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.
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