Investing in Her Future

Abigail “Abby” Stevenson’s (TPR 2020) describes her Carnegie Mellon undergraduate years as “everything I wanted my college experience to be.”

Her experience includes the exceptional education she craved. A business administration major in the Tepper School of Business, Abby is active in two organizations within the school’s Finance Group ― the Investment Banking Academy and the Tartan Student Fund, where she is a portfolio manager. In summer 2018, she interned as an investment banker for Bank of America in New York City.

Abby is the recipient of the Arthur and Meryl Gabriel ACS Legacy Scholarship II, which was a big factor in convincing her to enroll at Carnegie Mellon, her first-choice school. She states: “CMU is the perfect place for me.”

Service is a big part of Abby’s CMU experience. As a member of Alpha Kappa Psi, CMU’s co-ed business fraternity, she served as service chair, organizing an expanded Service Day of outreach to groups in the Pittsburgh region. The fraternity also raised $400 for a donation to the Tree of Life Synagogue while continuing their yearlong fundraising for a $1,500 college scholarship that will be awarded to a Pittsburgh high school senior.

“Service chair was one of the most time-consuming positions I’ve held here, but one of the most rewarding,” she says.

CMU has also given Abby the opportunity to resume her passion of dancing.

“I danced from three years old until my first year of high school, when I quit because it took too much time away from academics,” she explains. “Coming to CMU, I didn’t know what the possibilities were. As a dancer and choreographer with Dancers’ Symposium, I’ve made art and presented it on stage for my parents and friends. And this year, I joined the Korean Pop Dance Club, which has been truly challenging.”

Growing up a few miles from Penn State University’s main campus, with her mother employed there and two alumnae sisters, PSU may have seemed the logical choice, but, Abby says, “CMU felt so right.”

“When I visited Carnegie Mellon, I met a lot of very passionate people who were very driven, and they celebrated themselves and their friends.”

Abby is certain that, without her ACS Legacy Scholarship, she would not be a Carnegie Mellon student. That scholarship put her CMU education within reach.

“It makes a difference. For students like me who don’t qualify for a needs-based scholarship, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to pay for college. The ACS Legacy Scholarship is a saving grace.” Abigail Stevenson

She is sure she would not be as happy and self-assured as she is if she weren’t at Carnegie Mellon.

“I knew from the start CMU was where I would feel natural being myself, so I would grow personally, professionally and academically,” Abby says.