Why Wharton

Another gr8 summary of why Wharton…. From Fanaticalfan on the S2S discussion boards at Wharton.

One of the things about Wharton is that it has one of the largest class sizes of any b-school, which means there are large numbers of students going into many fields. Even 5% of the class going into a specific field is still 40 students. When combined with outstanding u/g and EMBA program, and a strong reputation for supporting cutting edge research, Wharton is able to attract outstanding faculty across many areas, whereas smaller schools may well have to specialize. For example, while Wharton well may be a finance mecca, it also has the most published marketing faculty of any b-school in the world.

1. Wharton is looking for people with intellectual curiousity and broad field of interest, who have a history of getting involved in things beyond study and work. When combined with a culture that is focussed on ‘co-production’ between students and the administration, rather than things being handed down on tablets of stone from the administration, I’d say this gives it a strongly collaborative culture. Don’t get me wrong, many people at Wharton have a strongly competitive spirit underneath, and it’s not all sitting round the campfire and singing kumbyah – but there is a strong sense of enlightened self-interest in that people know that a big part of b-school is networking, and to maximize this, you need to be collaborative. As evidence of this, Wharton has over 130 different student organizations for just 1600 students.

2. Wharton wants people who have a sense of personal maturity, self-awareness and enough experience of organizations (this may be through extra-curricular activities, and not just employment) and leadership to know who they are, where they are going and to put the theoretical learning at Wharton into context. however, this is not a time driven thing – some people are mature at 22, others are still immature at 28. Wharton tries to assess these aspects of your personality directly from your application, rather than making an assumption that everyone with 3 years experience is equally (im?)mature.

3. Wharton has a 1st year core of classes that you must take, on the basis that Wharton believes you need to have a broad understanding of the different areas of business, and how they interact. However, you can waive out of most of these if you have a prior background in that area, and replace those classes with additional electives. So I’d say that Wharton is pretty flexible in its curriculum design, while still providing the necessary base of knowledge for 2nd year electives, and some of the broader issues you face as you move into more senior positions later in life. Whcih I would suggest is particularly important if you have an interest in general management.

4. it depends on the person. What matters is what you can show you have learned from the experiences you have had. Some people have had some incredible opportunities, and not learned much from it. Others appear to reflect deeply on the fewer experiences they have had, and thus demonstrate greater potential for growth as they have more experiences.

5. With a large class size, and a student driven rather than administration driven culture, I would suggest that Wharton would defy categorization by a single word more than most schools. What you get out of Wharton is entirely up to you. Some people just put their head in the books and soak up as much as they can of the academic rigor Wharton is known for. Others do what they have to in the classroom, and take the attitude that there is as much to learn outside the classroom as there is inside it about leadership from clubs and student organizations, guest speakers, conferences etc.

Actually, maybe there is a word – ‘choices’. Choices about where you will work (Wharton is one of just 2 or 3 schools with genuine global hitting power), choices about what field you want to work in, which classes (with over 200 electives on offer, Wharton has more classroom choices than any other b-school in the world), what activities you want to get involved in (over 130 different student organizations and with a student-driven culture, Wharton is delighted if you want to start another one that more specifically targets your interests), etc.