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Short Feature with Men's Cross Country Rising Senior Kevin Cory

Short Feature with Men's Cross Country Rising Senior Kevin Cory

Rising Senior Kevin Cory, a business administration and statistics major from Frederick, Maryland, answers a few questions about student life at Carnegie Mellon, what internships he's had, why he chose his major, and a memorable moment he's had as a member of the cross country and track and field teams.

1. What do you enjoy about campus life?

My favorite spot to spend a lot of time on campus is Schatz. Whether it's with the entire track team or just a couple of close friends from outside of the team, it's always very relaxing to go and just talk with some buds, and get away from the stress the rest of the campus readily supplies.

2. What do you get involved in outside of your sport?

Outside of cross and track, I'm involved in Tartan Athlete Fellowship which is a Christian org of athletes who meet for bible study activities once a week. We also go on a mission trip every year, I've been on ones to West Virginia and one locally in Pittsburgh, and both were incredible experiences for me. 

3. Tell us about your internship experience.

This summer I'm interning at Conning & Company in Hartford CT as a trading intern in portfolio management. I write a lot of scripts in python and R to help the actual trading team visualize data. I'm less involved in the analysis of credit spreads, and yield curves that goes into their actual trading decisions because I'm only an intern. For my freshman and sophomore years I interned at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in Washington D.C. (which was much closer to home for me), and I primarily did research for them on regulation and markets. 

4. What are your summer plans?

Other than interning, I plan on visiting my grandparents the last week of summer, but don't have anything too exciting planned. I do intend on going to NY a couple of weekends to meet up with some guys on the team to run and hang out.

5. What are you excited about next semester?

I'm very excited next semester for the class Statistical Methods in Finance. It is the first time it's being offered at CMU, and it is a class that I feel is very much at the intersection of my studies/interests (Finance, Stats, Math). I'm also very excited for the cross country season and the potential this team has to be the best in school history after losing only one senior from an already very deep team from last year.

6. Why did you select your course of study – what class have you enjoyed the most?

My favorite course at CMU thus far has been 21-270 Intoduction to Mathematical Finance. The Professor (Hrusa) gave incredibly interesting lectures that always left me excited to come back for the next class. It also felt like a perfect balance of interesting and challenging that I had not experienced at CMU up to that point. I choose my major (Business), because I was initially very unsure of what I wanted to study in college, but after my internship at the FDIC, and more classes in finance, econ, stats, and math, I started to feel very interested in all those subjects. Of course, I was still unsure of which interested me the most, so I figured it was a good idea to graduate with two majors and a minor to not be too focused on any one thing.

7. What class would you recommended someone take at CMU?

I would recommend taking 36-225 probability theory. Skills learned in stats are very applicable to a wide variety of fields/majors, so it's a good idea to try this one out and see if potentially using stats in your field of interest or just in general is something you could see as a career.

8. What have you enjoyed about living in Pittsburgh?

I enjoy running in Frick Park and Schenley Park a lot. They have great trails, and finding soft surfaces in a city for a runner is the dream.

9. What has been a memorable moment so far during your time on the team?

During indoor at our dual meet against Case Western Reserve University, the race for the team title was incredibly close going into one of the last events, the men's 5000m run. I was one of a few guys on our team expected to contend for scoring, but no one realistically expected any of our guys to beat Case's top runner Sam Merriman, who was an All-American from cross country. By the last "K", it was just me and him occasionally trading leads until we got to the final homestretch where I out-kicked him from behind to give us a big surge that helped us to eventually win the meet. After I finished, I got tackled and hugged by like 20 guys, and everyone on the team started chanting "Kevin, Kevin" for a decent bit. It was honestly overwhelming, I usually don't like that attention. But that race surprised everyone on the team so much because I used to be one of the worst runners on the team, and had only recently started doing better that cross country season. Ever since then, I always have that moment in the back of my mind, both training and racing, and it honestly serves as a pretty good source of inspiration to make myself push harder to try and recreate that moment and inspire my teammates like that again.