MBA applicants can get carried away with rankings. In this series, we profile amazing programs at business schools that are typically ranked outside the top 15.
Students aspiring to sharpen their analytic and quantitative skills are well served at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business. Boasting a faculty that includes eight Nobel Prize winners, Tepper has pioneered “management science,” a supplement to traditional case studies that draws on more scientific—rather than historical—strategies to complex business decision making. Management science depends on tools such as computer modeling, organizational behavior and economic theory. In addition to this overall “quant” emphasis in its curriculum, Tepper offers a unique joint MBA/MS degree in computational finance for students who are deeply driven by quantitative analysis. According to its Web site, the five-semester-long Master of Computational Finance program curriculum is “specifically designed for individuals with strong quantitative backgrounds seeking leadership positions within the financial services industry.” Students are immersed in highly focused computational analysis, examining different theories of finance, stochastic calculus modeling and statistical methodologies, in addition to the managerial skills they learn in the MBA program’s marketing, strategy, communications and operations courses. While schools such as Wharton, Chicago Booth and Columbia may garner a higher rank for careers in finance, few other programs offer such uniquely intensive academic resources for a specialization in quantitative analysis.