Business School Profiles: The Wharton School

Due to frequent requests, I've asked a couple of students from MBA schools to compile quick "profiles" of their MBA schools. More profiles will come over the next few weeks. Email us if you want a special school to be covered and we'll generate a specific profile for you!

School Background:

The Wharton School is the Business School of the University of Pennsylvania, and is located in Philadelphia, USA, about 2 hours from New York. It was established in 1881, and was the world's first business school ever established.

Since the 1990s, Wharton has been consistently ranked as one of the world's top business school by the press. It has been ranked #1 by the Financial Times every year in which the newspaper has ranked business schools until 2010. Admissions rates are amongst the lowest across Business Schools with Harvard and Stanford, and the school has one of the highest average GMAT (average was 715 in 2009).

Wharton's reputation is especially strong in finance, and it is often seen as the "holy grail" by the finance profession, more especially at investment banks and hedge funds. This is due to its rigourous, highly analytical curriculum. In fact, together with Columbia and Chicago, it is one of the school that places the most students in finance. Wharton is also quite strong in marketing, healthcare (it is one of the few schools with a healthcare major) and private equity, but relatively lacks presence in general management compared to Harvard, for example. Wharton students are often seen as being extremely sharp technically, but lacking the "charisma" of some other schools graduates due to their relentless focus on pure logic and tangible results.

In 2009, the top 5 employers of Wharton graduates were McKinsey, Bain&Co, The Boston Consulting Group, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup. All the top banks, consulting firms and large corporates such as Google, P&G, Microsoft, IBM, etc. come to the campus for frequent presentations and interviews. The average compensation upon graduation was $110,000, with an average sign-on bonus of $20,000. Average compensation has traditionally been within the top 3 of all business schools. Given the school's reputation in the field, a lot of the students choose to go into finance: in 2009, about 42% of the graduates went into finance, 27% in consulting and 8% in Technology.

What's the typical background of students there?

Wharton is very much international compared to other US Business Schools, which tend to be more US-centric. This is very specific to Wharton, and the school often prides itself on its diversity and its global network. In 2009, 45% of the students were from outside the US, and 74 countries were represented! The school has the largest China Club of all business schools, and has a sizeable Indian student population as well and has a fantastic reputation in emerging markets,on par or above schools such as Harvard or Stanford. The MBA class at Wharton is very large: typically about 800 students enroll every year; this is a great advantage as your network will end up being very large and diverse. Average work experience is slighly higher than for other schools and was 6 years in 2009. Wharton students tend to be a little bit older, and the average age is about 27-28, but there is a big range. The youngest student was 18 (yes, 18!) and the oldest was 43 for the class of 2010.

There is no “typical” background for students, but there is a large group of ex-management and strategy consultants (16%), ex-investment bankers (9%) and ex-private equity professionals (10%). Wharton tries to keep classes very diverse, maintaining a good mix of entrepreneurs, bankers, consultants, IT professionals, computer geniuses and even actors, artists and TV celebrities!

How is the curriculum and what are classes like?

Wharton is a 2 year programme. You start earlier than other schools (in July instead of September), because the school first sends you to a “maths camp”. Wharton is very analytical in its teaching approach, and it wants to make sure that all students are up to speed in statistics, algebra and so on.

The first year is a “core courses” year. You all study the same classes, including Operations Management, Marketing, Strategy, Communications, Finance, Accounting, etc. The 800 students are split into small classes of about 70 people (called “cohorts”), and during the first year you will take all your classes with those 70 people, and they will quickly become your best friends! You are also assigned a “learning team” of 6-7 people, and you'll have to do all of your team assignements with them during your first year. After a year, they will either become lifelong friends or your worst ennemies depending on how you get along!

The second year is different, and this is unique to Wharton. You will get to choose your classes. Wharton, being faithful to its reputation as a finance school, devised an auction system to choose classes. At the start of the year, you are given an specific amount of points for you to “bid” on classes. There are 10+ rounds, and over those 10+ rounds, you can bid to “buy” and “sell” classes at various prices. “Prices” vary with demand and supply, so the best and rarest classes are expensive, and students often “speculate” to get more points and get their favourite classes. Psat 10 years auction data will be provided to you so that you can crunch some numbers and analyse past trends! You are free to take any classes you want during the second year, but you need to declare one major, so you will need to pick 3-5 out of 10 classes in a specific area.

Classes are typically a mix of case studies, homeworks and group projects, with participation in class representing from 10% to 30% of your grade. Classes are competitive, because you are graded based on relative performance. That means that if everybody gets 95% in an exam, and you get only 90%, you will get a bad grade!

There is also a wide range of exchange programmes with schools such as LBS, Insead and Beijing University, which are very popular and useful if you want to build a specific regional network.

How is the life on campus in Philadelphia

Philadelphia is a great city for students: because the city is smaller than New York or Chicago, you will spend a lot of time with other students and develop a close network. But it is still the 5th largest city in the USA, and only 2 hours from New York, so you get the chance to have a lot of entertainment. For those that want to work on Wall Street, this is an ideal location because you can go up to New York to do your networking with banks. Another advantage is that the city is relatively cheap compared to New York, Chicago or Boston.

The main disadvantage is that Philadelphia is an industrial city and is not particularly pretty, clean or safe. Locals are not the kindest and friendliest lot, and you may struggle to understand the local accent at first. While it is great for a student, it is definitely not the kind of city where you would want to spend the rest of your life, in my opinion.

Who went to Wharton?

The network is one of the best you can get. Alumni include current and former CEOs at Tesco, American Airlines, Boeing, Pepsi, Philips, Fuji, UPS, Fidelity, Paypal, Apple, HP, Cisco, General Electric, Time Warner, etc. Also a lot of personalities in the finance world including Donald Trump, Warren Buffet, Nicholas Taleb (author of bestseller Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan), head of hedge funds and private equity firms including Warburg Pincus, Sequoia Capital, SAC and Goldman Sachs Asset Management. There are a couple of Presidents of countries such as Nigeria, Panama, Estonia, Ghana, Philippines and Nicaragua too.

Weaknesses of the School

-Not as strong as Harvard in general management and in private equity, and not as strong as Stanford for entrepreneurship
-Very intense programme, with more emphasis on analytics as opposed to behavioural leadership. Students are generally perceived as weaker on the soft skills side compared to Harvard in particular.
- Philadelphia not as nice as Boston (Harvard) or San Francisco (Stanford) or even Chicago (Booth)
- Starts in July as opposed to September for other schools

Strengths of the School

- The most flexible curriculum from all business schools, as you can choose your classes in second year
- Great student reputation for being very “down to earth”. Students are well known for being friendly and not arrogant, which is not the case of many other top schools
- The best possible name you can put on your CV for a career in finance, right next to Wall Street
- The largest student body of all MBAs together with Harvard, which means a larger and stronger alumni network
- Wharton students are all famous for analytical and technical abilities, and "fact-based" reasoning

How much does it cost

The tuition fee for the 2 years was about 80,000 in 2009. Several scholarships exist to help, and many countries offer low-interest rate loans, that will be quickly repaid after 1-2 years work after graduation. Most companies pay MBA graduates sign-on bonuses to help with the loans. Living costs are lower than other cities because rent in Philadelphia is significantly cheaper. All in all, you'll spend about US$150,000 over the 2 years, including tuition, insurance, books, living expenses and travel. This doesnt take into account the money you will make during your internship, which can be substantial (i.e. $15,000-$20,000 for finance internships).

How do I apply

The application process is described here.
AskIvy also provides application tips and coaching, which details you can find here