There were some outstanding professors, but also some not very good ones. I also wanted more electives in current topics. --Consulting I found the Information Technology classes to be a bit overrated (We do have access to the latest technology to facilitate learning, but having access to technology vs. learning how to manage an IT project are two different things. Too bad that surveys are ignoring this fact.) At the same time, both finance and marketing classes have been consistently outstanding, with excellent faculties assisted by high-tech analytical tools that really put us on a level field with, if not ahead of any top schools. This fact becomes quite evident at inter-business-school Finance and Marketing competitions. Despite the fact that many students become interested in pursuing a Finance/Marketing career after the two-year education, far fewer companies looking for Finance or Marketing talents recruit at our school than it deserves. --Consulting Carnegie Mellon's MSIA program vastly exceeded my expectations of a good business program. I came to CMU looking for a program that would give me a good share of business skills, as well as quantitative tools and a good technology background. I found all of that and more. The Entrepreneurship program is outstanding. The IT courses are excellent too, although there is still room for improvement in the cohesiveness and interweaving of their curricula. Overall, I am more than happy about my choice. --Marketing As a former participant of the Graduate Women in Business Network, I can speak for the school's support of our organization. Our team wanted to establish an outreach program for all admitted women. The goal was to provide personal contact with women in the program so that the admitted student could ask candid questions about the program and student life. Admissions was very supportive in helping us achieve this objective. --Consulting My Carnegie Mellon MBA was tops in the quality and diversity of my classmates - I now count among my best friends an Israeli paratrooper, an Swiss-American ex-chef, a Venezuelan currency trader and an Indian badminton champion! --Consulting Dean Dunn (the new GSIA dean), the administration, and the faculty were willing to do everything in their power to help the students and improve the curriculum. As a result, GSIA has integrated the course subjects so that topics in one class are also used in other classes. Professors have ensured that course material has direct relevance on our future careers. Cutting-edge technology -- as it relates to business -- is both used in class and taught. We had several classes that used videoconferencing merged with computer presentations. We also had professors who were inventing uses of the Internet and teaching us how to use it in business applications. --Consulting The things I enjoyed most were working with my colleagues who are serious, smart, and fun to be with. Before I entered the program, I was well informed of the prevalence of engineering type, heavy duty techies in the program. However, determined that the program offers the skills I wanted, I decided to take my chances. The staff was always there when you need administrative assistance, the course program was laid out early and professors were always there if you wanted to jump to an early headstart, the director of the MBA program was always one step ahead in getting students feedback and comments on issues, if any. --No job track given Most importantly, my peers impressed me. They are people who had a very "techie" background, yet these same people are sincere, reliable, and comfortable to spend a lot of project time with. The size of the program was just perfect. By the end of two years, you know everyone by name, and have worked with half of the class once or twice. The Career Opportunity Center was just outstanding! I landed my first internship offer within 2 weeks and a half after the start of the recruiting season and I received a total of 5 offers for my internship research. --Consulting Carnegie Mellon's Graduate School of Industrial administration suffers in the public's eye from its single-minded devotion to its founding principle -- to establish and promote a scientific approach to the art of management. Underlying this approach is the belief that business administration relies on provable and testable hypotheses. Such a doctrine is the natural offshoot of a university whose very identity is derived from an emphasis on research and development. The validity of this approach can be seen in the now universally taught theories of modern finance and operations. Miller and Modigliani conceived their beliefs while immersed in the cross-disciplinary and creative environment of Carnegie Mellon. --No job track given In remaining loyal to its origins -- by sticking to its core competency -- GSIA teaches a quantitative and analytical approach to management. The necessity of this approach is not appreciated by many, and GSIA does little self-promotion to convince others of the validity of its approach. --No job track given GSIA provides its students with an excellent GENERAL MANAGEMENT education. The eight-week mini-semesters allow for a broad sampling of disciplines and the time compression and workload develop and hone the time management and teamwork skills in such demand today. While our training has been criticized for stressing the quantitative over the qualitative, I maintain that this is only apparent by the distinct discomfort that the GSIA graduate feels in the absence of hard data to support or disprove a decision. I doubt seriously if valid heuristics for "gut" decision-making can be absorbed in an academic experience of two short years. In a world that is increasingly becoming overrun with data, what the GSIA graduate excels at is the gleaning of usable information. --No job track given The natural reluctance of both CMU and GSIA to promote themselves and their obsession to hypothesize, test, and retest all ideas either from within or without is not well-suited to the decade of 5-second attention spans and sound bites. It takes a special type of person to serve both the gods of the media and the gods of scientific inquiry -- the revolving door to the GSIA dean's office for much of the nineties is evidence of this. And in the absence of assertive and aggressive leadership, the school has suffered in the eyes of the customer as various factions pursued their own agendas. Yet, fundamentally, what GSIA set out to do is still intact and appropriate today as ever: to teach management as a science and as an art. Those who see only the former or the latter and not the both are missing the forest for the trees. --Consulting My experience at GSIA (Carnegie Mellon) was everything I hoped it would be. Although the school has a quantitative reputation which it deserves, I also found avenues to develop my public speaking and interpersonal skills. The faculty at GSIA are the strong point of the institution. I am a finance and operations major, and found the professors in both, departments to be knowledgeable, helpful, and most of all, accessible. --Finance The small class size is an added benefit for two reasons. First, the student to professor ratio is low allowing better classroom discussions and more personalized lectures. Second, it allowed me to really get to know each of my fellow colleagues and understand their perspective, which is invaluable given our diverse (30% international students) student body. All of the professors are outstanding. Each was very approachable and sincere in their concern of having everyone understand the material. The professors made every effort to assist students after class hours and were very open to changes in the structure of the class. --No job track given The hidden gem at Carnegie Mellon is the outstanding administration staff. Their efforts in ensuring a smooth transition from the working environment to that of the classroom are simply second to none. All of my concerns were addressed immediately. One administrator worked with me until 10 p.m. in assisting me resolve a difficult issue. My MBA experience was enhanced greatly because of their dedication. --Finance Back to Top 1999 Profile Update School Profile School Statistics |
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