Rachel Duncan

Punxsutawney Phil LIES!!

Oh yeah, Mr. Groundhog?  An early spring???  Harumph.  Night classes have been cancelled for two days now thanks to your little early spring.  I can't even find my car on the street even if I wanted to go to class because it is underneath a bunch of snow somewhere.  Which reminds me that I am selling my car for my "real-world negotiation" for Interpersonal Negotiations class (by the way, my favorite class this mini), so if any of you out there know someone in Pittsburgh who wants to buy a 1999 Ford Contour with only 77,000 miles in excellent condition and with immaculate maintenance records, please tell them to contact me.  Actually, they don't even need to buy it - I just need someone to show up and haggle with me over the price so I will have something to write about in this paper.  Here are some pictures - see, isn't it a lovely vehicle?  A great starter car for new drivers in the family - you know, safe with a good-sized trunk for moving into a college dorm, but red in color which makes it fun, right?

But I shouldn't complain about the cold because I actually came to Pittsburgh twice to visit Tepper, both times in February, and I STILL decided to come here - a decision which had more to do with character, and a lot more to do with community (see my Nov. 16th post - "The Paris of Pennsylvania") than with the weather.  I remember visiting another business school that shall remain unnamed, but that has a much larger student population and an incredible endowment.  Their campus was certainly impressive, but the image that stayed in the front of my mind after the visit was an enormous banner hanging in their main hallway that said - "Generate.  Collaborate.  Integrate."  Now, you and I can have a conversation about whether the cheesiness level on a banner like that is acceptable for an institution of higher learning, and I think Tepperites would end up all over the place if you took a poll of who thought that was outrageously offputting versus a perfect summary of what business school should be.  But that's all beside the point - or at least, beside MY point.  Which is that I couldn't remember a single individual from my day there.  No matter whether that banner was cheesy or not, I knew I wasn't going to give up an income for two years and pay the big bucks for a banner.  I was going to do it for the people and for the place.

In stark contrast to the visit, when I came to Tepper, I met people that I kept in touch with afterwards.  Real people with whom I might not agree on everything, but who I knew weren't going to school as part of a plan to elbow their way to the top of the food chain or prove to the world that they were smarter than everyone else.  And when I came back  home after the visit, I went to the school's website and saw pictures of actual students I had met there.  That's what got me back there for a second visit and, finally, to enroll in the program.  Moral of the story:  VISIT THE SCHOOLS YOU APPLY TO!

Okay on to the next agenda item - did anybody see Chris Brown's performance at the Grammy's?  That man can dance - I heart him...

Speaking of hearting people, my now-husband and long-time steady Jon and I finally took the great leap into matrimony on December 23rd.  It was fabulous, if I do say so myself.  We tied the knot at the Venetian in Las Vegas, cheered on by 125 of our closest family and friends, including a couple of the latest additions to my Friends-of-Rachel club from right here at Tepper.  I know you're just dying for visuals, so here you go ...

Now THAT's teamwork!!

What Makes Tepper Tepper

One of the things I noticed when I was a first-year student beginning to talk to second-year students was that there were certain employers hiring a lot of Tepper students while some hired very few or didn’t come on campus at all. Having been on the other side of the recruiting table in my job before school, I knew as well as anybody that this might have a lot to do with internal politics and whether Tepper happened to be the alma mater of anybody with particular influence in recruiting at an organization.

I wondered if there was more to it, though, and started to raise my hand here and there at company presentations and ask the question, “Why do you choose to recruit at Tepper?” or “Why do you choose to recruit at the six schools you have listed there?” One of the things that drew me to my summer employer, Deutsche Bank, was the answer they gave to that question; and for them, it boiled down to intellectual capital.

They view themselves as an organization that prides itself on intellectual capital in that they invest time and resources into staying at the forefront of financial engineering, and Tepper is a great fit for them because we have the same organizational focus on intellectual capital. We’re not just a screening mechanism that provides trainable individuals with high leadership potential to the MBA recruiting system – we actually equip all of our students with relevant and marketable skills that they can use from day one at their summer internships or full-time positions.

As a prospective student, this focus on intellectual capital jived well with what I was looking for in a business school and made a lot of sense to me in terms of what I was seeing out there in the rankings. While rankings deserve a much lengthier treatment in terms of where they come from and how useful, scientific, or relevant they are, I did notice that Tepper performed exceptionally well in the Wall Street Journal rankings, which are the only ones I know of that are based entirely on recruiter measurements of success as opposed to donations, faculty perceptions from other schools, prospective students, etc. I think as the world becomes increasingly complex and quantitative, you’ll see more schools modeling themselves after Tepper in terms of preparing their students to be successful in that world.

To-Do List of Life Getting Shorter

What's up, anonymous internet readership?  As you can tell by the fact that I'm blogging, I'm procrastinating.  Credit Derivatives homework number 5 - I plan to start you closer to your deadline than I have ever started any homework in my life.  Well, except for maybe Credit Derivatives homework number 2, but I had to turn that one in half-done, and I simply can't afford to commit such an act of rebellion twice.  Shocking, I know.

So speaking of productivity, I'm making some headway on my giant "to-do list of life" these days.  I alluded mysteriously in my last post to acceptance of a job offer, and I know you all have been quivering with anticipation since that day and have probably started on-line gambling communities that revolve around your guesses as to which lucky company will soon welcome me on to their payroll.  Well, you shall wait no longer - that company is Constellation Energy in Baltimore.

I will be starting out with a few other folks, including one other Tepperite, in an MBA rotational program in their corporate finance division.  Let me point out to prospective MSCF students out there who are confused right now that yes, it is incredibly rare, for an MSCF student to go corporate in this way.  But, I am an MBA student as well, and I guess I figured out over the summer that I am more interested in the business strategy side of things than I am in the middle-of-the-action trading floor side of things.  Constellation has a big trading operation, so I also propose to you that my quantitative finance training will not go to waste as they have complicated risk management issues that will afford opportunities to use at least the intuition I've gained from MSCF (hopefully not the C++ skills, to be quite honest - that would probably end terribly for both of us:)

In 13 days, I will also be checking another big box on my life to-do list as fiance and long-time steady Jonathan and I finally tie the proverbial knot.  In Vegas.  Yee haw!  Well, I guess that's all for now.  Time to go read some accounting case studies - credit homework will just have to wait until tomorrow...

Thanksgiving Hangover

I have just returned from a glorious four-day vacation from schoolwork, and the month that lies ahead is starting to look a lot like what an early-morning family brunch would seem like after an all-night bender - I'm disoriented, I can't think straight, I don't want to get out of bed because I know that as soon as I do I'll get a headache, and going through the motions as if normal seems an impossible goal.  Speaking of all-night benders, I watched Walk the Line last night - I tell you there's nothing like having a glass of wine while you watch a movie about an alcoholic.  But that's beside the point - anyways, the movie was great.  I give it an A, possibly A-plus, but I suppose you already knew that.

Let's see, this post is not going to be the longest one I've ever written, and that's mostly because I can't wait for the coming month to be over, and I don't want to scare anyone away from school.  But, please understand that I'm getting married in three and a half weeks, so school is this huge distraction right now from much more important decisions I have to make - like what color ribbon should go on my flower girl's basket and whether to go with traditional floral centerpieces or ones composed of chocolates that guests can take home (seems like a no-brainer to me, but if you have any useful advice, leave me a comment).

I do have some exciting career news to share with you, but I'm going to wait until my next post because I haven't officially accepted the offer.  So check back in a few weeks for the update...

The Paris of Pennsylvania

Let's talk about Pittsburgh, what I like to call "The Paris of Pennsylvania."  Sure the name makes it sound awful, and maybe you've heard of the "smoky city," but the fact of the matter is Pittsburgh has the infrastructure of one of the wealthiest, most important cities in the country, but with only 300,000 in the city proper, and 1 million greater.  This means there is all the fine dining, symphony, ballet, football, hockey, baseball, museums, art, etc. of a big city, but incredibly low hassle to take advantage of it.  I came to visit the city twice during my long, drawn-out graduate school decisionmaking process. Both times were in February, and I *still* got sold on Pittsburgh.

So, Pittsburgh is nice and all, but unfortunately I spend a lot of my time at school and don't get out as much as I'd like to.  I knew this would happen, and that's why I visited the campus of every school I applied to.  I wanted to make sure the people wouldn't drive me crazy.  I wanted to make sure I was joining a community where I fit in and not just signing up for a school, where my academic experience would be completely disconnected from my life.  I've definitely found the connection I was looking for at Tepper.  People are down-to-earth, and it's a small school, so I can bring my fiance (and long-time steady) Jonathan to a school function and leave him alone for hours because people actually know him and want to talk to him - it's great!

Another thing I was looking for in a school was a business school that was a part of a university community and not just off by itself and isolated from the rest of the world.  Yes, I do spend most of my time at school in the Tepper building, but I love walking across the campus and checking out what's going on at the other amazing places within Carnegie Mellon - robotics, theater, design - all these programs are world-class here and making incredible contributions to the world all the time.  And in the MSCF program (I am a dual-degree student), some of CMU's best faculty from the Heinz school and CMU's Math and Statistics department come to Tepper to teach as part of the program.  It's hard to find a university community that is that open to cross-departmental collaboration.