Carnegie Mellon: Tepper

The Tepper School of Business, originally known as the Graduate School of Industrial Administration when it was founded in 1949, forms part of Carnegie Mellon University, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

It’s name changed after a $55 million donation in 2003 from the founder of hedge fund Appaloosa Management David Tepper, which was later followed by $67 million more in 2013.

The school offers degrees at all levels, with a focus on management science. The MBA, formerly known as an MSIA, is a full-time, two-year programme which normally includes an internship in the summer between the years. Those who waive the summer internship may complete the course in 16 months. The flex-time programme allows working professionals to complete the MBA through evening classes.

The school uses a mini-semester system, in which there are four semesters per academic year, each half the length of a normal American semester. This system, invented by Tepper, allows students to access a broader variety of subjects, as they take more than 32 different different courses.

Tepper students partner with students, professors and researchers in other schools and centres, such as engineering, robotics, biotechnology and life sciences, product design and computer science.

Several Nobel Prize-winning economists have been affiliated with the school, such as Robert Lucas, who was awarded the prize for his work applying the theory of rational expectations and its challenge to Keynesian orthodoxy, and Franco Modigliani for his life-cycle hypothesis about the level of saving in the economy.