Menon emphasized this point at an economics department workshop for juniors who were considering writing theses. "You have to make it fun for yourself," he said. "If you don't find something that you will want to work on in your spare time, you will make the thesis process extremely painful. I was excited about what I was doing, and my thesis work didn't seem like work at all."
Menon's senior thesis on cognitive dissonance and rational decision-making combined his knowledge in his two majors, economics and psychology, and caught the attention of professors there during his interviews at Harvard.
Studying abroad
This is not the first time that academic accolades have rained upon Menon. Growing up in Kerala, India, he was put through one of India's two competitive national school systems. In 10th grade, he applied for a scholarship that would send students to Singapore's top five junior colleges (the country's equivalent of America's last two years of high school.) It was a demanding application process, and few were selected for the honor, but Menon's academic record, application exam and interview garnered him an offer. Even then, going to Singapore was a decision he made on a whim.
"I just went for it," said Menon of his decision to apply to the program. "Then I had the offer from them, and I had to decide: so am I going or not? And I kept postponing and postponing it, and on the day I actually had to tell them, my dad got really mad and told me, 'You haven't decided about your life. You're sitting there, playing a computer game and you have to decide right now, because today's the deadline.' And I said, 'All right, I'm going.'"
Menon landed in Singapore's prestigious Victoria Junior College, again with no definite plans for the future. When it came to applying to colleges, he said, all his information came out of conversations with friends and the U.S. News and World Report. "My friend mentioned Amherst College, and I said, 'Amherst? What's that?' and he told me it was a liberal arts college," Menon recounted. "I said, 'Arts college? I don't think my parents would be too happy about that.'" Reassured that Amherst offered classes in all the disciplines, Menon sent in his application together with his applications to four other schools. Amherst offered the best financial aid.
"Not your normal story of visiting it and falling in love with the place the first time you saw it," he admitted. "The first time I saw this place was when I landed here and I was driven here by the [International Students Association (ISA)]. I was like, 'Wow, this place looks really pretty, I'm really happy I made the choice.'"
Strategizing econ and psych
Though Menon is now one of the economic department's superstars, and has served as a teaching assistant for the majority of the courses that the department offers, when he first got to the College, he hadn't yet found his all-consuming passion. In India, neither psychology nor economics had been on the radar. "I never had exposure to psychology or this type of econ," he said. "In India the type of econ you do is like the British system in which you basically write essays; you write essays of five-year plans and things like that. It was very different."
Because he had always been interested in astrophysics, for a while he considered physics as a major. "Parents or grown-ups are always asking you, 'So, son, what are you interested in?' And I [say], 'Nothing. I just like studying. Everything is interesting.' And they [say], 'No, but there has to be something that you're interested in,' so you pick something at random that is vaguely interesting to you and so that sticks. That was physics for a while."
But aside from astrophysics, Menon arrived at the College with the vague idea of wanting to explore the dynamics of how people interact strategically and how they figure out what the other person was thinking. "I didn't come here with a plan per se at all, but I was interested in this question of how people work," he said. "So I said, okay, maybe psychology, maybe economics. I took Econ 11 my first semester, Psych 11 my second semester. I was just fishing around, I did poli sci, I did art, I did French for four or five semesters."
When asked to pinpoint the single class at the College that had been most significant to his academic career, Menon shrugged helplessly and rattled off a long list. But in economics and psychology, Menon found an interest that, for the first time, he wanted to pursue to a level beyond simply learning about it.
About taking Assistant Professor of Economics Christopher Kingston's course on institutional economics, Menon said, "That was a cool course that really got me thinking. It's only when you take a research seminar that you learn about the things that you can do, Until then, you are the recipient of knowledge, but when you get to that level, you realize where the gaps are that you can contribute to filling up."
Vaulting ambition
Menon's economics thesis attempted to change a fundamental touchstone of neoclassical economic theory. One of the basic assumptions of Paul Samuelson's mathematical framework on consumer preferences is that people have fixed preferences. Menon tweaked the model to make preferences malleable, and applied it to key economic problems. Reflecting on his work, Menon admits that he might have been "overly ambitious," but that he never felt particularly daunted by the challenge. "I tried to build up this whole thing," he said. "I made axioms and built up from the first principles. You can say it was kind of ambitious but"-he smiled and shrugged-"oh well, whatever. When I do something, I really get into it."
Menon's lack of fear of taking on one of the great minds in economics has paid dividends. "It's nice to see that people are actually excited about my ideas and my thesis, especially when I was talking about it at my grad school interviews," he said. "I'm just an undergrad, and to see that some of the people who are really big in the field are actually liking some of the ideas that you come up with, that's pretty amazing right there."
Service to the school
But it is not only in the academic arena that Menon has excelled. He credits his Amherst experience for the opportunity to take on responsibility and leadership roles, and the senior has, over the course of his four years, contributed much to campus life.
Since his first year, Menon has been a Senator with the Association of Amherst Students (AAS), and has served on both the Budgetary Committee and the Committee on Education Policy. He also brought cricket, as a first-year, to the playing fields of the College when he started the Cricket Club together with Dale du Preez '07 and Rohan Mascarenhas '07. He has also served as president of the ISA, the organization which first welcomed him to the College. This past Interterm, Menon brought in an instructor to teach a class on Argentine tango, and it has since become an established club on campus.
"By now, I'm quite confident in my leadership abilities," he said. "I know that people like me when I lead. And I know I can get some teamwork done."
In the wake of his myriad achievements, Menon has remained effably humble. His friends inevitably cite his easy-going nature and willingness to share experiences. "Anoop is one of the most down-to-earth individuals I've ever met," said Heather Teige '07. "One of thefondest memories I have of him are the long conversations we would have during our sophomore summer here in amherst, where he would tell me all about Kerala. He is a caring and devoted friend. He is also an excellent cook!"
Harvard and beyond
As a senior, Menon looked both at jobs and at grad school, and, before hearing from Harvard, Menon received an offer from Bain & Company, the consulting firm based in Boston. But his relentless curiosity steered him back toward academia.
"There was this side of me that said, 'You haven't learned enough, you haven't gone into detail into what interests you. When I do something, I really want to do it well. I'm passionate about what I do," he said. "So regarding the things I want to learn-that vague idea in the beginning of college about how people think and interact-the best option I could find was business schools, where they really do cutting-edge stuff on decision theory. So I looked around in catalogs, and Harvard had this whole thing on strategy, so-voilà."
Menon will spend his next five years at Harvard. As for after that, Menon, like he has most of his life, remains open to new paths and new opportunities, though academia will definitely be part of it. "It's five years so by the time I'm done with that I'll probably be thinking differently from now," he said. "No point to second-guessing myself. Honestly, two years ago, let alone four years ago, I had no clue that I would be going to Harvard Business School for a Ph.D. in strategy. I had no plans, I go with the flow. That's how I usually am."
For now, it seems as if Menon has found the academic passions that he had been searching for. "I'm pretty confident that this is what I want to do," he said. "After all, I'm spending the next five years of my life on it." As for after that, wherever the wind blows Menon, there is no doubt that he will find success there. He ended the interview sharing a bit of wisdom that he had received from his parents.
"My parents are both surgeons but they never forced me to go into medicine," he said. "They've always told me, 'Do what you're interested in, be happy and be good at what you're doing. That's what's important and that's what will make you happy.'" Thus far, the advice seems to have worked.