Ready to get to work on your Wharton application? Read on.

Wharton application essay tips

Essay #1: Two short-form questions

• What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (50 words)
• Describe your medium- and long-term professional goals after your Wharton MBA. (150 words)

Seeking specific information, Wharton provides a combination of prompts that gets to the essence of the career trajectory you are hoping to follow. Whether you pivot or continue on your current path, the adcom wants to understand the role and industry you are aiming for immediately after graduating from the MBA program. With just 50 words available for your response to the first of these prompts, you also want to name some target companies that could serve as the next step in your career path and to communicate a plausible plan. 

The second part of the prompt combo seeks information on your medium- and long-term professional goals. By explaining your vision for your long-term goal (think eight to ten years), you help the committee understand your motivations for your desired career path. To complete the picture, explain how you will navigate the medium term, describing what skills and experience you will need to further gain that will lead you to realize your long-term dream. Identify the specific steps and functional roles that you will follow along your career path.

Essay #2: Long-form essay

Taking into consideration your background – personal, professional, and/or academic – how do you plan to add meaningful value to the Wharton community? (350 words)

For this essay, start with the end in mind: How do you intend to contribute to the Wharton community? To answer that question, research the school’s cocurricular opportunities and pedagogical approach. How will you add to the program and its community? Based on your experience, what difference do you intend to make? How will you participate and contribute?

Next, decide which aspects of your experience and background have prepared you to make your intended impact. You can highlight achievements, challenges you’ve overcome, initiatives you’ve led, and teamwork situations, with the idea of how that will translate to the difference you’ll make at Wharton – and that’s just for starters. 

Brainstorm ideas and jot them down. Talk with friends and family, and ask them what they think your personal strengths are and how they have seen you make an impact in your student or professional communities. What unique value-add do they think you can bring to a student community of professionals?

Remember to think about what is important to you – not just your goals, but also your values. Now you’re ready to write. The MBA application process is nothing if not a journey of self-reflection!

Start this essay with an impactful experience from your past, and analyze the lesson you learned from it. Then, bring that lesson forward and apply it to your intended role at Wharton. Alternatively, you could start with your intended impact at Wharton and then go back to your past experience. Regardless of how you structure your essay, you want the Wharton adcom to see you as someone who will actively engage with your cohort and add value to the greater MBA community.

Reapplicant Essay 

Please use this space to share with the Admissions Committee how you have reflected and grown since your previous application and discuss any relevant updates to your candidacy (e.g., changes in your professional life, additional coursework, and extracurricular/volunteer engagements). (250 words)

The name of the MBA reapplicant game is “Growth and Improvement.” Wharton is asking for reflection, and you need to provide it, while also showing how that reflection has led to action and advancement. Demonstrate to Wharton that you are a better candidate this time than you were the previous time.

Additional Information Essay

Please use this space to share any additional information about yourself that cannot be found elsewhere in your application and that you would like to share with the Admissions Committee. This space can also be used to address any extenuating circumstances (e.g., unexplained gaps in work experience, choice of recommenders, inconsistent or questionable academic performance, areas of weakness, etc.) that you would like the Admissions Committee to consider. (500 words)

“Address[ing] … extenuating circumstances” means you should describe any issues and situations in a straightforward way. Provide the adcom with sufficient context, and avoid giving excuses or placing blame elsewhere. If possible, provide evidence that the circumstances in question were temporary and will not affect your MBA performance.Use this essay strategically. Admissions officers are reading many, many applications, so do not use this additional information essay to superfluously expand on something you have already touched on in your other essays. Any aspect of your candidacy that you think might raise a question mark for the adcom should be addressed clearly and succinctly here. Don’t make them guess about anything. Alternatively, you could use this essay to share a dimension of your identity, values, or experience that didn’t fit into your other essays but would add depth to your candidacy.

The Wharton MBA Team Based Discussion

If you are invited to participate in a Wharton MBA Team Based Discussion, be sure to listen to the advice provided in this Accepted video: What Is Wharton’s Team-Based MBA Interview Like? Tips From Director of Admissions Blair Mannix.

Wharton Application Deadlines

Source: Wharton website

To be considered for one of the three primary rounds, you must submit a completed application by 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on the day of the deadline. For the Deferred Admissions Round, applications are due by 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on the day of the deadline.

***Disclaimer: Information is subject to change. Please check with Wharton directly to verify its essay questions, instructions, and deadlines.***

Wharton Class Profile

Here is a look at the Wharton MBA Class of 2027 (data taken from the Wharton website):

Applications: 7,613

Enrolled class: 888

Women: 44%

LGBTQ+ students: 12%

First generation: 11%

Military 6%

U.S. race/ethnicity (Federal guidelines reporting): 

• White: 41%
• Asian American: 33%
• Black/African American: 13%
• Hispanic/Latinx: 9%
• Multi-race: 2%
• Did not report: 1%
• Native American: 0%

International students: 26%

Countries represented: 68

GMAT Legacy average: 735

GMAT Focus average: 676

Average GRE Quant: 163

Average GRE Verbal: 162

Average GPA (students who attended universities with a 4.0 grading system): 3.7

Undergraduate major:

• Humanities: 36%
• Business: 32%
• STEM: 32%

Interdisciplinary and dual degree programs (students):

• Health Care Management:72
• Lauder: 72
• Moelis : 54
• JD/MBA: 15

Average years of work experience: 5

Range of years of work experience: 0-13

Previous industry experience:

• Consulting: 31%
• Private Equity/Venture Capital: 15%
• Nonprofit/Government: 10%
• Investment Banking: 8%
• Technology: 8%
• Other: 8%
• Financial Services: 6%
• Health Care: 4%
• Investment Management: 4%
• Consumer Packaged Goods: 2%
• Media/Entertainment: 1%
• Energy: 1%
• Real Estate: 1%
• Retail: 0%

Related Resources

• Applying to Wharton Lauder? Do Your Research!, podcast Episode 465
• M7 MBA Programs: Everything You Need to Know in 2026
• The Business School Selectivity Index: GMAT Scores, GPAs, and MBA Acceptance Rates

The post Wharton MBA Essay Tips and Deadlines [2026-2027], Class Profile appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

Not surprisingly, the top ten full-time MBA programs in the U.S. News & World Report rankings have once again shifted positions. The Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) moved up to capture the #1 spot this year, replacing The Wharton School, which now stands at #2. Chicago Booth climbed to #3, while Harvard Business School (HBS) and Northwestern Kellogg are tied at #4. MIT Sloan dropped one spot to #6, while Columbia Business School (CBS) and NYU Stern tied for #7. Dartmouth Tuck dropped from #6 to #9, and Berkeley Haas rounds out the list in the #10 spot. 

U.S. News’ metrics continue to encompass career placement success (50%), quality assessment by deans/directors and corporate recruiters/company contacts (25%), and selectivity (25%). The ranking maintains its composition of career-related factors for career placement success. Subcategories of this section of the survey include salary by profession (10%), which compares salaries by industry and acknowledges that varying pay scales exist for different occupations; the employment rate at graduation (7%); the employment rate three months after graduation (13%); and mean starting salary and bonus (20%). U.S. News collected scores for both the traditional and new versions of the GMAT. It used percentiles as components for the selectivity analysis, along with GRE scores, GPAs (undergraduate), and acceptance rates.

Regardless of the outcomes or the changes in methodology, applicants, students, and alumni continue to study the rankings insatiably. Interestingly, U.S. News encourages prospective students to consider factors beyond the rankings, including “location, campus culture, strength of specific programs, and cost after tuition and financial aid.” We encourage you to do the same and have created a free guide to help you do so. 

U.S. News received responses to its 2026 survey request from 333 U.S. universities accredited by AACSB International. The publication then ranked the 134 full-time, in-person, and hybrid programs that had submitted sufficient data. It’s worth noting that U.S. News largely adheres to the data-reporting standards set by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) and the MBA Career Services and Employer Alliance (MBACSEA). GMAC’s GME Admissions Reporting Standards and the MBACSEA’s are publicly available. 

Notable Changes This Year

• The Stanford GSB claimed the top spot after tying with The Wharton School last year. The California-based program boasts an overall starting salary and bonus (two-year average) of $206,157 this year, leading the top ten for the highest total compensation. However, the school reported a three-month placement rate (two-year average) of 80.3%, which was the lowest among the top-ten schools (next lowest was HBS, with 80.4%). The median GMAT score at the Stanford GSB increased by five points to 745 (old scale), lagging NYU Stern’s reported median score of 750 (old scale). The median GMAT Focus score at the GSB is 695, which is equal to that at CBS and ties for the highest among all programs. The median GPA at the GSB is 3.8 (tied with Northwestern Kellogg).
• The Wharton School stands alone in the #2 spot this year. Its students reported the second-highest starting salary and bonus (two-year average) at $201,902, slightly ahead of NYU Stern’s reported $201,106. Wharton’s three-month placement rate (87.6% ) is just slightly lower than those of CBS (88.4%) and Dartmouth Tuck (87.7%). The GSB’s acceptance rate is the lowest among the programs in the top ten of the rankings, at just 6.8%, well ahead of the next lowest of 11.2% at HBS. 
• The median GMAT at Wharton, Chicago Booth, and CBS is 740, just behind the reported median scores at the Stanford GSB and NYU Stern (745 and 750, respectively). The median GPA at Wharton (3.7) is slightly lower than the 3.8 at both the Stanford GSB and Northwestern Kellogg but equal to the median GPA at Chicago Booth, MIT Sloan, CBS, NYU Stern, and Berkeley Haas.
• Last year, Northwestern Kellogg and the Stanford GSB were both ranked #2, but this year, Kellogg shares the #4 spot with HBS, which rose from #6. Berkeley Haas entered the top ten this year at 10th, after being ranked 11th last year.
• Some well-known programs that moved into the top 25 this year are UNC Kenan-Flagler at #21 (tied with Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business), the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California at #25 (tied with the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia), and Emory Goizueta at #23 (tied with the University of Texas at Dallas, which moved up eight spots). 

The U.S. News ranking of part-time MBA programs remained relatively static this year. Northwestern Kellogg and Berkeley Haas remained tied at #1, while Chicago Booth slipped to #3, where it is tied with NYU Stern. The rest of the top ten is made up of the same schools from last year, which either maintained their former ranking or shifted one place up or down. 

The part-time rankings were based on survey responses from which 245 schools qualified for the 2026 ranking. Ranking factors included peer assessment (50%), part-time student ratio (12.5%), part-time students total (12.5%), GMAT/GRE scores (10%), undergraduate grade point average (10%), and work experience (5%). 

U.S. News 2026 Top Ten Full-Time MBA Programs

U.S. News 2025 Top 10 Part-Time MBA Programs

Hoping to start business school in 2026 at one of these top-ranked programs? Sign up for a free consultation, and be sure to check out our MBA Admissions Consulting Services and work one-on-one with an expert consultant to create an application that will get you accepted!

Related Resources:

• The Business School Selectivity Index: GMAT Scores, GPAs, and MBA Acceptance Rates, a free tool
• The Best MBA Programs: A Strategic Guide to Selecting the Right One, a free guide
• Admissions Straight Talk Podcast for MBA Applicants

The post U.S. News & World Report 2026 MBA Rankings [Full-Time & Part-Time] appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

The M7 business schools represent seven distinct, vivid cultures, each with its own history, values, characteristics, opportunities, and challenges.

Of course, there are many commonalities among the M7 schools, as well: all are highly competitive, offer robust academic resources, are supported by a committed and involved alumni network, and attract top-tier recruiters (even in down business cycles). Yet each one also has a unique, strong, and distinctive personality that both reflects and drives its leadership in the MBA realm. These programs have risen to their prominent position because the schools are the leaders in their domain: graduate business education. So, they reasonably expect their students and applicants to have correspondingly high ambitions, but together, they also represent diversity.

In 2026, the M7 schools continue to attract the brightest minds from around the globe, with highly competitive admissions and world-class academic resources. Let’s take a deep dive into these schools and see what they have to offer the next generation of business leaders.

Table of Contents

• Harvard Business School
• Stanford Graduate School of Business
• MIT Sloan School of Management
• The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania
• Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management
• University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business
• Columbia Business School

What Sets the M7 Business Schools Apart

There are other elite MBA programs, of course, but the M7 schools have an ongoing, shared history; their deans connected with each other years ago and formed a group that meets regularly and shares information. Over time, these meetings have grown to include other individuals within their admissions offices, creating a consistent flow of information across multiple levels. The meetings address a range of issues, including best practices for components of the admissions process and responses to current events that directly affect MBA admissions.

Here are some other characteristics that make the M7 schools stand out:

• Prestige – Each M7 school is globally recognized as a leader in business education.
• Rigorous Academics – From the case method at Harvard Business School to the flexible curriculum at Chicago Booth, the M7 programs provide an intellectually challenging environment.
• Top Recruiters – The M7 schools attract the world’s leading companies across industries, ensuring that students have access to unparalleled career opportunities.
• Global Network – The alumni networks of the M7 schools are vast, influential, and highly supportive, offering lifelong connections.

While the M7 schools share these qualities, what sets them apart is their unique cultures and offerings. Let’s explore each one in more detail.

Harvard Business School, Class of 2027

• Median GMAT: 685  
• Median GPA: 3.76  
• Acceptance Rate: 11.2%  

Immersion could be the keyword for the Harvard Business School (HBS) experience. The program’s cornerstone is the case-study approach, intertwined with experiential learning; students read a case and then intensively analyze it both before and in class. The aim is to train students in complex, real-world decision-making. Students then have numerous opportunities to sharpen this training through practical application. By continuously engaging with classmates from different functions, industries/sectors, and geographic regions in these case discussions, students radically expand their perspectives, thought processes, and knowledge. This immersive experience is enhanced by the smarts, passion, and ambition of HBS students. Outside of class, these high-achieving, high-energy students participate in many clubs and volunteer activities. The two years of the MBA program reportedly fly by, thanks to the nonstop immersion and engagement.

What HBS Looks for in Applicants 

Given its case method approach, HBS seeks students and future leaders who will carry their weight and contribute fully in the classroom – people who have something to say and the ability to communicate it. Further, students must be able to listen, respond thoughtfully, and adapt to new ideas as the dialogue progresses. Beyond the requisite high level of accomplishment, HBS seeks people who enthusiastically and effectively engage.

Stanford Graduate School of Business, Class of 2027

• Average GMAT: 740  
• Average GPA: 3.76  
• Acceptance Rate: 6.8% 

Nothing less than transformation, that’s what the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) is about – both yours and the kind you bring to the organizations and communities you touch. Stanford’s Silicon Valley DNA, highly customizable program, and emphasis on innovation, change, and entrepreneurship shape its MBA experience. It’s a small, elite cohort that goes on an exploratory journey together, and many students emerge in a different place than they expected when they started out. This journey integrates the personal and the professional – in Stanford’s multifaceted pedagogical approach, building business and leadership skills is tied to understanding and defining one’s mission and vision. Beyond the MBA classroom, students learn from and engage with numerous guest speakers who represent the cutting edge of their fields. They are also encouraged to access Stanford’s other top-notch programs, including law, medicine, engineering, the humanities, and the sciences. During the MBA program, students form a robust, mutually supportive network for testing ideas, boundaries, and their own assumptions and inclinations.

What the Stanford GSB Looks for in Applicants

Stanford wants people who will be excellent “fellow travelers,” people who have – and will therefore bring to the program – a unique point of view. The school values risk-takers and change agents. At the same time, these individuals deliberately remain a “work in progress,” always open to new information, ideas, and situations and willing to shift gears accordingly. They relish exploration and collaboration.

MIT Sloan School of Management, Class of 2027

• Median GMAT: 730  
• Median GPA: 3.69  
• Acceptance Rate: 14.1%

What’s special about the MIT Sloan MBA program is its zeal for tackling large, multifaceted problems. The school’s students learn how to develop robust solutions that can weather uncertainty, ambiguity, and change, and they relish the challenge. The adcom appreciates people who lead organically by drawing others along the journey to solve complex problems. The Sloan MBA approach is rooted in two concepts that intertwine: invention, which entails creativity and agility, and data-driven analysis, which entails rigor and objectivity. These concepts align with MIT more broadly. Just as a robust process involves iteration, this program supports its pedagogy with ongoing experiential learning opportunities (in other words, practice) to reinforce and deepen the learning and ensure that students grasp topics and hone skills in a real-world context. In essence, Sloan MBA graduates are able to see around corners and make constructive use of whatever they encounter. They lead others through the process, driven by their vision and their passion to tackle compelling problems.

What MIT Sloan Looks for in Applicants

MIT Sloan seeks students who are open to following where the data lead, even if doing so contradicts their personal preferences or assumptions. The school is also interested in people who possess both vision and practical skills, who are creative and analytical. That doesn’t mean an applicant must embody these qualities 50/50, but if, for example, a candidate is primarily creative and visionary, they also need to show a record of concrete impact and achievement. Needless to say, curiosity and a collaborative mindset are also sought.

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Class of 2027

• Median GMAT: 735  
• Median GPA: 3.7  
• Acceptance Rate: 20.5% 

The Wharton MBA program is big, with almost 900 students per class, multiple opportunities for joint degrees and certificates (from law and veterinary medicine to the MBA/MA Joint Degree in International Studies program with the Lauder Institute and the JD/MBA), more than 20 majors, an extensive range of electives (including courses across the many other campus schools), and clubs in several broad categories: professional, athletic, social and special interest, community service, geographic, and cultural. Yet Wharton does not sacrifice quality for quantity. Its many majors are deep and rigorous. Moreover, the MBA program’s structure – dividing each incoming class into four clusters, each of which is further divided into cohorts of approximately 70 students, and then into diverse five- or six-person Learning Teams – ensures broad exposure and drives dynamism throughout the learning process. What students learn from their teammates and classmates will help them take full advantage of the program’s vast resources. While bigness and abundance characterize this program, Wharton has devised a learning structure that personalizes and optimizes it for students.

What Wharton Looks for in Applicants

Wharton wants applicants who, along with being high performers, are actively engaged in activities and/or interests that contribute somehow. This doesn’t necessarily have to be community service, but it does need to be some form of clear and consistent engagement outside of work that positively affects others. Finally, given Wharton’s extensive opportunities and resources, it is essential that applicants show that they are resourceful; Wharton does not want its abundance squandered.

Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, Class of 2027 

• Median GMAT: 687 
• Median GPA: 3.68  
• Acceptance Rate: 28.6%

Management has long been, and remains, the hallmark of the Kellogg MBA program, a comprehensive discipline grounded in leadership and global perspective. The premise is that, given today’s rapid change and high volatility, strong management capabilities are needed more than ever. Moreover, they can be applied across industries and sectors. Kellogg’s renowned management resources include two management-focused majors, “Management Science” and “Managing Organizations,” along with numerous other traditional majors. To complement these pillars of business training, Kellogg offers innovative “pathways,” which are cross-functional sets of courses that address timely topics, including “Growth and Scaling,” “Data Analytics,” and “Social Impact.” Students can mix and match majors and pathways, benefiting from the accumulated wisdom of the scholars and experts who devised them. Kellogg has innovated in another area as well: It is one of the first top-tier U.S. MBA programs to offer a one-year option (for people with some academic business foundation). Not least, Kellogg is renowned for its abundant global opportunities, in which almost one-half of its students participate.

What Kellogg Looks for in Applicants 

Kellogg greatly values work experience that shows an applicant’s exemplary people skills – including leadership, teamwork, collaboration, and communication – and presents a record of meaningful accomplishment. Because Kellogg’s student body is particularly strong in philanthropic activity, including this element in one’s application is a good way to show fit with the program.

University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Class of 2027

• Median GMAT: 736  
• Median GPA: 3.6  
• Acceptance Rate: 28.7%

Academic and intellectual rigor combined with curricular flexibility – this intriguing balance is what the Chicago Booth MBA program offers. Intellectual culture is paramount at Chicago Booth, reflecting the character of the broader university to which it belongs. In the Chicago Booth MBA program, ideas are important – having them, sharing them, challenging them, testing them, and acting on them when the time is right. Chicago Booth has unrivaled quantitative depth and analytic rigor among MBA programs. This is a fantastic asset for students who want to refine their strengths in these areas and for those seeking a rock-solid foundation. The school’s flexibility allows students to tailor their learning program to their needs, which puts the onus on students to understand what they need. Although students do not have to select a major, many do, and some even pursue multiple majors. Chicago Booth offers a wide array of options, including both standard choices, such as “Accounting” and “Marketing Strategy,” and less-common ones, such as “Behavioral Science” and “Econometrics and Statistics.”

What Chicago Booth Looks for in Applicants 

Chicago Booth looks for people who have the self-knowledge, critical thinking skills, and resourcefulness to make the most of the MBA program’s flexibility and strengths and to use them productively. And because the school values ideas, it seeks applicants who will go beyond practical career training to explore new topics, areas, and disciplines and who will challenge themselves intellectually.

Columbia Business School, Class of 2027

• Average GMAT Score: 734  
• Median GPA: 3.6  
• Acceptance Rate: 20.9% 

Integral to the Columbia Business School (CBS) MBA program and identity is its New York City (NYC) home, which the CBS website refers to as a top asset of the program. To CBS, this location equals access. To complement the program’s renowned full-time faculty, CBS attracts adjunct professors and speakers who are thought leaders in many areas of business and beyond, because so many either reside in/near NYC or visit frequently. Within this vibrant setting, CBS builds its student community from the start by creating diverse clusters of 60-75 students who take all first-year classes together. CBS’s depth in finance is unique, and the school offers special programs for private equity and value investing. Other highly acclaimed specializations are “Social Enterprise” and “Healthcare and Pharmaceutical Management,” the latter strengthened by the plethora of major pharma companies within a couple hours’ drive of campus. The NYC location also reinforces and amplifies the program’s entrepreneurship resources, given the city’s strong tech and fintech ecosystem.

What CBS Looks for in Applicants 

Beyond strong professional and academic track records, CBS wants people who have a plan to take advantage of the school’s resources, engage with the surrounding city and its endless opportunities, and pursue their defined goals. Because it’s easy to fade into the background amid the immensity of NYC and the dynamism of Columbia University, CBS also wants students who can and will forge bonds with their peers.

Key Takeaways on the M7 Business Schools

With their deep resources, commitment to academic rigor, and diverse student communities, the M7 schools provide unparalleled opportunities for MBA students. While each school has its own distinctive culture and specialties, all the M7 programs offer transformative experiences that will shape your future.

As the MBA landscape continues to evolve, the M7 schools will remain at the forefront in developing leaders who can navigate tomorrow’s complex business challenges. If you’re aiming for a career that will have a global impact, one of these seven MBA programs could be the ideal place for you to start your journey.

Related Resources

• Free MBA Admissions Guides
• The Business School Selectivity Index: GMAT Scores, GPAs, and MBA Acceptance Rates
• Admissions Straight Talk Podcast

The post M7 MBA Programs: Everything You Need to Know in 2026 appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

Business school interviews aren’t just about showing your target program what you can do – they’re also about demonstrating how you work with others. Many top MBA programs, such as Wharton, use team-based or group interviews to highlight candidates’ collaboration, communication, and leadership skills. These interviews simulate what happens in the classroom and on group projects: students working toward a shared goal, responding thoughtfully to different viewpoints, and helping team members succeed together.

How Individual and Team Interviews Differ

In an individual interview, the spotlight is entirely on you – your story, your goals, your fit with the school. Team interviews, on the other hand, focus on how you interact with others. You still need to demonstrate strong communication skills and self-awareness, but you’ll also be evaluated on your ability to listen, collaborate, and think on your feet.

Business schools use the group interview format because teamwork is at the core of the MBA experience. The adcoms want to see how you operate when you’re part of a group, not just when you’re answering one-on-one questions.

Whether you’re preparing for Wharton’s Team Based Discussion or another group-style interview, here are some tips on how to approach it with confidence and make a great impression.

1. Know the school and the format.

Before your interview, review any materials the school has provided, and spend some time learning about the program’s culture, mission, and teaching style. Understanding what the school values will help you shape your ideas and show that you’re aligned with its approach.

2. Practice with a team.

The best preparation is practice. Ask friends or colleagues to join you for a mock discussion, or sign up for an Accepted mock team-based discussion. Practice helps you get comfortable contributing to a conversation that moves quickly while also allowing you to refine your timing, tone, and teamwork skills.

3. Bring brief notes, and use them sparingly.

It’s fine to jot down a few bullet points or reminders before the discussion, but don’t rely on them too much. While glancing at your notes occasionally is okay, reading from them isn’t. You’ll come across as more engaged if you focus on the conversation instead of your page.

4. Collaborate, don’t compete.

Remember, the interview isn’t a debate or a test to see who can talk the most. Build on others’ ideas, find common ground, and keep the energy positive. Disagree respectfully when you need to, but always with professionalism and grace. Schools will be watching how you add to – not dominate – the conversation.

5. Keep your contributions focused and concrete.

Quality matters in this situation more than quantity. Offer clear, relevant points backed by real experiences or examples. Avoid getting lost in theory, and keep your comments practical, concise, and to the point.

6. Dress appropriately.

Even though the format might feel casual, your appearance should not be. Business attire shows respect for the process and will help you feel composed and confident on interview day.

Final Thoughts: Entering the Team Interview Prepared

Team-based interviews are a great chance for you to show the adcom that you’re not just a strong individual performer, but also a thoughtful collaborator. Preparing for this type of interview requires a slightly different mindset, one that balances confidence with empathy and initiative with listening.

You’re already close to the finish line, so don’t leave your interview performance to chance. Run through a mock discussion, get feedback, and fine-tune your approach before the big day. When you walk into that virtual (or in-person) room, you’ll be ready to make your best impression.

Related Resources

• Mastering Your MBA Interview, a free guide
• Preparing for Your MBA Interview
• Ask Away at Your Admissions Interview!

The post Six Tips for Team Interviews appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

Here’s a look at eight MBA programs with especially strong consulting tracks and impressive placement rates at elite consulting firms.

1. INSEAD

With campuses in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, INSEAD offers a unique global perspective that is highly valued in consulting. The one-year MBA program is intensive, allowing students to quickly transition into the workforce. INSEAD’s strong network with leading consulting firms and its diverse cohort further enhance its standing in the industry. With 55% of the Class of 2024 hired into management consulting, INSEAD is a great option for individuals interested in this career path and looking for a global MBA program. 

2. Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

Kellogg is renowned for its collaborative culture and strength in marketing and strategy, which are critical in consulting. The school’s emphasis on teamwork and strategic thinking aligns well with the demands of top consulting firms. Kellogg also boasts a robust consulting club and high placement rates at McKinsey, Bain, and BCG. Of Kellogg’s Class of 2024, a full 35% accepted jobs in the consulting field. 

3. Chicago Booth School of Business

Chicago Booth’s data-driven approach and analytical rigor make it an excellent choice for future consultants. The school’s emphasis on empirical research and quantitative analysis prepares students for the analytical challenges of consulting. Chicago Booth also benefits from a strong consulting club and an extensive alumni network in the industry. With 33.8% of the Class of 2024 entering jobs in consulting, Booth is an excellent program for prospective MBAs interested in this professional path. 

4. MIT Sloan School of Management

MIT Sloan’s focus on innovation and analytical problem-solving makes it a strong contender for aspiring consultants. The school’s curriculum includes a variety of consulting-focused courses, and Sloan’s Action Learning Labs provide hands-on consulting experience. The program’s graduates are well prepared for the strategic and analytical demands of working at the leading consulting firms. Of MIT Sloan’s Class of 2024, 32.1% accepted consulting roles. 

5. Columbia Business School

Columbia Business School’s location in New York City provides students with unparalleled access to major consulting firms. The program offers a strong consulting track and has a high placement rate at top consulting firms. In addition, its connections make it a prime choice for aspiring consultants, as proven by the 30.6% of its Class of 2024 who entered consulting roles. 

6. The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Wharton is known for its analytical rigor and strong finance program, which translates well into consulting. The school has a strong track record of placing graduates at McKinsey, Bain, and BCG. Wharton offers a dedicated consulting major and numerous consulting-focused electives. With 25.2% of its Class of 2024 accepting positions in consulting, Wharton is a great choice for candidates interested in the big three firms. 

7. Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School (HBS) consistently tops the various MBA program rankings and offers a strong pipeline to elite consulting firms. It boasts a robust consulting club, extensive alumni network, and a curriculum that uses the case study method exclusively – an approach that prepares students particularly well for the rigorous problem-solving component of consulting positions by simulating real-world problems. The latest HBS employment report backs this up, revealing that 18.0% of the Class of 2024 entered consulting. 

8. Stanford Graduate School of Business

The Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) emphasizes leadership and innovation, which are highly valued in consulting roles. The program’s smaller class size ensures that students receive personalized attention and forge strong relationships with faculty, which can be beneficial in securing career placements in consulting. In 2024, the GSB saw 14% of its graduates go into the consulting field. 

For aspiring MBAs who aim to break into elite consulting firms, an MBA from a top business school can be a powerful springboard. The leading programs offer unparalleled recruiting access, consulting-focused resources, and strong alumni connections, while equipping students with the analytical, strategic, and leadership skills needed to thrive in the industry. Ultimately, choosing the right MBA program means weighing each one’s consulting track record, resources, and network against your personal career ambitions.

Related Resources

• How to Write a Winning MBA Goals Essay: Tips to Clarify and Communicate Your Career Vision
• MBA Admissions Advice for Career Changers
• When the MBA Optional Essay Is No Longer Optional

The post Top MBA Programs for Consulting Careers appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

For many business degree hopefuls, the MBA remains the gold standard of graduate management education, and not without reason – an MBA can be the start of a new chapter in your life. Professionally, it can help you accelerate your career or make a career pivot. Academically, it can help fill gaps in hard and soft skills. Personally, it can help you discover more about yourself. For these reasons, many cite their MBA experience as being transformative. 

An MBA is the goal for many people who aim to pursue a business career. But what about individuals who have the desire to pursue graduate management study and start making their mark in the business world but don’t meet the work experience requirement of most MBA programs? Is gaining acceptance to business school without work experience possible? The short answer is yes, it is! The two most common paths for candidates in this situation are pre-experience master’s programs and deferred MBA programs.

Pre-experience/Early Career Programs

The terms “pre-experience” and “early career” are used interchangeably, but they both refer to programs that cater to recent graduates (“recent” meaning fewer than three years out of college). While the first offering in this category was the general management MiM (master’s in management) degree, the portfolio of programs now includes master’s degrees in finance, innovation and entrepreneurship, and data analytics, to name but a few options you might find at business schools today. Business master’s (BMs) degrees in data science, accounting, finance, and health administration are generally the most searched BM programs in the United States.

Applicants in this category are commonly referred to as pre-experience or early career candidates, and this market continues to be popular; according to GMAT Geographic Trend Report: Testing Year 2024, while global GMAT scores are most often sent to MBA programs (63% of them are), the proportion of GMAT score reports sent to BM programs has declined from 36% in 2020 to 30% in 2024. Although pursuing an MiM or similar program doesn’t negate the need for an MBA down the road (indeed, you will find individuals with both an MiM and an MBA), these programs are excellent choices for recent graduates looking to explore their options in the business world. 

Candidates who opt to pursue their business studies now, rather than waiting until they’ve earned a few years of work experience, might do so for a few reasons: they might want to specialize early on in a certain area, such as finance or marketing, to enter a specific function; they might want to “convert” their liberal arts or science degree into a business career; or they might come from a business undergraduate degree but want to better understand how theory is applied in the real world so they can hit the ground running in their post-graduate job. Whatever the candidate’s reason, these degrees provide an excellent foundation and help individuals build the skills, knowledge, career support, and network to get a head start in their careers. Additionally, some MBA programs provide a path for their MiM students to return to complete their MBA as a second-year student.

Deferred MBA programs allow students in their final year of study (or just after, if they’re pursuing a master’s without full-time work experience) to secure a seat in the MBA classroom before gaining the generally required work experience. These programs tend to attract highflyers – students with excellent academic credentials and internships, who have demonstrated leadership potential, and who have already started formulating career goals. These candidates understand, and can articulate, how an MBA will help them achieve their goals. These programs are a great option, because they offer security (you don’t have to worry about studying for the GMAT and writing applications while juggling your busy work schedule!) and add some clout to your resume (“Wow, already accepted to an MBA program before you’ve even graduated? Impressive!”). Of course, as with anything, there are pros and cons, so it’s important to determine whether committing yourself to a deferred program makes sense with your career plans. If you decide that a deferred MBA program is the best option for you, bear in mind that they are incredibly competitive. 

Here’s some information to help you better understand which schools offer deferred MBA programs and what these programs are all about. (Information is accurate as of February 2025.)

Harvard Business School 2+2 Program 

Harvard’s 2+2 program is what the name implies – a minimum of two years (four, maximum) of work experience, followed by two years of MBA study. Harvard is looking for “innovative thinkers who have demonstrated leadership and analytical skills and want to develop their knowledge and passion to make a difference in the world.” And this difference doesn’t have to be in a “traditional” business area. In fact, the 2+2 shows some preference for candidates who are pursuing paths “that aren’t as well established”; this could include candidates who plan to work in an operating company, come from a lower socioeconomic background, are first-generation college students, aim to pursue a technically demanding role, or aspire to entrepreneurism. So, if you’re not focused on joining one of the “big three” strategy consulting firms, don’t let that stop you from applying. You might just be what the 2+2 is looking for.

New York University (NYU) Stern NYU x NYU/Stern Program

Undergraduates from NYU’s College of Arts and Science, Tandon School of Engineering, Global Liberal Studies program, Stern School of Business, and Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development can opt to join the full-time, two-year MBA program at Stern (without needing to take the GMAT or GRE) two to five years after they graduate. Financial support is a big pull with this program – accepted students are granted an Early Advancement Award of $10,000, which covers part of their MBA tuition. These students are also eligible for other Stern scholarships, including the Berkley Early Advancement Fellowship, which covers all fees and tuition for the year in which they matriculate. Accepted students with an interest in technology or in the fashion and luxury industries, and who have relevant post-undergraduate experience, can enroll in the Andre Koo Technology and Entrepreneurship MBA program or the Fashion & Luxury MBA program, rather than the traditional two-year MBA program.

Columbia Business School (CBS) Deferred Enrollment Program

CBS’s deferred admissions option offers flexibility; admitted students can explore the professional world for two to five years before beginning their MBA studies at a time that works best for them. This is a great opportunity for individuals who are looking to explore their career options and develop a better understanding of their business interests and passions. The flexibility continues once students begin their studies; they can specify in a letter of intent whether they prefer the 16-month (January) program or the 20-month (August) program, the latter of which includes a summer internship. Having spent time in industry or entrepreneurship during the deferment period can help students determine which MBA journey will offer the teaching and experience they need to achieve their desired professional and academic development.

Wharton Moelis Advance Access Program

Wharton’s deferred admissions program offers recent undergraduate or master’s degree students the chance to work for two to four years before joining the MBA program as a Moelis Fellow. The program is meant for “students who are ambitious, innovative, and prepared to use a sense of professional liberty to maximize their early career experiences.” In addition to seeking proactive, motivated students, Wharton encourages admits to take professional risks during the deferment period and take advantage of the opportunity to “pursue [their] early years with increased confidence and risk-tolerance.”   

Stanford Graduate School of Business Deferred Enrollment Program

Stanford’s program offers something that most do not – deferred MBA admits are able to take as little as one year (but no more than four) to gain experience before beginning their MBA studies. It is open to students in either the final year of their bachelor’s or joint bachelor/graduate program, and to those in a graduate program that they started immediately after their undergraduate study. We should note that Stanford uses the same evaluation criteria for deferred candidates as it does for applicants to its full-time MBA program, assessing how they think, lead, and see the world.

Stanford cites deferred enrollment as a good option for candidates who are unsure of their long-term professional path and feel they would benefit from gaining full-time work experience first. The school also indicates that some industries – such as private equity, biotech, and management consulting – recruit only MBA candidates who have either pre-MBA experience in that field or specialized knowledge. So, taking time out to gain that experience and knowledge can be valuable in ultimately achieving your post-MBA career goals. 

Interested in a dual degree option? Some of Stanford’s programs allow you to wait until the first year of your MBA to apply for a dual degree; others prefer that you apply in the year immediately before you matriculate in the Deferred Enrollment Program.

Stanford expects admitted students to “pursue opportunities that enable [them] to build expertise, enhance [their] skills and knowledge, expand [their] perspective, and develop professional judgment and self-confidence” during the deferral period. So you will need to reflect on what activities will allow you to develop and how you should spend your pre-MBA time.

Kellogg Future Leaders Deferred Enrollment Program

“Graduate with the confidence that incredible things are ahead.” Kellogg’s deferred enrollment program allows admitted students to work for two to five years before beginning their MBA journey. The admissions committee wants to get to know you and to understand your motivations and why Kellogg is a fit for you. Master’s and undergraduate students (excluding law, medical, and PhD students, who apply through the standard admissions process) can come from any study discipline and either graduated in the past year, are in their final year, or went straight into graduate study post-bachelor’s.

The usual admissions requirements apply – test scores, essays, letters of recommendation, interviews – for some candidates, but not all. Applicants who are already engaged in undergraduate studies at Northwestern are exempt from having to take either the GMAT or GRE, so that’s one application requirement that can be ticked off the list for candidates already wearing the purple N.

Yale School of Management Silver Scholars Program

Yale’s program works slightly differently from the other deferred admissions programs on this list. College seniors earn their MBA in a fast-tracked, three-year format immediately after they complete their undergraduate degree. The program structure is as follows: Year 1 covers the core curriculum, Year 2 involves a full-time internship, and Year 3 comprises electives. The opportunity to develop academic skills while simultaneously gaining professional experience is a unique one. In addition, Silver Scholars learn alongside students from Yale’s traditional MBA program. Access to knowledge and experience? Check!

Yale says, “Silver Scholars are chosen for their combination of intelligence and common sense, maturity and curiosity, passion and compassion. Each has made a difference and distinguished themselves in a particular field of interest.” You’ll need to ensure that you really stand out through the application process (which is largely the same as for the traditional MBA program). Remember, you’ll be studying alongside students with five years of professional experience. You’ll need to convince the adcom that you have what it takes to contribute to classroom discussion and debate.

Chicago Booth Scholars Program

Chicago Booth’s program is open to students who plan to pursue either the full-time or part-time MBA and allows candidates to apply before they graduate from college, then defer and gain professional experience for two to five years before enrolling in one of the school’s MBA programs. Booth cites flexibility as one of the major differentiators. Booth Scholars have the option of pursuing the Evening MBA or Weekend MBA, if one of those programs is a better fit with their career objectives.

Booth says that candidates for the Scholars Program “demonstrate intellectual curiosity, personal maturity, competitive scores, and leadership” and that they “have a history of substantive internships or part-time jobs and/or an entrepreneurial spirit.” The application essays make clear that successful candidates need to be able to articulate their career goals and where the MBA fits in. The school wants intelligent, independent thinkers with a considered career map. Although one’s professional goals can change during the deferment period, of course, the adcom wants to see that candidates have taken the time to think through their career path and how attending Booth aligns with it.

UVA Darden Future Year Scholars Program

Darden’s program allows final-year undergraduate students, or full-time master’s students without work experience, to work for two to five years before starting their MBA studies. Student backgrounds are diverse, because Darden aims to recruit individuals who bring to campus a range of abilities and professional and academic experience. In 2024, 121 Future Scholars were admitted and were in the deferral period, busy enhancing their professional experience. This group comprises an internationally (20%) and academically (46% non-business degrees) diverse group of students hailing from 16 countries and 43 undergraduate institutions. Applicants are evaluated in three areas: academics, extracurricular involvement, and personal characteristics. While the latter of these criteria is vague, the adcom does say that the school is looking for individuals who “aspire to be future ethical leaders and managers in a global world.” Putting thought into why you have the potential to be this kind of future leader, and whether your values align with Darden’s, would be time well spent.

MIT Sloan Early Admission

If you are an “ambitious and forward-thinking student,” Sloan’s deferred admissions option might suit you. It is open to final-year students who will not enroll in a PhD, MD, or JD program immediately after graduation and to those in graduate study (who started immediately after completing their bachelor’s) without full-time work experience, except for internships or co-op experiences. Accepted students can work for two to five years before joining the MBA program.

The admissions process is slightly different for Early Admission candidates, and the application calendar differs for non-MIT undergrads. Candidates are required to submit a 300-word cover letter demonstrating their fit with the school. MIT is quite specific about who it’s looking for. The school wants “thoughtful leaders with exceptional intellectual abilities and the drive and determination to put their stamp on the world … people who are independent, authentic, and fearlessly creative … who can redefine solutions to conventional problems, and strive to pre-empt unconventional dilemmas with cutting-edge ideas.” There is a lot to think about and squeeze into a one-page cover letter, so carefully consider how you fulfill the program’s stated criteria. Additionally, candidates must submit a resume and a 60-second video in which they introduce themselves to the class. This video is an excellent opportunity to show your personality and bring the person introduced in your cover letter to life. A second video is required in whish applicants must respond to open-ended questions that are randomly generated.

Additionally, interested MIT students who have a cumulative GPA of 4.2 or higher are in luck, because they can waive the GMAT/GRE.

Berkeley’s Accelerated Access Program 

Berkeley’s Accelerated Access Program is open to undergraduate and graduate students and encourages domestic and international candidates with diverse backgrounds and academic areas of study to apply. Admitted students not only have access to the full-time MBA program but are also eligible for consideration for dual degree programs.

Students are required to work for a minimum of two years before beginning their MBA studies but are allotted a maximum of five years in which to explore their career interests. Although Berkeley does not require its deferred students to follow particular career paths, it prods them to pursue “employment that enhances [their] leadership profile and prepares [them] to contribute to the mission-driven business community” at the school. To ensure that admitted students are meeting the required criteria, some admissions offers are conditional, and students are required to attend check-ins with a Berkeley Haas advisor or career coach. Additionally, a review might be conducted prior to the intended enrollment date to ensure that the student has met the required terms. 

Carnegie Mellon Tepper Future Business Leaders Deferred MBA Admissions Program

In February 2021, Tepper joined the deferred admissions space with its Future Business Leaders program, which allows students to defer for up to four years while they gain professional experience. The program is open to college seniors who plan to graduate from a U.S. university in the current academic year and do not yet have full-time work experience. The school says that “competitive applicants will have a strong academic record, professional internships, and undergraduate leadership experience.” Tepper’s adcom also expects candidates to have put some thought into their career goals and why the program format is a good fit for them (essay alert!). The GMAT/GRE is waived for Carnegie Mellon students, and admits are eligible to apply for scholarships, with decisions to be made at the time of matriculation.

Georgetown McDonough MBA Advanced Access Program 

The most recent player on the MBA deferred admissions scene is Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, with its MBA Advanced Access Program (MAAP). The program allows candidates who are either in their final year of undergraduate studies or in graduate school – and have no full-time work experience – to apply for deferred enrollment. Accepted students can secure a place in the class two years out from when they apply, with the option of extending this time period to three or four years.

The application process is thorough. In addition to the standard written application essay (candidates have three question options to choose from) and video essay, MAAP candidates must complete program-specific essays. The prompts for these essays ask candidates not just about their career goals but also about where they stand in working to achieve them. Additionally, applicants are expected to describe their personal and professional development plans. So, you’ll want to take some time to reflect on how you can present yourself as a proactive, principled future leader who will contribute to the school’s community and make an impact in the business world.

If these options sound interesting, but you’re still unsure whether you should study for a master’s now or wait to pursue an MBA, schedule a free consultation with an Accepted admissions expert today!

Related Resources:

• MBA Acceptance Rates: The Selectivity Index
• Admissions Straight Talk Podcast for MBA Applicants
• Retaking the GMAT with a 700 – Should You Consider It?

The post Deferred MBA Programs and Other Options for MBA Hopefuls with No Work Experience appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

Can I prepare for a Wharton TBD?

A successful Wharton Team-Based Interview is all about the team’s success and your contribution to the team. It’s not about strutting your stuff or dominating the conversation. It’s also not about being a wallflower or going with the flow.

You need to listen carefully and contribute constructively. The team’s success is paramount.

Most traditional interviews are the opposite. They focus on you, and you are supposed to engage in a dialogue that highlights your individual contributions and fit with the interviewing MBA program. There is no team. The TBD – or any group interview – is a different ballgame and one you need to train for – unless you want to leave the results to chance.

This is your opportunity to show the adcom what you’ll contribute to Wharton – an opportunity you truly don’t want to miss. Train and practice for it with Accepted’s Mock Wharton Team-Based Discussion. Our Mock TBD is a prime-time rehearsal.

Schedule a Mock Wharton Team-Based Discussion

The 2023-2024 Mock Wharton Team-Based Discussion schedule is as follows:

• Friday, February 23 at 8:30 PM EST
• Sunday, February 25 at 11:00 AM EST

The Mock Wharton TBD provides:

• Wharton team interview simulation with 2-7 other Wharton applicants and 1-2 Accepted consultants acting as facilitators.
• A mock individual interview.
• Written feedback on the individual applicant’s performance during the team simulation and the individual mock interview.
• One consultation to discuss feedback on both the team and the individual interview.

Wharton Mock TBD reviews

Don’t take our word for it, though. Here’s some of the feedback we’ve received from mock interview participants:

“I truly valued the opportunity to practice discussing the interview topic with other skilled and motivated candidates. I believe after participating in one of these groups, the candidates are much more prepared for the real interview.”

“This exercise gave me the opportunity to practice with students who actually have received the interview invite as well. It gave me a clear picture of how the discussion would flow and identify areas I need to focus on to improve my performance in the actual interview. Thank you!”

“The benefits of the Mock Wharton Team-Based Discussion include: Trying out the experience of the group IV with other people invited to interview. Seeing my own weaknesses and other people’s strengths.”

Watch: Director of Admissions Blair Mannix describes what happens at a Wharton TBD

Related Resources:

• Preparing to Ace Your MBA Interview, a free guide
• Interview with Wharton’s Director of Admissions, Blaire Mannix, podcast Episode 545
• Top Tips For Team Interviews

The post Would You Benefit From a Mock Wharton TBD (Team-Based Discussion)? appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

[powerpress]

Welcome to the 545th episode of Admissions Straight Talk. Thanks for tuning in. Are you ready to apply to your dream business schools? Are you competitive at your target programs? Accepted’s MBA admissions calculator can give you a quick reality check. You’ll not only get an assessment, but tips on how to improve your chances of acceptance. Plus it’s all free. 

It gives me great pleasure to have back on Admissions Straight Talk, Blair Mannix, Executive Director of Graduate Admissions at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Blair first came to Penn as a graduate student where she earned her master’s in higher education management in 2010. She joined Penn’s undergrad admission staff in 2008. She’s been at Wharton since 2012 and became Director of Admissions in 2017 and the Executive Director in 2022. She was last on Admissions Straight Talk almost exactly two years ago. Let’s learn what’s new and exciting in the Wharton MBA program and admissions process. 

Blair, welcome back to Admissions Straight Talk. [1:50]

Awesome. Thank you so much for having me, Linda. It’s great to be back.

It’s great to have you. So first question, can we start with a basic overview of Wharton MBA program for listeners who may not be that familiar with it and focusing on its more distinctive elements? [1:56]

Absolutely. So the Wharton MBA program is a two-year graduate program in the city of Philadelphia starting in August of the year that you enroll through to the summer where you go on an internship away from campus. And I think the thing that really makes the Wharton MBA program stand out amongst peer programs is its flexibility. We offer a lot of flexibility within our core curriculum and 200 electives that students can choose from. We really feel passionately that we want people to chart their own course through the MBA program and not just get classes taught in similar ways to the same people in the same cadence over and over again. We really want people to get, the way I describe it is wringing every ounce of utility out of this program, and we think the flexibility of curriculum really does that.

Another thing that Wharton does really well is that the Wharton MBA program is a very tactile degree, meaning that our students really are getting into the guts of understanding models or marketing strategic plans. And we’re not just teaching students to be leaders and managers, which of course we are, but we do really believe that you need to understand the inner workings and core operations of a company in order to lead it well. And so our degree is very hands-on in that respect as well.

One of the things that always struck me about Wharton is not only that you have this incredible plethora of options and flexibility, but the support that you give your students to take advantage of all that wealth of opportunity. [3:21]

Thanks for saying. That’s something we’re really proud of. I say it in jest, but I really do not think there’s going to be a time in your adult life that you are more supported than when you’re at the Wharton MBA program. We call it your personal board of directors, our advising support network. You’ll have advisors and support across all of our main components, the leadership program, career management of course, advisors, and how to navigate your career search and beyond, of course academic advisors and even student life advisors. So you do have this particular board of directors to help you navigate what is a lot. Wharton is a lot. There’s a lot of resources and how do you take advantage and again, wring that utility out of your two years.

Right now in preparing for the call, I noticed that Wharton seems to have in my mind, clarified its vision, namely in defining the Wharton Way, which boils down to, according to your website, elevate research impact, innovate through your pedagogy, collaborate through disciplines and divides, all to be accomplished through a data-informed approach aiming towards scalable solutions and equitable outcomes. Can you dive into the impact of these principles on students’ MBA experience? Sounds great, but they’re general and out there. [4:13]

I’m very happy for the question. I’m happy to talk about the Wharton Way. I’m really happy to talk about the Wharton Way. So this is Dean Erica James’ vision for her tenure of the Wharton School. So it’s something that of course is near and dear to my heart as it is near and dear to her heart. And so the three pillars, elevate research and impact, innovate through pedagogy and collaborate across disciplines. A couple of examples under that. First and foremost, the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School are research universities. That’s the bread and butter of what we do. And I think something that’s interesting that a lot of folks probably don’t think about is we have deep ties to government and obviously business. So a lot of the research you see coming out of government organizations or a lot of the research that’s cited across Fortune 500 companies is Wharton research and that pipeline and those pipelines through our centers of innovation and our centers of research already exist.

So when she says elevate that research impact, she just wants to continue that and continue doubling down on faculty research, getting out into the business and government community. So I think that’s something that we’re really excited about internally, and how do we create opportunities, mechanisms, and operations to get that done? So that’s something that has a lot of energy behind the scenes, so that’s exciting. And then of course innovating through teaching, innovating through teaching. Here’s an example I think is great. We have a fabulous professor by the name of Ethan Molik who runs our Wharton Interactive News Center. He’s a faculty member that teaches through games, and Wharton Interactive is now a revenue center. So we are trying to bring this pedagogy through innovative games to the world. And so that’s an example of what we’re trying to do there. Basically what the Wharton way is when everything boils down is that we don’t want to gatekeep Wharton resources.

I’m not saying we’ve been doing it a lot in the past, but we really want to give that to the world. So Wharton Interactive is an example. We have a great program called Wharton Global Youth that we’re trying to bring Wharton classes down to 16, 17 year olds and making sure that is just a lot more in the community. And the last thing, collaboration across disciplines is, the problems of society are not going to be solved by business faculty, business students and people within the business world operating alone. Public private partnerships, collaborating across governments, collaborating across medical, engineers, all of those things that’s going to be at the core. The University of Pennsylvania does a really good job of that just naturally through its own history and culture, and I think Dean James really wants to double down on that. And so that’s the third pillar of the Wharton Way.

Now in addition to the Wharton Way, what’s new at Wharton? I mean, there’s always something new at Wharton. [7:15]

Yeah, so let me start with this. So one of the organizations I’ve been privileged to be a part of for the last 12 to 18 months is our Wharton Executive MBA. And about a year ago, so about 12 months ago, we launched the Wharton Executive MBA Global cohort. So we’re allowing folks to take an Executive MBA, living and working out of their homes, but the key metric of this is that they actually are coming together nine times throughout their time. So it’s not a fully online MBA, they’re coming together nine times across the world globally, to learn from each other and be part of an in-person cohort. So that’s really exciting. I’ve been at the forefront of obviously the admissions and recruiting for that, and it’s just been a privilege to talk about. I would encourage folks that are listening if they’re interested, do a quick Google on the Wharton Executive MBA WAVE classroom because we’re not just teaching this on Google.

I keep saying it’s not your grandma’s Google or excuse me, we’re not teaching this on Zoom. It’s not your Grandma’s Zoom. Technology is actually amazingly cutting edge and groundbreaking. And so faculty are teaching in the round and there’s a screen for every student and the camera follows the faculty member looking at a particular person. And so it’s very much a synchronous experience. You have to show up for class at nine o’clock on a Monday morning. And so that’s very exciting. But I would say otherwise, when I was thinking about the answer to this question, Linda, AI, the research around AI that I see pumping out of the Wharton School every week, it seems there’s another faculty authorship on –

I just saw an article in the Wall Street Journal that I think was Wharton professors on AI. [8:46]

Thank you. Thank you for calling attention to that. So you’re seeing what I’m seeing.

It was fascinating. [8:52]

Right. And it’s coming from all angles. And so I just think that’s another hallmark of the Wharton School. So let’s just use research on AI as an example, but it’s coming from the marketing space, it’s coming from the management space, it’s coming from the finance space. And so all of those things combined is just pumping out this research that is being cited all over the globe. So I think that’s really exciting. Research in AI, publications on AI and what Wharton is doing there. The last thing that I’ll say before I stop belaboring the question about what is new at Wharton is just the analytical powerhouse that Wharton always has been and continues to be.

Our analytics at Wharton hub for innovation has just been churning out really interesting pieces of content. We just had our third annual, I think, Women in Data Science Conference that’s bringing women in data science from all across the world to Philadelphia, the Future of Work through our Wharton People Analytics Conference, like what are we all expecting in a post Covid world, that’s really exciting. And we actually just launched our first class through Wharton Interactive called Machine Learning and Business Decisions through actually our sports business initiative. So it’s like the machine learning, the gamification, the pedagogy and the innovation are all coming together in the analytic space. So that’s pretty exciting too.

That’s always fascinating. But the article that I was citing, if I remember was about human beings versus AI and innovation and basically saying that AI has a lot to offer in terms of innovation, and it went through the steps, different steps. I’m a lay person, I’m not an expert in innovation, and it was something that I could really understand. It was just a very interesting article. [10:06]

Did it have a title, something like Is AI a Better Entrepreneur than Humans? I feel like I-

Innovator. [10:36]

Innovator, yeah. No, I’m right there with you. Yeah, it’s a really exciting time. I think it’s a really exciting time to be at Wharton when all of that’s swirling. So I’m happy you noticed that as much as I do.

What trends are you seeing in terms of interest from applicants in different sectors and geography? What trends would you like to see? [10:47]

I’ve been a member of the Wharton Adcom for 12 years. I think I’ll just maybe expand on the question slightly to see how I’ve seen it change over the last 12 upcoming 13 years. I think the main hallmark I’ve seen in the applicant pool is just a pure play diversification of where students are coming from. That doesn’t answer your question, but when I came to the admissions committee, it was a lot of more consultants, a lot more investment bankers, and I just think the ROI of an MBA has really expanded and I think that’s really important. For me, I don’t really have a specific answer, and I’m not trying to dodge the question. I really just don’t think I have an answer on what I want to see more of. But I’ll say this, this is what we want to see more of.

The MBA is transformative. It is a degree that can be utilized for the rest of your life across sectors. It’s not super specialized, clearly it’s not a credential. And so I think that my goal, at least in this role, is to try to continue to communicate that an MBA is valuable and can be valuable across sectors, from education to technology to energy to NGOs. I mean, a lot of applications say I get from the nonprofit sector that are really successful, they’ll say I’m in nonprofit, but even in nonprofit, you need to know how to run a business. You need to know how to pay people and do the accounting and things like that. And so I think that it’s a transformational experience that my goal is to get to as many different types of work experience backgrounds as possible. So that would be my goal, but not targeting a specific one per your question.

I was just thinking about my own MBA path and experience. Obviously the MBA has changed enormously since I got mine. I’ll admit I got it in 1979, but I did not follow a classic MBA path. And when I started Accepted, I had been doing different things. I’d taken off time for family and I questioned whether I got value out of it until I started Accepted, which was in the mid-nineties. And then I started a small business and it was valuable, it was invaluable. And I don’t mean the network and all that stuff. I mean the principles. I didn’t remember the formula for who knows what for a put or anything like that. I didn’t remember that at all. I didn’t need that. But the basic framework, the principles I had, and that helped me enormously. [12:22]

I mean for me, that goes back to the Wharton way, like innovation through pedagogy because people come for different reasons and you’re right, networking, meeting the people, getting your first job out of the MBA. We work hard at that, getting your first job, but that’s not what it’s really all about. It’s about what skills do you need in 20 to 30 years that you’re going to pop up from a classroom innovation in the types of things you’re learning in the classroom by faculty that you’re going to use in 20 years. And so Wharton works really hard at making sure that we’re being current in the marketplace of skills and ideas that students need to know. So it just makes me happy that you had that MBA experience ’cause what we hope to deliver.

Now what don’t people know about Wharton that you would like them to know? Or is there a common misconception that you’d like to dispel? [13:49]

Yeah, I have a common misconception. And the first is that it’s a very competitive place, very cutthroat, very competitive. The MBA program in particular, and I’ve said this over the years, but I always joke that when people meet me or the team or they come to campus and they say, “Oh, this is not what I thought this was, and it’s very different.” And I say, “Well, then that means I’m not doing my job. My job is to communicate to you in your own hometown or when you come to campus that what Wharton really is, not what you think it is.” And so I like to put out there that it’s actually a very collaborative place.

We have a system of grade non-disclosure, and we’ve had that for decades where there’s groups vote that they’re not going to share GPAs with potential employers, and that’s sexy and interesting to talk about, but really what that is: we want you to take chances. You’ve probably never taken a chance in your whole life. If you were admitted to Wharton, you got good grades, you had the right majors, you went to the right companies, you had the right political maneuvering and to get promoted and whatever you did, but we really want you to take chances because the business world is won by people that take chances. And so that’s why the curriculum is set up like that

Risk reward. [15:03]

Exactly. So that’s something we’re really proud of. Another thing that I think people sometimes lose in their maybe external opinion of Wharton, and it’s something we have struggled with internally, the duality of we are the best school to study finance in the world> Period. That’s something we’re really proud of. That’s something that’s been part of our DNA since our inception, but we’re also quite good at a lot of other things. We have top 10 programs and management and marketing, and these great dual degree programs like the Lauder Institute or our healthcare management program are groundbreaking. And so sometimes what makes my job difficult is finance, and we are very good at other things because a lot of times folks think, “Oh, Wharton’s not for me. I want to study marketing.” And we’re like, “Actually, it is for you.” So that’s something that I like to put out there as well.

Let’s turn to the application and start with testing. Now, Wharton requires either the GMAT or the GRE, no Executive Assessment for the full-time MBA. Is it okay for the Executive MBA, since you are now in charge of the- [16:04]

Yes, we do accept the Executive Assessment for the Wharton MBA for executives.

Could you review the rules surrounding the new GMAT Focus? Am I correct that you only really accept it for around three applicants? [16:07]

Yes, and I actually saw that you did a LinkedIn post about this Linda and I actually put in my to-do list to email you and I never did. So I’m happy we’re getting this chance. I mean all positive because-

Thank you. [16:24]

No, all positive. You got it right. Right now, the GMAT focus is launching this fall, but our deadline for round two is the first couple of days of January, and so it was too late for me to really have an evaluation selection process that felt fair and unbiased and equal. And so I just said we’re happy with the GMAT Focus. I believe in the efficacy of the test, I believe in the GMAT corporation, but we will be accepting the GMAT Focus starting in round three of this year, so April 2024, as well as with our Moelis candidates who apply in the same month. And so I won’t go into it, but there’s been a lot of mixed messaging. There was even a change on my website, which you very correctly noted when we were going to accept it, but I think the dust has settled. Final decisions are made. If you’re applying to the Wharton MBA program in the fall of 23 or the winter of 24, no GMAT Focus, but if you’re applying in round three or the Moelis Advanced Access round in April of 24, ready to go.

And obviously for the next application cycle. [17:20]

Exactly right.

What’s new in the MBA application? [17:23]

Not a lot.

Nothing. And actually that’s very purposeful. There’s a lot of change. The MBA, excuse me, let me back up. The admissions business is changing. I have done nothing but this. I’ve been in this line of work for 18 years, and I have seen some shifts in the business and some ebbs and flows of changes. But I think, and there’s a couple of things to say under this, of course, the Supreme Court decision, but the GMAT changes as well. The market pressures on testing organizations, the GRE changes, and there’s questions, but I would love to talk about ChatGPT for college essays-

It’s next. [18:02]

Great. I have a lot to say about that.

How that works. I’ve been calling it admissions… We did something with our evaluation and selection process about eight years ago that I called Admissions 2.0. So internally, I’ve been calling this admissions 3.0, because the whole business is changing. And so given that scope and given that umbrella, I felt really strongly about not changing our application because enough is changing. Let’s not torture these applicants. And that’s where we’re at.

Or maybe the application readers also, I don’t know. [18:30]

Yeah. Maybe that too, but really it was for the applicants.

So you mentioned ChatGPT. What do you feel is the appropriate role of ChatGPT and AI in the application process? Obviously Wharton’s going all in on machine learning. You mentioned that a second ago. So what is the appropriate role? [18:34]

Faculty have done great work on the use of ChatGPT and passing Wharton exams. There’s a couple of fun articles about that too, but this is where the office of MBA admission stands. This is where I stand. My view personally is being fearful of ChatGPT and what it means for society is like being scared of email. It’s coming, it’s here. It’s an efficiency tool. People will be using it. I don’t believe it’s the right move to gatekeep using an efficiency tool, especially if we say that we’re cutting edge business leaders. Cutting edge business leaders outside of our walls should be using ChatGPT to speed up their work. Now ChatGPT, as we all know, has limitations. There’s studies in law schools that they put fake legal precedents on some of the answers they do.

You have to check it. [19:35]

Of course you have to check it, but I think it’s only going to get better. And so I think it’s an efficiency tool. Behind the scenes we use it for our own work. Faculty at Wharton use it for their own work. I think people should use it going forward. And so I have no reason to or no plans to put a disclaimer on our application saying, “Please don’t use ChatGPT” because we all know it’s not good. You’re going to have to work with it. And I think that’s okay.

I think it’s going to be another sign of judgment on the part of applicants. If they use ChatGPT wholesale and they don’t check it and they don’t add their own personal perspective to whatever ChatGPT produces, then they’re going to have very generic, superficial and substandard essays that will not enhance their chances of admissions. If they use it as a tool like spell check or grammar check, but the essay is still theirs, then it might just have a good place. It might take them some time. [19:59]

I agree.

I was talking with some colleagues recently and they expressed concern about the tragedy competition or pity essays that seem to be proliferating. So two questions. Do you feel that, A, it is proliferating? Do you feel that people may be revealing much more than you need to know of their personal private lives in essays? So that’s question number one. And related, can you give some guidance as to what is too much information? [20:35]

Yeah, so-

Talking about the changes in admissions. Okay, there’s a change. [21:01]

Well, so let’s address the change and let’s address some history. For me, I’ve been reading applications in some form or another. I definitely have my 10,000 hours in for18 years. So saying, putting sad stories and essays is not a new phenomenon. It’s just not. And so anybody who’s newer to the business I think may think that, but it’s not a new phenomenon. So that’s going to exist. Admissions is changing. That hasn’t changed, at least in my experience. So I’ll just say that. In terms of advice, this is the advice I always give, and it’s not exactly to this, but I think we’ll hit the point. I always say, finish your application, close it, meaning click it off, walk away. Walk away for a week. Do you think there’s a story, and it gets to the optional essay, which I want to talk about. If you think there’s a story that you’re like a human being reading this really needs to know this story in order to understand me, I want you to write that story in the optional essay.

And it’s not a sad story, it could be a happy story, but I would say 50% of you have a story that explains who you are. And sometimes it’s a childhood story, sometimes it’s a promotion story, sometimes it’s a sickness story. Sometimes it’s how I found my passion story. But I would say if you don’t feel like you have a story, don’t write a story like that. So I would say about 50% of students write some additional component to their application that would be kind of addressed in the premise of your question and 50%. But that’s the advice I use. If you think that there’s a piece of you that somebody needs to understand to evaluate your candidacy, write it. But if you don’t, I don’t think I need to know that story.

I think just in terms of what I’ve seen and reality is that we frequently grow from the most difficult experiences and in order to show resilience, which is I think a quality that is increasingly valued, you have to overcome something. If you haven’t overcome something, you have nothing to be resilient from or to or whatever. So I think that’s part of what you’re seeing. But the point that others have made is sometimes people are revealing too much personal information or going into too much detail about the difficulty and less about the overcoming part of it. Have you seen that? [22:34]

Our essay questions are not geared towards that.

So you’re not seeing it. [23:18]

Yeah, as I think about it live, they’re not geared towards that. So I don’t really think I see a lot of that. But there are. I mean, listen, I’m a proponent and a student of this business. One of my favorite things to do is just talk admissions shop with people. People are in my email all the time. I’m like, “I will take a half an hour to talk shop with you.” And I say that because something I do regularly, but also people have questions on their applications from undergrad to grad school to professional schools, all of which I know and talk to that would draw you to those answers. And so my suggestion would be, if you don’t want to hear about these types of stories, maybe you don’t have essays that are geared towards that.

Now Wharton has two required questions and one optional. The optional asks, please use the space to share any additional information about yourself that cannot be found elsewhere in your application and that you would like to share with the admissions committee. It gives a lot of latitude and space. Number one, is it truly optional? How would you like to see it used? Do most admitted students write one? And you said you wanted to address the optional question on your own. So if there’s something else you want to say that’s not included in those three questions, go for it. [23:51]

No, I answered that question like what I want people to use it for. If you close your application, feel like there’s a story you need to tell, please put it in that optional essay. But I would say people use it for two different reasons and I encourage people to do it in two different reasons. And I’ll take this moment and put a quick plugin for some admissions’ application tips webinars we do that are on the Wharton YouTube channel. I did one that has a ton of views that I’ve gotten some nice feedback on, but our teams does great ones and it talks about this. It talks about what you should use your optional essay for. But really what they say is this a lot of students are like, “I have some things to say” and I’m like, have a couple bullet points if you want to say, “Hey, listen, I was sick in senior year and that’s why I have a C in statistics.” Put it in a bullet point.

“I want you to know there’s a gap in my career because they pushed all the hiring back to January.” “Boom, boom, boom, boom.” Bullet points are great. That gives me context. I’m happy with it. But then there’s a lot of people that want to tell this story. So I would say half use bullet points, half use a story. It’s fully open and optional because I really want you to use it to just tell me what you need to tell me. There’s no hidden agenda with me. I just want to know what I need to know because I would rather you tell me than me have to go find it.

Or guess. [25:28]

Yeah. Or there was a pass-fail grade. What happened at Brown in the summer of 2018? I don’t want to have to go find it. I would rather you tell me.

March 2020. [25:35]

Well, that one, I know what happened. We all lived together. I was there for that.

We all remember that one. Do most admitted students write the optional or is there any data on that? [25:42]

I don’t know. That’s a good question. I really don’t know, but you can tell how much it matters. It matters, but I don’t not track that stuff. Yeah.

How do you review an application? What do you start with? [25:55]

Transcripts. Transcripts, resume. Those are the two most important things. I think applications, they have a natural cadence. When you open the application, you’re immediately, the way I describe it and the way I train our readers, you’re just trying to take the student in. You’re like, “Okay, they’re 27, living in Boston, working in healthcare, living in the Back Bay, taking in the student, taking in the student. And then you click on the transcript and you’re like, “Okay, and then they went to Duke and they majored in mechanical engineering”, and then you’re just watching them walk through your life. Our whole job is figuring out how you walk through your life. And so you’re like, “Oh, they were a member of the swim team and they did this at Duke and they did community service. Okay, great. And then they graduated in 2020, good year to graduate.”

Okay, great pivot. I always call it the pivot moment. All right. Then they went out into the world, then we read the resume. What did they do? Where did they move? What did they make? How did they feel about it? What are their things? And then that natural discovery process leads you most often to the essays, but sometimes to the letters. For example, if there’s a student that has a little bit less years of work experience, I might be like, “What do people say about this person?” So I’ll go to the letters first before the essays. But then sometimes if you’re working in consulting and you’ve been there for three years and you’re applying to the Wharton MBA, which is more commonplace, not bad, but just more common, I might go to the essays to see what you want to do here. So it’s a pretty standard path. And then it diverges between essays and letters and then that’s it.

How many people review an application? [27:27]

Two.

Two. [27:33]

We have two read each application before interview, and that’s really something I’m proud of. We have a “blind read” process, and so one reader does not know what the other reader says, and that’s to cut down on bias. There’s a lot of processes, and I’m a big student of decision analytics and decision science, and there’s a lot of not just admissions offices, but people that are hiring for jobs at scale that have one commentator’s comments read by another, and of course that influences you. So ours is blind. And then we do a full committee before interview to make sure that the decisions we’re making are strong and make sense. And then of course, robust interview, another read and then final committee.

What can an applicant expect if lucky enough to interview and participate in the team-based discussion? [28:12]

Yeah, so we’re on year 12 of the team-based discussion. So we’ve gotten good at it. I was part of some of the first waves, so I’m proud to say that. So this is what I like to say about the team-based discussion. I’m like, “We want to take the stress and the energy from here to here.” I’m like, “I’m never going to take it down here.” I know. Especially coming from my lips. I was like, “But I’m going to try.” So basically what the team-based discussion is when you’re invited to interview, you will know it. And I put on our website that we will be releasing decisions. I don’t quite know it off the top of my head, sometime in late October, but let’s just call it October 30th at noon. You’ll get your decision October 30th at noon. And that’s the story.

And so there’s no harangues, there’s no fear, there’s no waiting every week. It’s not rolling decisions. And then when you get invited to interview, you’ll get your prompt. We’re not going to spot prompt you and make you totally freak out, and you’ll get a one-page PDF on how you could prepare. But I think more importantly how you don’t prepare, because we don’t want people to be over preparing for something they can’t really prepare for. So you’ll get the discussion prompt, you’ll get how to prepare, more importantly not to prepare. And then it’s a 35-minute group discussion with four to five other applicants. So everybody’s in the same boat. Everything is on Zoom. We were actually Zoom beta users all the way back in 2018, 2019 before Covid. We’ve been doing this for a long time. Everything is on Zoom now, and you have a 35-minute discussion. I mean, and that discussion feels like a discussion at work.

How do you solve problems? How do you bring in different resources? How do you drive towards deadlines and decisions? And there’s a lot of academic and career research that says when people do certain things, they tend to get along better in groups. And that’s the type of stuff we’re looking for. So I always just tell people, imagine you’re walking into a conference room at work and you’re right about to take that left, and you’re thinking about who is in the room, and there’s some people that you’re like, “Yes.” And there’s some people that are ugh. Just think about what those people do, that’s a skill. Running a room and knowing how to work with people is a skill. And I think one of the things I’m proudest of in our process is that at the Wharton MBA Admissions Process, it’s not that you crest to the interview stage and then you interview and you either do really well and get in or you don’t do well and you don’t get it.

The skills of running a room are very different than the skills most times to get a 4.3 in physics at MIT, they just are. And so we’re a school and we want to have the room runners and we want to educate them to be the 4.3 In physics or finance, and then we want the 4.-

Marketing. [30:53] 

Then we want the 4.3s in finance, and we want to teach them how to run a room. And so that’s what it looks and feels like. After that, you’ll do a one-on-one with your interviewer, and the whole thing will be about an hour, hour and 20 of your life.

What’s the most common mistake that you see applicants make in the team-based discussion? [31:08]

The mistake questions are always tough for me because I don’t, it’s just like my brain isn’t oriented like that.

You’re much more positive than that. [31:20]

Yeah, I think I am. But of course, I’ve been in this chair for six years. I’ve just gotten asked the mistake question a lot, and I always don’t have a good answer. I don’t really think of it. I don’t think of it like that. I don’t know. I’m not talking at all –  want to be part of it. There’s a book that I think-

How about trying to hog airtime? [31:39]

Maybe. I mean, maybe. But there’s a lot of research on different ways to be successful in groups. And so this is my thing. I’m like, it’s just be a normal person. Be the person that you are at work for 35 minutes. Keep it together.

Be the person you’d like to work with. [31:55]

Yeah, maybe that. Well, that’s another thing. So we were training our interviewers last year and I said, “I don’t do interviews. I don’t do them.” And someone said, “Why?” And I said, “Listen, I can’t do them all. So if I did only a couple, that wouldn’t be fair or accurate”, which is two of my guiding principles for this work in this office. Because if I interviewed, let’s say seven to 10 people, I would have a predisposition to admit the seven to 10 people if they did well, and who’s in the driver’s seat? Me. So that’s just not fair if you’re not one of those 17 people that’s randomly assigned to me. So that’s just an aside, but that’s how we work it behind the scenes.

What advice do you have for applicants wanting to join the class of 2026? In other words, those applying this cycle and probably preparing for a round two application. [32:35]

Take a look at the resources we put online. We really do try to democratize all the information that it takes to put a strong Wharton MBA application together and a strong, I believe, business school application. So there are application tip sessions. They’re an hour long. We go through what it means when you select the dropdown menu to apply to a healthcare management major versus the Water Institute versus a JD MBA. And if you do what that means and who reads it and what the timeline is. And so we give you all of that information. We even talk about essay structure, how to write those essays and give you real guideposts on how you’re supposed to spend your time and your pros. So we try really hard to put that out there. So go check it out. Just it’s on the Wharton YouTube channel.

We touched on this just a little bit in a previous question, and I didn’t send it to you ahead of time, but I’m wondering, for people belonging to underrepresented groups, do you have any special advice for them in light of the Supreme Court decision or for the applicants, it doesn’t really make that much difference in terms of what they say. [33:29]

Doesn’t really matter. The only change in that is that we no longer will be asking the race question on the application, but it’ll be suppressed for all readers, evaluators, staff members, and for the entirety of the cycle. And so for me, I don’t think it changes applicants’ head space, what they write about, what they talk about. They’re going to put together the same application that their soul wanted them to put together before. So no real advice.

Well, you mentioned the Moelis program- [34:14]

Moelis.

I was pronouncing it incorrectly. Any tips for applicants applying to that program, the Deferred Admit Program at Wharton? [34:20]

Yeah. First of all, that program has grown like gangbusters since we launched the global audience. Yeah. We launched it to the global audience in the summer of 2019 and started receiving applications for the first cohort that is external to the University of Pennsylvania in the summer of 2020. And we just think it’s a beautiful pipeline and it’s a beautiful representation of talent. This is what I would say, if you are thinking about applying to an MBA program through a deferred enrollment program, you’re already there. You’re already talented. You know what’s going on. You’ve done your research, you have some sort of direction. So I would just say, be really confident in your application because the fact that you’re even thinking about this, you’re already top 1% of the population. So we’ll just say that. Second thing is that, again, with these deferred enrollment programs, we want you to take risks.

That’s one of the points of them that you can lock in your admission, and we don’t want you to go backpacking and never work for two to four years, but you can take a little bit more risk. So think about that when you’re thinking about lining up your second job or your third job or what you want that deferment period to look like, because we really do want you to take risks because again, business favors risk-takers. It just does. There’s a reason that the American culture produces more entrepreneurs than most of the rest of the world, and that’s our tolerance for risk and some loss, but that’s who we are and that’s what we want to be part of.

The Moelis program has been in existence now for several years, so obviously some of the people that were admitted via that program already in Wharton, right? [35:55]

Yeah. Yeah.

Are most of those people actually coming for the MBA? Are they deferring additionally, or are they just saying, “I said I don’t want it?” [36:04]

Good question, Linda. That’s a great question. So yes, you’re completely correct in saying that some of the first admits are starting to trickle back. So for the last couple of years I’ve had, I think, about 20 Moelis admits come back to the class. So about 20 in the class of 25, 20 in the class of 24, 20 in the class of 23. Next year is the year it’s going to skyrocket. They have a two to four year deferment. So numbers wise and statistically, we’re expecting about 60 to 80 come back next year.

So we’re really going to start to see that come back. You’re correct. We’ve had a couple of years to see if students get accepted through the MBA and decide, this is what I’m going to do or decide, “No, I don’t want an MBA.” And so far data says over 80% of our students are coming back. That’s something that they absolutely are committed to and want to do. That’s an interesting question. I feel like now I want to have a focus group about that. I’m serious. I’m like, I’m going to email someone. “Did you think of not coming back? Was there a moment where you thought like, “Oh, I’m just going to go out on my own and start my own company, whatever.”

I’m interested in the reasons that they came back or thought of not coming back. But the industry is one, meaning the industry of deferred enrollment programs is doing very well. So I think a really, it’s something that people were clamoring for because most of the top 10 MBA programs right now have deferred enrollment programs, and they’re all doing very well.

Now let’s turn to the applicants, which are, I guess, the other end from deferred admits. When you review a re-applicant’s application, and that would not be somebody who applied to Moelis and then applies later on, when you review a reapplication, do you look at the previous application, the notes on the previous application? Both. None. How do you approach a reapplication? [37:34]

I love that. Both. None. Yeah. We actually very, as a point of process, do not. We don’t want to be biased against a previous application because a lot of times with programs like this, it’s not that your application was not strong, it’s just the pool is so deep and we have a low admit rate. And so the way we read applications is not looking for your flaws. I say this all the time. We have a read-to-admit culture. We’re not looking for your flaws. And so it’s not like if I looked at the previous note, I would see a listing of your flaws. It’s just culturally, it’s not something that would ever happen. But we found over the years that if you do not put the old application in any way in the new application and a reader and a decision maker is not biased against the fact that they’re a re-applicant, the re-applicant admit rate actually goes up. So per round, our re-applicant admit rate is actually a couple percentage points higher than the overall admit rate.

In that. And so we fully credit that just to not being biased against reading your old application. So statistically, it actually is more beneficial for re-applicants for us not to read it.

Also, you would expect re-applicants, they have a year more work experience, they made some mistakes maybe on their application last time, they would be stronger applicants. [38:59]

Absolutely. Another really good point.

What advice would you like to give to someone thinking ahead to a fall 2024 application or even a later application? In other words, they’re not applying this cycle, they’re applying next cycle or later cycle. [39:12]

I would say really hunker down and think, and then speak to the people that you trust in your life, mentors, bosses about what you really want to get out of an MBA. We found, and this is anecdotal, there’s no data on this for us, but it’s like we found that if someone can come in pretty crystallized, and I’m not saying with exactly the type of company industry location that they want to work at post MBA, but I mean, what you want to do during your two years, what clubs you want to leave, what skills you want to learn, what do you want to use the program for, the more you’ll get out of it. And so it’s not necessarily a piece of advice towards applying. It’s a piece of advice on navigating, and that’s the advice that I’ve given over the years, and I’ve gotten some feedback that it’s been helpful.

It’s great advice. And what would you have liked me to ask you? [40:07]

Oh, goodness. I just think I’m excited for where… This is maybe not a question, but it’s an answer to a question you didn’t ask. I just want to say I’m excited for where the business of admissions and where the MBA admissions world fits into the grander ecosystem is going. I think with the changes to testing profiles and the bringing online of AI resources, most notably ChatGPT, which people use more often, as well as just the ecosystem of what’s been going on around the country, I think it’s really interesting moment to be a part of as someone that’s a student of the business. And so I’m really excited to be a part of it, and I’m excited to be a change agent within the four walls of an admissions office to hopefully the betterment of society applying to schools across the country. And that’s just where I will be putting my energy for the next 12 to 18 months. So stay tuned.

Happily. 

I want to thank you very much for joining me today, Blair. Where can listeners and potential applicants learn more about Wharton’s MBA program? [41:05]

On the Wharton MBA website.

Relevant Links:

• Wharton MBA
• Wharton MBA Essay Tips and Deadlines [2023 – 2024], Class Profile
• MBA Admissions Quiz – Are you ready?
• Wharton MBA Admissions YouTube Channel

Relevant shows:

• How to get into Yale SOM – podcast Episode 542
• The Only Online Ivy League Executive MBA Program – podcast Episode 490
• Admissions Directors Reveal the Most Common Mistakes Applicants Make – podcast Episode
• How to Get an MBA at Columbia Business School – podcast Episode 528
• How to Get Accepted to NYU Stern – podcast Episode 525

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The post What’s New at Penn’s The Wharton School. And How to Get In. [Episode 545] appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

U.S. STEM MBA Programs: An Overview

STEM certification programs have proven application bonanzas for top business schools. STEM certification may have begun pre-pandemic as a way to alleviate uncertainty in the visa process, but the programs have proven to be a robust inducement for MBA applicants, particularly from foreign countries. According to Poets & Quants, “At Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, the move to designate its entire MBA program STEM in early 2021 paid dividends this year. . . Its applications rose by an incredible 21%, an increase of 450 to 2,555, even though Cornell presumably felt the same domestic squeeze as its peer schools.”

[List of top STEM OPT U.S. Business Schools >>]

Cornell’s new MBA class has students from 43 countries, a dramatic rise from 30 countries from 2021. Cornell is receiving roughly double the number of international applications as domestic applications. Poets & Quants also reported strong upticks in foreign student enrollment among 27 B-schools surveyed: “In the top 10, the average gain was 10.2 percentage points, or 36.6%, with Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business the biggest by points — 18, or 72%, to 43% — and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania the biggest by percentage: 84.2%, or 16 points, to 35%.

“Across all 27 schools, the average gain from 2020 to 2022 was 14.6 percentage points, or 69%. The biggest gain was at CMU Tepper, which doubled its total from 28% to 56%; notably, UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School gained 23.5 points, or more than 200%, to 35%. Three other B-schools more than doubled their international ranks in two years.”

Are you an international MBA applicant? We’ve helped hundreds of applicants get accepted to top MBA programs! CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT HOW WE CAN HELP YOU GET ACCEPTED >>

The GMAC’s survey from 2019 was the first to inquire about a program’s STEM-certification, and found that these programs were more likely to report growth in international applicants. A total of 195 of the 804 U.S. programs responding reported that their programs were STEM-certified (24%). Among them, the most common program types were Master of Data Analytics (28%); Master of Finance (22%); and Master of Information Technology (14%). And while a majority of both STEM-certified (53%) and non-STEM (57%) programs reported declines in total applications during this period, STEM-certified programs fared better among international applicants. In the 2019-2020 academic year, 43% of STEM-certified programs grew their international applications, compared with 26% of non-STEM programs.

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Given ongoing concerns over visa status and one’s ability to work in the U.S. after business school, programs that are STEM-certified are sure to be more appealing to this applicant pool.

While some MBA programs – such as Chicago Booth, Wharton, Virginia Darden – now offer specific concentrations that qualify international students for STEM OPT, others – such as Berkeley Haas, Carnegie Mellon Tepper, and Rochester Simon – qualify MBA graduates of all majors in their MBA programs for this extension.

During 2021, MBA programs have seen a rebound in international applicants, and many schools (NYU Stern, Darden, and Yale) are touting this return. Still, they are maintaining their STEM certifications because it will pave the way for their graduates to get jobs and stay in the U.S. long enough to pay off or pay down their loans. Despite its cost, the MBA degree continues to pay robust dividends right off the bat. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article: “At about 98% of universities that offer master’s of business administration programs, graduates typically made more money two years out of school than they had borrowed, a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal student loan data for nearly 600 programs found.”

STEM MBA Programs

Name of MBA Program	Majors That Are STEM Designated	MBA Essay Tips
Arizona State Carey	All MBA Platforms	Tips
Babson MBA	1) Business Analytics and Machine Learning 2) Quantitative Finance	Tips
Berkeley Haas	All Majors	Tips
Brigham Young Marriott	Management Science and Quantitative Methods	Tips
Carnegie Mellon	All Majors	Tips
Chicago Booth	All MBA programs	Tips
Columbia Business School	MBA and EMBA programs	Tips
Cornell Johnson	1) Two-Year Management Science MBA 2) One-Year Management Science MBA 3) Tech MBA 4) MPS in Management 5) MPS in Management - Accounting Specialization	Tips
Dartmouth Tuck	STEM track	Tips
Duke Fuqua	Second Major in Management Science and Technology Management (MSTeM)	Tips
Georgetown McDonough	Management Science major	Tips
Harvard Business School	Management Science track	Tips
Indiana Kelley	Accounting, Business Analytics, Finance, Marketing or Supply Chain and Operations	Tips
Lehigh University College of Business	Business Analytics (a concentration within 1-MBA)	Tips
Michigan Ross	STEM track	Tips
MIT Sloan	MBAn	Tips
New York University	Tech MBA Two-year full-time MBA	Tips
Northwestern Kellogg	Management Science MMM Program for Dual Engineering/MBA Degrees	Tips
Notre Dame Mendoza	MBA/Master of Science in Business Analytics Dual Degree	Tips
Pace University	MBA in Information Systems	Tips
Purdue Krannert	MBA-STEM	Tips
Rice Jones	All MBA Programs	Tips
Rochester Simon	All Specializations	Tips
Rutgers	STEM designation	Tips
Stanford GSB	1) All MBA majors 2) MSx	Tips
Syracuse	FT MBA, M.S. in Business Analytics, MS in Finance, MS in Marketing and MS in Supply Chain Management	Tips
Texas McCombs	14 of the 22 concentrations for the full-time MBA program	Tips
University of California, Davis	All Majors	Tips
University of California, Irvine	Analytics in Digital Leadership concentration	Tips
University of California, Los Angeles	All Specializations	Tips
University of California, Riverside	All MBA Programs	Tips
University of California, San Diego	1) Full-time MBA 2) FlexEvening 3) FlexWeekend	Tips
University of California San Francisco	1) Financial Analysis, MS 2) Information Systems, MS 3) Full-Time MBA 4) Marketing Intelligence, MS 5) Energy Systems Management & MBA 6) Environmental Management & MBA (4+1), BS/MBA 7) Financial Analysis & MBA (4+1), BSBA/MS	Tips
University of Connecticut	1) Business Analytics 2) Digital Marketing Strategy 3) Financial Analysis and Investments	Tips
University of Delaware Lerner	Major in Business Analytics	Tips
University of Georgia Terry	Only open to U. of Georgia undergraduates; includes 45 majors	Tips
University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler	All MBA Programs	Tips
University of North Texas Ryan	MBA in Business Analytics	Tips
University of Washington Foster	Management Science	Tips
University of Wisconsin - Madison	1) Specialization in Operations and Technology Management 2) Supply Chain Management	Tips
USC Marshall	Specialization in Management Science	Tips
Vanderbilt Owen	Finance Concentration	Tips
Wharton	1) Business Analytics 2) Business, Economics & Public Policy (BEPP) 3) Business, Energy, Environment & Sustainability (BEES) 4) Operations, Information & Decisions (OID) 5) Quantitative Finance 6) Statistics	Tips
Washington University in St. Louis (Olin)	Full-time MBA	Tips

We’re going to do our best to keep this table current. However, please do not rely on this table; confirm the STEM designation yourself to make sure that the MBA programs you apply to really have that designation. And if you find out a school has attained STEM certification and is not on the list, please let us know by emailing blog@accepted.com.

If you would like to learn how to get into top MBA programs that offer STEM OPT eligibility and are a good fit for you, register for a free consultation with me. 

At Accepted, we’ve helped hundreds of applicants get accepted to top MBA programs and look forward to helping you too! CLICK HERE TO GET STARTED.

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By Jennifer Bloom, admissions consultant at Accepted for 20 years and Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW). She is an expert at guiding you to produce application materials that truly differentiate you from the rest of the driven applicant pool. If you would like help with your application, Jennifer can suggest a number of options that work with any budget. Want Jennifer to help you get accepted? Click here to get in touch!

Related Resources:

• STEM Applicants: Why Your Statement of Purpose is So Important
• Top MBA Application Essays: How to Answer Them Right (school-specific essay tips)
• The Questions You SHOULD Be Asking – ANSWERED!, a podcast episode

The post Top STEM MBA Programs: A Comprehensive STEM-OPT Eligible List appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

Distance learning and unstable market conditions due to the Covid pandemic have not hurt the fortunes of MBA grads from top programs. The 2022 employment reports released in recent weeks from top schools, including NYU Stern School of Business, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, UC-Berkeley Haas School of Business, MIT Sloan, Harvard, and other peer programs have all announced record-breaking starting salaries for grads. 

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NYU Stern MBA Salaries Soar

Median base salaries for NYU Stern were $170,000–the highest ever–up $15,000 from the previous year. Median signing bonuses of $35,000 were on par with 2021, and average total compensation rose by $14,340 to an unprecedented $196,143. 

Within three months of graduation, 94.1 percent of Stern graduates had accepted job offers; 86.6% had accepted job offers by graduation. Top hiring industries remained consistent: consulting (31.2 percent), investment banking (27.2 percent) and tech (17.0 percent). 

Brian Ruggiero, Associate Dean of Career Services, boasted that the Class of 2022, which had begun their MBA studies during the pandemic, “adapted quickly to the resulting paradigm shifts. The demand for these skills is clear,” he said, pointing to the high acceptance rates for jobs three months after graduation being on par with pre-pandemic levels, as well as the highest compensation on record. Early data for the Class of 2023 also show “strong demand for Stern talent,” he added, evidenced by a 100% success rate among seekers of internships. 

Michigan Ross MBA Class of 2022 Almost at 100% Employment

Similarly, University of Michigan Ross School of Business reported that an eye-popping 99% percent of their 2022 grads were offered jobs within three months of graduation, landing median salaries of $165,000 and a $192,270 median salary package. Both salary figures reflect a $21,000 increase over the previous year.

The B-School Selectivity Index:
Are You Competitive at Your Dream School? >>

UC Berkeley Haas, Dartmouth Tuck, and Georgetown McDonough Report Great Employment Outcomes

On the West Coast, the 2022 class at UC-Berkeley Haas School of Business had a 93.8% job offer rate, up 4% from the prior year, returning that figure to among the highest of the pre-pandemic years. The median base salary for Haas MBAs was $155,000, up by 3.7% from the previous year.

Dartmouth Tuck’s employment data released November 22 for the Class of 2022 showed that 98% of Tuck grads had job offers within three months of graduation, with median base salaries rising by 16.7% to $175,000 from $150,000 in 2021. Ninety-three percent of grads received a median signing bonus of $30,000, bumping median total compensation to $202,900, up more than 15% from last year.

Georgetown MBAs enjoyed average base salaries of $138,552, up from $126,107 last year, and an average signing bonus of $36,342. A statement from their website noted that “96% of students received a job offer within three months of graduation and 95% accepted their offers – tying last year’s placement records as the highest levels ever achieved by Full-time MBA graduates. The record-setting average salary marks a 10% increase from 2021, with bonuses increasing by 6%. 

“The outcomes presented in this report are a testament to the extraordinary talent in the Class of 2022,” said Christy Murray, associate dean and managing director of career services at Georgetown McDonough. “These students began their MBA journey amid ongoing disruptions and uncertainty from the global pandemic, yet through their hard work, perseverance, and commitment to excellence, they were well positioned to secure impactful roles in business across a wide range of industries and sectors.” 

Wharton MBAs pocketed their highest-ever median base salary of $175,000, a jump of 12.9 %. Salaries had been flat at $150,000 in 2019 and 2020, rising only to $155,000 in 2021. Within three months of graduation, 98.7% of Wharton’s MBAs seeking jobs received offers. Wharton’s 20222 employment report, released November 17, also revealed that more grads than ever found jobs in tech, despite the current flurry of layoffs and hiring freezes at tech giants Meta, Amazon, and Twitter. 

However, an article in Poets&Quants cautioned that Wharton’s impressive results in landing tech jobs may be a bit of an outlier: 

“. . . techies should be wary of seeing Wharton’s success in tech as a sign of rebound. While the raw number of Wharton MBAs finding jobs in tech is higher than ever, the percentage of the class in the industry is down slightly, as the number of job-seeking graduates in 2022 (633) is 8.2% more than in 2021 (585) as a result of Wharton enrolling larger classes at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Moreover, Whartonites’ success in landing tech gigs runs counter to many of their peer schools, where tech hiring is down — and in some cases down big — and likely points to a very different tech landscape graduates faced this summer as they rounded out their offers.”

Other MBA 2022 Jobs and Salary Stats

The following data is from Poets&Quants and underscores that whatever hardships and uncertainties students experienced while applying and earning MBAs during such a volatile period, their investments are paying off handsomely now.

• Harvard Business School grads saw a 16.3% year-to-year increase in median salary to $175,000 and median performance bonuses increase to $40,000 powered a leap in total median compensation to $223,100, a one-year jump of 17.5%.
  
  
• Virginia Darden School of Business MBAs made a median $175,000, up 21% from the Class of 2021;
  
  
• At MIT Sloan School of Management, average base salary increased 7.6% from the previous year, to $159,391, and median base salary grew 10% to $165,000; total median compensation was $204,700, up 4.7% from $195,600 last year;
  
  
• At Northwestern Kellogg School of Management, median salary for the class jumped $15,000, to $165,000, and is up 18% since the last pre-pandemic graduating class in 2019; bonuses stayed at a median $30,000, and with 87% receiving them, median total pay came out to $191,100, up 8.7% from $175,800 last year.

Soaring MBA Salaries’ Significance for Applicants

These stats reflect several factors: 

1. The enduring value of the full-time two-year MBA degree from top MBA programs.
   
   
2. Inflation, which increases salaries and will allow most of those who borrowed their tuition to pay off their debt with cheaper dollars.
   
   
3. A tight labor market in which businesses – even if we are in a recession – are willing to pay for top talent.

Many of the 2022 MBA grads applied to business school in winter and spring 2020 at the height of COVID lock-downs, social isolation, and distance learning. Unemployment hit 14.8% in April, 2020 and remained above pre-COVID levels until Fall 2021. These grads looked at the dismal events of the time, swallowed hard, and concluded that the environment is paving the way for them to obtain their MBA. As you consider whether to apply at a time of rising layoffs, possible recession, and general instability, consider the payoff that these grads have experienced by taking the plunge when they did.

Are you considering an MBA to maximize your earning potential? The stats show that the investment is worth it, but it takes an outstanding application to impress the elite schools. Our experienced MBA admissions consultants work with you one-on-one, throughout the process, to help you get ACCEPTED!

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For 25 years, Accepted has helped business school applicants gain acceptance to top programs. Our outstanding team of MBA admissions consultants features former business school admissions directors and professional writers who have guided our clients to admission at top MBA, EMBA, and other graduate business programs worldwide including Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Booth, INSEAD, London Business School, and many more. Want an MBA admissions expert to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch!

Related resources:

• Starting Salaries for MBA Grads Climbing
• M7 MBA Programs: Everything You Need to Know in 2022
• Is an MBA Worth It, or Is the Sky Falling Down on the MBA Degree?, a podcast episode

The post Class of 2022 MBAs Earn Bullish Starting Salaries appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

Are you the Harvard, Stanford, or Wharton “type?”

Each year, Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton are flooded with applicants who have great experience and powerful stats. However, most are not the applicants these programs are looking for. If these elite programs are on your radar, you need to know if you will be considered a viable candidate. And if you are, you’ll want to know the ingredients of an application that will positively wow the admissions committee. 

So if you’ve got Harvard, Stanford, or Wharton on your mind, don’t miss our on-demand webinar, What Does It Take to Get Into Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton? with MBA admissions veteran Linda Abraham, founder and president of Accepted. During this hour, Linda answers the most important questions that smart applicants ask about applying to these programs, including: 

• How can you determine ‘fit’ with the cultures of these schools?
  
  
• How do the interview processes differ in each school?
  
  
• What are the schools looking for in their essays?
  
  
• Is there even such a thing as a Harvard type? A Stanford type? A Wharton type?

And more! 

You don’t have time to waste applying to schools where you don’t fit. Instead, learn which top programs will fit like a glove! Show your business smarts by making time to watch our on-demand webinar.

Watch now:

About the Presenter:

Since founding Accepted 25 years ago, Linda has been a sought-after admissions expert for media outlets including Bloomberg Businessweek, CBS News, U.S. News, and The Wall Street Journal. She is the host of the Admissions Straight Talk podcast, co-author of MBA Admissions for Smarties, and has been a frequent contributor to Poets & Quants. Every year Linda looks forward to hearing from Accepted’s many clients who have been accepted to Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton, among other top MBA programs.

For 25 years, Accepted has helped business school applicants gain acceptance to top programs. Our outstanding team of MBA admissions consultants features former business school admissions directors and professional writers who have guided our clients to admission at top MBA, EMBA, and other graduate business programs worldwide including Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Booth, INSEAD, London Business School, and many more. Want an MBA admissions expert to help you get Accepted? Click here to get in touch!

The post What Does It Take to Get Into Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton? appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

The Wharton EMBA targets engaged professionals who have an expansive but clear vision for their future career. Further, Wharton seeks students who incorporate social and ethical values in their vision and actions. Wharton is very transparent about one value that it currently esteems: diversity – and hence it asks applicants to address diversity directly.

Wharton Executive MBA application essays

Wharton Executive MBA essay #1

What are your career objectives and how will the Wharton MBA Program for Executives contribute to your attainment of this objective? (500 word limit)

An effective (and natural) way to start is to briefly introduce your career objectives (your career vision) along with a specific substantiating element such as a statistic, an observation, an experience.

Then get into the nitty-gritty of the path you envision. You might start with your current career situation and move forward detailing your future career plans – in doing so, clarify how each step leads to the next or builds on the previous one, creating an organic flow. Most important, clarify why you are pursuing that path; this “why” is the real objective and animates your goals, elevating them from explanation to human story and engaging vision. Put more detail into the roles you plan immediately post-MBA and the several years following; longer-term goals need less detail, but should reflect your vision at a higher, more macro level.

In discussing how the program will benefit you, describe what skills and knowledge you need for future roles/positions and how the program meets those needs. Don’t just list courses and professors; refer to the structure and special features of the program, detailing how they will support you and your goals. Structurally, there are two basic approaches to this part: (a) weave in the “Why Wharton?” details after each goals phase, or (b) have a separate “Why Wharton?” paragraph containing this entire discussion holistically. You could also mix (a) and (b), adding brief “Why Wharton?” points into the goals discussion and an additional paragraph with more encompassing “Why Wharton?” points.

Check out the rest of our school-specific EMBA application essay tips >>

Wharton Executive MBA essay #2

Research has shown that there is a compelling business case for diversity, equity, and inclusion in organizations. Please respond to one of the following essay options: (500 word limit)

2a. Provide an example of how you created or advocated for a work environment where differences are valued, encouraged, and supported. What did you do? What was the outcome?

2b. Describe an experience when you were part of an event/meeting/workplace that involved diverse perspectives. Include your contribution and what you learned.

Please take a moment to learn how the University of Pennsylvania endeavors to make everyone feel welcome: Diversity at Wharton

Do spend some time reviewing the various information and stories at the “Diversity at Wharton” or “Diversity & Inclusion at Wharton’s EMBA” links, as it will help guide your topic selection and approach. Note that both 2a and 2b ask for a concrete story or anecdote – actual experience. It’s relatively easy to talk “about” diversity in a buzz-wordy way; the adcom wants evidence of active engagement with the concept. 

To select the question and topic that works best for you – that best supports and enhances your application – look for stories that are not portrayed elsewhere in the application and that show a fresh dimension of you and/or your experience, that are relatively recent, that reflect meaningful impact, and that are consistent with Wharton’s diversity message. For either essay question, I suggest jumping right into the story, narrating the experience with more detail at pivotal points. For question 2b, conclude with a short reflection summarizing what you learned – be specific and avoid bland, generic sounding messages about diversity. For question 2a, you could also add a reflection at the end, if you have a point to express, with the same caveats noted for 2b.

Wharton Executive MBA essay #3 (Optional)

If necessary, you may use this optional essay to explain any extenuating circumstances of which the Admissions Committee should be aware. (300 word limit)

Only use this essay if you need to address extenuating circumstances. That includes issues such as a gap in the resume, a bad grade, not having a supervisor provide a recommendation.

Wharton Executive MBA reapplicant essay

What have you been doing since you previously applied for admission and what impact have your activities had on the clarification of your goals? Include any steps you have taken to enhance your preparation for admission to Wharton. (300 word limit)

Reapplicants must show some growth from the previous application for an effective new application, and this essay allows you to laser focus on that growth and corresponding insight without its complicating the main essays. Ideally you’ll have some worthwhile professional experiences to include in “what you have been doing since you previously applied” – but feel free to include non-work activities as well, as long as they have further clarified your goals in some way. “Any steps… to enhance your preparation” can include things like improving test scores, taking relevant courses, researching goals in some way, enhancing your network, etc.

For expert guidance with your Wharton EMBA application, check out Accepted’s MBA Application Packages, which include comprehensive guidance from an experienced admissions consultant. We’ve helped hundreds of applicants get accepted to top EMBA and MBA programs and look forward to helping you too!

Wharton EMBA application deadlines for 2022-2023

Source: Wharton website

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Wharton Executive MBA Class Profile: Class of 2023

Here’s a look at Wharton’s EMBA Class of 2023 (profile info from Wharton website):

Wharton EMBA class of 2023 facts and figures

Total class size: 234

Women: 33%

Underrepresented minority students: 16%

Countries represented: 36

Average age: 37

• Under 30: 5%
  
• Over 40: 16%

Average years of work experience: 12

Median GMAT score: 710

Middle 80% GMAT range: 680-750

Students holding advanced degrees: 51%

Median salary and bonus: $220,500

Sponsored by Employer (>50% financial support): 28%

Industries represented

• Advertising/PR
  
• Aerospace & Defense
  
• Agribusiness
  
• Automotive & Transportation
  
• Biotech/Pharmaceutical
  
• Chemicals
  
• Computer Hardware/Electronics
  
• Consulting
  
• Consumer Goods & Retail
  
• Diversified Financial Services
  
• Education
  
• Energy/Utilities
  
• Food & Beverage
  
• Government/Military
  
• Health Care
  
• Insurance
  
• Internet Services
  
• Investment Banking/Brokerage
  
• Investment Management
  
• Manufacturing
  
• Media/Entertainment/Sports
  
• Not-for-Profit/Social Enterprise/Impact Investing
  
• Pharmaceuticals/Biotech
  
• Private Equity/Venture Capital
  
• Professional Services
  
• Real Estate
  
• Technology Services/Computer Software
  
• Telecommunications
  
• Transportation
  
• Travel/Hospitality
  

Are you considering an EMBA? We have the resources to help you navigate the options and make the right choice for you:

• EMBA: The Ultimate Guide for Applicants
  
  
• How to Get Accepted to a Top EMBA Program: The Experts Speak, a podcast episode
  
  
• MBA Options: Full-Time MBA vs. Part-Time MBA vs. Executive MBA
  
  
• Essays: How to Make an Impact [Sample Essay]
  
  
• 5 Key Elements for Your Executive MBA Application

Related Resources:

• Ace the EMBA: Expert Advice for the Rising Executive, a free guide
• EMBA: The Ultimate Guide for Applicants
• Wharton’s Executive MBA, Where East and West Meet and Mix, a podcast episode

The post Wharton Executive MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines [2022-2023], Class Profile appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

[powerpress]

Discover what opportunities the Wharton Lauder MBA program offers [Show Summary]

Kara Keenan Sweeney, Director of Admissions Marketing and Financial Aid at the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Penn Law School shares how the program continues to offer global opportunities during a COVID influenced world.

[Show Notes]

Welcome to the 465th episode of Admissions Straight Talk. Thanks for joining me today and whenever you’re able to tune in. The featured resource for today’s show is Fitting in and Standing Out: The Paradox at the Heart of Admissions. Your application needs to show that you’re going to do both, and that’s the difficult paradox at the heart of admissions. Master that paradox, and you are well on your way to acceptance. Download the free guide.

It gives me great pleasure to introduce Kara Keenan Sweeney, Director of Admissions Marketing and Financial Aid at the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Penn Law School. Kara has an extensive background in graduate admissions, starting with her master’s in higher administration at Columbia, and then moving onto admissions positions at INSEAD, the University of Pennsylvania, Penn State, and now the Lauder Institute. 

Can you give us an overview of the Wharton Lauder program for those listeners who aren’t that familiar with it? [1:45]

The Lauder program was founded in the mid-1980s by the Lauder family to work with Wharton to help educate and generate a new, globally-minded group of business leaders. When students come to the Lauder Institute, they’re earning a Master of Arts in International Studies at the same time, they’re getting their MBA from Wharton. Basically, it’s an MA/MBA joint degree fully integrated into the MBA program. 

When students come to Lauder, they focus on one of our six programs of concentration. Five of those programs are regionally focused. We have a program on Africa, East and Southeast Asia, Europe, Latin America, and then what we call the SAMENA region or South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. That’s our fifth regional program. We also have a global program for our students who have already had fairly significant global experience.

In our regional program students are almost in every case also focused on a language. We have 10 languages of instruction at Lauder. When they come to Lauder they’re already speaking a language at an advanced level, and then they’ll continue to work on that language until they get to the superior or the fluent level over the two years as part of their studies at Lauder. It’s a fully integrated joint degree. We have a small program with about 70 to 80 students a year. It’s a really international community and just an amazing group to be a part of.

Are you also a joint program with the law school? [3:22]

That’s right. Thanks for highlighting that. We do have a joint agreement with the law school as well. Each year we have a handful of students that do it. It’s not really by design; it’s a little bit by default. The law school has just less than 200 students a year over at Penn Law. Wharton is up to about 900. There are just a lot more MBA students.

The Wharton program was founded to really work and fit in specifically with the Wharton school way back when it was founded. Our law school partnership is a little bit more recent, but in the class that’s starting this summer, we actually have three incoming JD students. We’re really happy to have them in the program. We love to have them, but we just tend to have fewer of them.

Does the Lauder Institute only work with applicants interested in dual degrees? [4:13]

Exactly. Lauder only offers a joint degree. Students take about two classes a semester at Lauder. They take their normal Wharton course load or their normal course load over at Penn Law. At Lauder, we borrow the credits from the other degree so that they can graduate with both because some of the Lauder courses count towards the Wharton degree and vice versa. But no, we don’t offer standalone degrees, only a joint degree program for students in one of the other graduate programs at Penn.

Does the dual degree program take the same amount of time as just an MBA or JD degree? [4:46]

Exactly. For Lauder, if you’re doing law school, you complete your first year of law school at Penn Law independent of Lauder. Then your second and third years would be as part of the Lauder program. 

At Wharton, you actually start Lauder first. We have a summer term that preempts the Wharton program and then you start the Wharton program in August each year and then you graduate on time with the rest of your Wharton class two years later.

Has anybody ever tried to do an MBA/JD with the Lauder program? [5:20]

I think it’s a little bit hard considering the coursework, the requirements, and also the cap on the number of classes you can take. You can do a joint degree, but I think triple is hard. We actually have an alum who did the MBA and Lauder simultaneously and then later on went to law school and did three years of a JD program. I think it’s almost impossible to do all three at once.

We definitely have some students who are interested in both. The other partnership that you can do with Wharton is the healthcare management program. We actually get the question a lot from applicants, “Can I do Lauder and the healthcare program?” You can’t do both at the same time, however, you can do Wharton Lauder and then take a lot of the healthcare courses. For anyone who’s interested in international healthcare, whatever the case may be, you can do Wharton and Lauder and still take a lot of the healthcare coursework and program. 

How has Wharton Lauder, a program that reveled in travel, adapted and adjusted its plans during the pandemic? [6:32]

Just like the rest of the world, we were particularly affected a lot in terms of graduate programming, because as you mentioned so much of our programming is focused on the immersions for our students. Historically, all of our students have done a summer immersion as well as other immersions over the two years of the program. In March 2020, we put a halt to all travel, not just at Lauder, but throughout the university. We were really thankful that our two largest classes came through over those two years of COVID. We have 80 students in each of our current classes. 

Last summer, we were able to actually have the students come to Philadelphia and do a Philadelphia immersion, which was great considering most of our students are not from Philadelphia. A lot of our students are from outside of the U.S. actually so it was great for them to be able to come to campus.

The classes were virtual, but we did have a lot of Philly cultural experiences for our students. They were able to take tours. They explored some of the different ethnic neighborhoods in Philly. There was a lot that they could do in Philadelphia. Last year all of our students were taking classes virtually, but there were opportunities for students to meet outdoors. We moved most of our programming online pretty seamlessly. I think our students were still able to build culture and build community. Of course, in the language classes, a lot of those things still took place. The great news is that as of last August, our students were actually able to start traveling again. We had about a year-long pause on travel, which of course was not just us, but everyone really and then last August we had our first intercultural venture start up again.

The students went to Alaska to study indigenous communities, which was great. A little later on, in the fall of October, we had a group of students go to Iceland to study gender equity and women entrepreneurship. We were one of the first groups at Penn and certainly at Wharton and Lauder to start traveling again. Our students have been doing smaller immersions and actually right now over spring break, all of our students are traveling. We have about four locations around the world. Senegal, Israel, Poland-Hungary, and India.

We’re fully ramped up. We’ve also had students traveling and doing research as part of their master thesis project with the Global Knowledge Lab and we’re planning on summer immersions taking place this coming summer of 2022. I would say things are fairly robustly returning to normal for Lauder. Maybe not fully the way they looked pre-COVID but quite similar to the way they were in the past.

How is the war in Ukraine affecting travel and the Lauder immersion program to Poland and Hungary? [9:43]

All of us were cautious about the students traveling to Poland and Hungary during this time. They are in safe locations. Initially, with the world and how volatile it is right now, we were concerned about COVID protocols. Of course, the students had to test and do everything they would do as part of the country’s requirements. That was our focus pretty much leading up to the trip, then of course the terrible situation with Ukraine happened. Our students still did go. In fact, they’re blogging about their experience, which will be part of some of the social media posts that we have over the next couple of weeks about their experience going to these countries during this time.

Right now we’re trying to maintain as much normalcy as we can for our students. There have been different ways for our students to seek out support if they feel like they need to do that as part of what’s going on. Of course, we have students coming from that part of the world or have family origins in that part of the world, and really everyone’s affected at this point, whether it’s directly or indirectly.

We’re making sure we’re there for our students in sort of an emotional support way and also making sure we educate our students. In the last couple of weeks, I can’t tell you the number of talks, sessions, and lunchtime talks that there have been at Lauder and throughout the university on the situation so our students can understand it better. We have alumni hosting events as well. There’s a strong focus on that region, but also a strong desire to have things be as normal as possible for our students now and of course, going into the summer as well.

How do you go through an application? [11:53]

The great thing with Lauder is you can actually apply simultaneously with your application to Wharton. You complete the Wharton application online, your Wharton essays, letters of recommendation, standardized tests, and then within the Wharton application, you indicate that you’re also interested in applying to Lauder. It’s a supplemental application built into the Wharton application online. 

For Lauder, we ask for a couple of specific things. We ask for the results of your language score. All of our students who apply to Lauder have to take something called the Oral Proficiency Interview or OPI. It’s administered by a third company called The Language Testing Institute.

For anyone who’s listening, you can find all of that information on our website. It’s actually quite a good resource. There are audio clips of language tests that have taken place in the past and also more helpful information on preparing for the OPI. Our students take the OPI, it’s a 30-minute phone conversation in a different language. In order to be admitted to Lauder,  students have to test at least at the advanced low level or above in one of the 10 languages that we teach. 

If they’re interested in applying to our global or our Africa general track, they have to test a superior level in any language other than English. Essentially that means being fully bilingual. It can be in their native language provided it’s not English. That’s for anybody who’s a non-native English speaker who also, of course, is fluent in English. The global program is designed for students who have had fairly significant international experience already and are looking for more of a macro level experience studying global studies from that wider lens, looking at issues across regions, that sort of thing.

Our Africa general track is also for students who are fluent in any language other than English, and are interested in focusing on the entire continent of Africa. Historically, we had called it the Anglophone Africa track, but that was kind of a misnomer because our students were really studying the entire continent, not just English-speaking Africa. We also have an Africa Francophone track which is for students who can test at the advanced level in French. The language component is important as part of the application as well as over the duration of the two years in the program. 

Does every Lauder participant know at least two languages? [14:38]

Yes, I would say every Lauder applicant has advanced knowledge of a language in addition to English. English is the language of instruction at Wharton and a lot of classes at Lauder. You also have to be either fluent or advanced in any language other than English, or one of the 10 languages that we teach at Lauder. 

What are the 10 languages that you teach at Lauder? [15:02]

I’ll break it down by program of concentration. For Africa, we have a French track. For our Europe program, we offer Spanish, Russian, French, and German. For Latin America, we offer Spanish and Portuguese. In Eastern and Southeast Asia, we have Mandarin, Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Our last program of concentration is the SAMENA track and we offer Arabic and Hindi. Those are the 10 languages. When you’re applying to the program, you’re taking an OPI in one of those 10 languages if you plan to pursue regional studies with language. Or you’re taking the OPI in any language other than English for our Africa general or global program.

What about students who speak a different language outside of the 10 offered languages? [15:52]

We only have 10 languages right now. We are always adding more. A few years ago we added Korean. We have seen interest in a Vietnamese track. We’re getting a lot more interest with students in that language profile. It’s not to say that we won’t add languages, but right now those are our 10 languages. There are opportunities through the school of arts and sciences to take advanced language in some of the classes that Lauder doesn’t teach, but we have a formula for Lauder. It’s those regional programs with one of the 10 languages global Africa track. 

The other components of the application are two essays for Lauder. Our first essay asks you to talk a little bit about why you’re interested in Lauder and why you’re applying to your chosen program of concentration. Our second essay is actually new this year. We ask applicants to talk about what they might like to research as part of the master thesis project at Lauder.

For those who are unfamiliar with that, it’s called the Global Knowledge Lab. It’s definitely another opportunity to go to our website and read about the GKL, as we call it, to learn a little bit more about the project. Basically, it’s a master thesis project. Students can write about virtually anything that they’re interested in doing, as long as it relates to their program of concentration. We’ve had students write about things coming from the arts and entertainment perspective and the sports world. We’ve had students write about blockchain, finance, history. Some of our students have actually leveraged the GKL to transition to a job after Lauder. We had a student a few years back who wrote about the NBA in China and was able, through contacts that he made, to take a job with the National Hockey League in New York. He was really able to leverage that research. We’ve had other students work on just passion projects. A few years ago, we had a student who was really interested in the history of North Africa so he wrote about that even though that’s not his personal background. It’s just an opportunity for our students to do master’s research as part of the MA degree. It’s definitely different from what you would do at the MBA program and they’ll actually do on the ground research as well to build research.

The second component of the GKL project is a group project. When students are approaching the application, they don’t need to know fully what they would like to research. They’re not committed to it, but we want them to understand that the master’s thesis project is a big part of Lauder. You’ll have a ton of support as you do this project over two years, but we want you to be thinking about what you might like to research. Show us that you’ve gone to the website and have read a little bit about what the GKL is so you’re coming fully educated on what the project is.  

Do you plan to keep the same application questions for next year? [19:07]

That’s a great question. We’re not totally done with this admission cycle. I think we might revert to having one question that encompasses two parts. There are two required essays for Wharton and two for Lauder. We realize that’s four essays to apply to the program. Presumably, we’re not the only program you’re applying to, so we want to be mindful of the applicants and how much time they’re devoting to it. I think that knowing why you’re applying to Lauder, your chosen program of concentration, and knowing what you might like to research as part of the GKL will still be part of the essay questions in some form whether they’re duplicative of what we have this year, perhaps not but I think you can think about that as part of your applications.

So the OPI and essays are two really big things. We’ll ask you to tell us a little bit about any international experience that you’ve had. We look at that as three months or more outside of your home country. 

When you submit your application, it is a joint application to both programs. I emphasize that because your application is not reviewed independently by two admissions committees. It’s reviewed jointly. The Lauder admissions committee actually takes the lead with the review of your application. Myself, my colleague, our second-year students, who are trained to read applications, will read your Wharton and Lauder application from start to finish and we’re actually trained to evaluate your Wharton application as well. We’ll read your Wharton essays, all of that in tandem with your Lauder application.

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The good thing about that is you’re only evaluated in the pool for the Wharton Lauder pool. So with Wharton and Lauder, it’s a highly self-selected group of applicants who have applied to the program. They know the language requirement. They’ve had some international experience. They want to do two degrees. Often, people will be concerned that they disadvantage themselves by applying to Lauder, but really it’s kind of the inverse. You’re actually only applying amongst a much smaller pool of really highly qualified applicants versus the 5,000-7,000 applications that Wharton gets.

We do make a joint decision with Wharton. We’ll meet as part of a joint admissions committee so that you’re jointly offered admission to both programs, but Lauder does take the lead with that application review. The last component for the Lauder application is actually after you’ve submitted it. For Lauder, there is a dedicated interview in addition to the Wharton team-based discussion. You’ll do the normal Wharton application interview process and then at Lauder, you’ll have about a 30-minute interview with a current student or an alum or a staff member specifically focused on your interest at the Lauder program.

What gets you excited about an application to Lauder? [22:42]

Most of our applicants are coming with, not necessarily tons of international experience, but we do see that most of our students have had some international exposure. It’s sort of a given that they’ll have that. What excites me about an application is when they can tie that into the program, to their interests at Lauder, and to their long-term goals. Seeing how it’s relevant not just to something really interesting on their resume or interesting on their CV, but something that really is telling about what they’ll bring to the classroom. Maybe you spent two years working in Egypt after you graduated from college, that’s great. Maybe you were working, let’s say you were doing consulting, but what did you learn that are the intangibles that you can bring to the classroom, to the class discussion?

Really, what we’re looking for at Lauder is evidence of that cultural or global mindset that you don’t necessarily have as perhaps somebody who spends time outside of your own country. You can seek that out or you could kind of live in that bubble that some people tend to do when they travel or work abroad. It’s important for our applicants to show evidence to the admissions committee that they’re really culturally curious about the world, they see the value of culture and language. Travel is an amazing experience, but I think learning from that and what you can bring back to the classroom and then take to your profession gives you those intangible skills. I think that’s really important. Bring that to your essays, bring that to your interview discussion. I think it’s really important to show us that you have the soft skills as well in addition to that, maybe on-the-ground experience outside of your own country.

What is the wrong way to approach these questions? [24:38]

It’s something so simple but we do see it every year, it’s folks who have not done their research. It’s such a simple thing to do and spend some time reviewing the website, listening to a podcast, reviewing a webinar or video, really learning about the program so when you’re approaching the essays, you’re telling us specifically why you’re interested in the program, specific classes for faculty members or the opportunity, what you really would like to research, showing that you’ve done your research on what the GKL project is.

We have students or applicants who will write essays about how much they love to travel and how they’ve traveled to so many countries. That’s great, I love to travel too, but you really want to make it a substantive argument about why a master of arts dual degree program makes sense for you as part of your MBA studies. Show us how you see that adding value to your student experience as a business school student, how you see it adding value to your career goals, and show us that you really understand what Lauder is. I think some people just see the master of arts and international studies and think they get to travel, but really it’s about showing us you understand the different components of the program. 

What about the applicant who is multilingual, has international experience and global career goals but their undergraduate GPA is not something they’re terribly proud of? [25:50]

The great thing about Wharton when we’re taught how to review is really to look at the application from a read-to-admit perspective. I think that’s an amazing way to approach the application review from the standpoint of an admissions reader and also from the standpoint of an applicant. We’re definitely looking at what is amazing about this applicant. We are not looking for reasons to ding an applicant. We’re looking for reasons to admit them. 

I’ve gotten this question a ton throughout my career from applicants. Nothing ever boils down to a GMAT or GRE score or a GPA. You need to think about your application and show evidence to the committee. Really what we’re looking for when we talk about GPA or, or standardized test scores, is if you can handle the rigor of the program and on the Wharton side. Obviously, the first term is very heavily quantitative. Can you handle the quantitative rigor? Have you taken calculus? Do you have some of the preparatory work that’s going to help you handle that? On the Lauder side, we’re looking to see that you’ve written a research paper or have taken some arts and sciences classes.

Sure, we’re going to look for those things. Having said that, we absolutely have students in the programs who are below the average in terms of their standardized test scores or with the GPA that maybe they’re not crazy about. Something applicants can do is utilize the optional essay as part of the application. Don’t just tell us, you have a 2.5 GPA and a 550 GMA without any context. Let us know, you were working full time while you were going to college. 

Maybe you were an undergraduate with a major in history, but you’ve taken post-bacc coursework and stats or some other quantitative courses that would help you prepare for an MBA. That’s a great thing to do by the way if you don’t have a strong math background or you didn’t take math classes as an undergraduate. Go online and take a couple of classes. Focus on quantitative work so you can brush up on that skill set.

Did you only take the GMAT and GRE once? If you only took it once and you didn’t do great, it kind of makes sense to do it again so you can improve your score. Give us some color there if you’re at all concerned about it. Most of our applicants have some quantitative aspect to their job so highlight that. Maybe you’re not a great test taker, but maybe you’re running numbers all day at work and you’re doing really well, then have your recommenders highlight that in their recommendations.

Think about other ways in your application in which you can bring in those strengths that you think might look a little negative in one part of your application and see how you can offset that in other parts of your application. You can do this through your essays, recommendations, the optional essay, and then of course, perhaps taking some preparatory work pre-MBA coursework to show that you can do this work and that you can handle it. They’re definitely not doomed, but really think through strategically about approaching the application so you can be successful.

Is it possible to refer an applicant from the Lauder pool to the regular MBA admissions if you see they’ll be a better fit there? [31:08]

I’m glad you asked that because we do get that question a lot as well. On the application, applicants can check a box that indicates if they’re not admitted to Lauder, they would still like to be considered for the Wharton-only program. Be sure to check that box if you’re still interested in Wharton. In reviewing the application, we actually have the ability to do exactly what you’re saying, “This person for X, Y, and Z reason isn’t maybe a fit for Lauder, but would be great for Wharton.” 

In the actual admissions committee, when we’re going through every applicant, we’ll maybe talk about, “Hey, this person really doesn’t have international exposure.” We do sometimes have people who apply before they have their language score, they get their language score, and no matter how hard they work on it, they’re not able to get to our minimum score of advanced low. In that case, we really can’t admit them for Lauder, but they can certainly be admitted for Wharton. Each year there are a handful of students who are admitted to Wharton only. I would say if you’re a good fit for Lauder and you’ve got a great Wharton application, there’s really no reason why you wouldn’t be admitted unless it’s something really glaring like the language score or something like that. But yes, you absolutely will still be considered for Wharton only if for some reason Lauder isn’t fit.

What is the Lauder interview like? [32:28]

It’s probably a little bit more to what our applicants might be thinking about in a typical MBA interview, but a 30-minute conversation. We’ve been doing them over Zoom for the last couple of years but historically we have done them on campus or really all over the world for a lot based on where our applicants are living. So if you’re in Tokyo, or London, or São Paulo, we have alums in all of these places who can conduct interviews. Right now we’re doing them on Zoom, we’ll see if that continues. For Lauder, it’s really a couple of things. The most important thing for us is why not just Wharton on its own? Why Lauder? What’s key about the Lauder program that you won’t get through Wharton on its own? Of course at Wharton, you can travel. There mini immersions that you can do but what are you really looking to gain through Luader? Why does our program make sense for you? 

We’ll ask about short and long-term goals. We’ll ask about your language skills. Why do you want to study a language if that’s a part of the program for you? What would you like to research? We’ll ask for evidence of that cross-cultural mindset. We’ll ask you to give some examples of times when you were dealing with a cultural barrier that you had to navigate. They’re our typical straightforward questions. I don’t think anything that’ll be too shocking, but definitely good for our applicants to prepare for that, similar to how you would for a job interview. I always tell people you want to come prepared, bring your resume, be prepared to talk about your strengths, about your gaps, about your goals. 

Where do a lot of grads get you jobs? [33:58]

We have the usual suspects to some extent in terms of post MBA outcomes for Lauder students with a caveat that a lot of our students are doing that work may be for Amazon, or McKinsey, or in finance internationally. We have quite a lot of international students at Lauder who are looking to stay in the U.S. for a couple of years and gain some U.S. experience. They’re going to New York or to the West Coast or to Chicago, wherever the case may be. We also have students whether they’re from the U.S. or not looking to work in region. I would say students come to Lauder for a couple of reasons. Some of them are really going to work the two years because they want to do private equity in China or private equity in Nigeria and that is the focus for them. So they focus, they work on their language, they work on all of these things to have that as a job.

For some of our students, it’s private equity anywhere. It doesn’t matter. So maybe the industry or the role is the primary driver and location is second or third. But our typical outcomes are technology. Amazon is the number one hire for Wharton and Lauder for the past couple of years. Not by a huge number, but definitely number one and after that it’s consulting and financial services but we are seeing an increasing number of students go into social impact, into NGOs, into some development work. 

Of course, each year we see more and more students both at Wharton and Lauder interested in entrepreneurship. So I would say those are the five areas that jump out which are fairly similar to the MBA. We see about one out of every three Lauder students working outside of their home country after graduation with a lot of the international students wanting to stay in the U.S. for a few years.

Here are some questions from an international listener. “Why are most compulsory admission essay prompts so personal? On a personal note, I cried trying to unearth memories I had buried so deeply, so I could write truthfully. It was a worthwhile experience and a reconciliation with the past that made me feel very vulnerable.” Is vulnerability in an essay whether perceived, real, or imagined a good element? [35:41]

I don’t know about vulnerability in particular, but I would say when you’re writing your essays, you want to draw from your personal experiences. Business schools are looking to bring students who have had interesting professional experiences and have a strong aptitude for whatever they’re looking to do afterward, but they’re also looking to bring in good community members. I know that’s a big focus for Wharton in particular. You don’t have to tell us a sob story about your upbringing. The funny thing is, I do feel like now we’re seeing more and more personal stories come to light whether applicants think that’s what we want to read or not. I feel some of our applicants now generationally are maybe more attuned to talking about themselves on a personal level. I feel that years back, you would have seen people keeping it very professional.

I think it’s good to have a combination. It’s not a therapy session. I don’t think you need to go to the heart of something that you would find upsetting. I think you want to write about something that’s really personal and important to you, but also something that has practical applications to the community of Wharton, perhaps in some ways your professional experience, your backgrounds, your goals. Think of it in a practical or strategic way.

I don’t think you need to get so personal with us that it leaves you feeling uncomfortable. You want to feel like you wrote a good essay that shows part of your character and how you can bring that strong character to the graduate program. For Lauder, our essays are a bit more directive in terms of academic experiences, but of course, we’re bringing individuals to our programs and we want to make sure they’re good community members. Some of those essays are looking to find that you’re going to be a good contributor.

The second question from our listener is, “How do you consider international students who apply to universities and cannot pay at least 5% to 10% of the fees? Do you get irritated and wonder if they consider the university a charity home?” [38:20]

No, definitely not. We have a ton of international students at Lauder. We have students coming from all over the world, of course, where there are huge disparate salaries but we do expect that students have done their research and frankly, I don’t know of a ton of students receiving 100% full funding to both programs. At Lauder, we’re very lucky to be very generously funded by the Lauder family. For Lauder, most of our students are receiving the average award for fellowships of $40,000 and the cost of the program is around $45,000 to $50,000 each year, depending on some of the travel components.

Most of the Lauder students are actually receiving full or near to full funding for the Lauder program. On the Wharton side, you have to approach it as if you’re applying to an elite business school. It’s a huge investment. Studies on MBA programs show that within five years, the return on investment is really worthwhile. You have to think about the financials. Do you want to take out a loan? The average student isn’t getting full funding.

When we’re reading your application, we’re not thinking about that at all. We’re looking at the quality of your application. In terms of finance and funding, that comes after you’ve been admitted to the program. For Lauder, every student who comes to Lauder is admitted to the program and receives at least a merit-based award and then you have the opportunity at Lauder to apply for need-based funding on top of that. At Wharton, they have generous funding, but again, not everybody is getting a full scholarship. You have to come into it knowing that realistically, you’re probably going to have to fund part of the program through your loans or through your financing.

What would you have liked me to ask you? [40:30]

That’s a good question. You asked me a little bit about what makes me excited about reading an application. I think maybe one question is like, “What’s our ideal student?” It’s sort of unfair to say there is such a thing as an ideal student. I think something that maybe is probably more practical is, “What makes a successful student in the program? What do we see from the application stage which then makes them successful?” 

In talking about the community aspect or being a good community member, I think that’s more and more important as years go by, especially with what COVID taught us. You’re going to have unprecedented challenges. COVID of course, is this huge world crisis that kind of threw us all for a loop and hopefully, we don’t experience something else like that in our lifetime, but for our students, when they’re in the program and long term, they’re always going to have challenges that are thrown their way whether they’re big or small. Know that coming to a rigorous place like Wharton and Lauder, you’re going to be very busy, you’re going to have a ton of demands, but still make an effort to be a good community member, to be collegial, to be kind, to have these intangibles. 

Of course, with COVID in the U.S., we had a big societal upheaval with Black Lives Matter and other sorts of social crises, political change in the country. I think everyone is feeling in general worn out from the last couple of years. Knowing that experience has been really difficult for everyone, whether you’re a student, a staff member at a university, a professor and coming to the program and filming with the mindset of being a good community member, somebody who’s going to make a good contribution, be positive, patient, be kind I think those are the things that I personally am looking for to see in applicants, in addition to having a strong academic and professional background. 

Where can listeners and potential applicants learn more about the Wharton Institute’s joint MA/MBA and MA/JD programs? [43:03]

You can learn more about Lauder by going to our site, which is lauder.wharton.upenn.edu.

Related Links:

• Wharton Lauder Admissions
• Wharton MBA Essay Tips
• A Wharton-Lauder Student Chats About Management Leaders of Tomorrow and the Value of Time
• Get Accepted to Wharton Webinar
• Accepted’s MBA Admissions Consulting Services

Related Shows:

• What’s New at Wharton MBA
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The post Applying to Wharton Lauder? Do Your Research! [Episode 465] appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

Chicago Booth and Wharton (University of Pennsylvania) share the #1 spotlight in U.S. News’ Best Business Schools of 2023 rankings, released March 29.

The metrics for the rankings are based on career placement success, student excellence and qualitative assessments by experts. MBA rankings are studied voraciously by applicants, students, and alumni but remain controversial. 

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Notable changes this year

• Chicago Booth’s rise reflected improvements on several metrics: a class GMAT score up by six points to 730; an acceptance that fell by five points to 22.6%; a higher score by corporate recruiters that now matches Harvard and Wharton; and a spike in average salary and sign-on bonus for last year’s MBA grads of $7,300 to a record $180,144–the second-highest of any business school. (NYU Stern had the highest of all schools at $181,803.) Placement for the Class of 2021 jumped five points three months after graduation, at 96.4%. 
  
  
• Wharton’s acceptance rate dropped by 4.9 percentage points to 18.2% and their average GMAT score rose by one point. Wharton MBAs enjoyed a jump in average salary and signing bonuses by $6,600 to $179,692, the second-highest of all schools behind only Booth. Job placement three months after commencement moved up by 3.3 percentage points to 96.8%.
  
  
• Top-ranked schools continued to jostle for position, with some flagship programs rising and others falling. Stanford’s GSB dropped by three notches, tying with Kellogg (Northwestern) for #3. Harvard and MIT Sloan remain tied at #5–no change from last year. Yale University’s SOM notched its highest ranking ever at #7, with Columbia and Haas (UC Berkeley) nipping at its heels, sharing the #8 ranking. Yale’s rise stemmed from a six-point rise in its average GMAT score to 726; a drop of six percentage points on its acceptance rate to 23.6%; and a dramatic 8.8 percentage improvement on its placement rate three months after graduation to 94.1%.
  
  
• Harvard Business School’s fifth-place showing reflects a surprisingly low employment at graduation of 69.0%, lower than any other Top 10 school. Its placement rate three months after graduation was 92.3%, the second-lowest for a Top 10 program. And the average salary and bonus for Harvard’s MBAs last year was $172,774, lower than seven other U.S. business schools. Harvard lost out on other metrics as well, including a higher admit rate of 12.5%, up from 9.2% last year, and average GMAT and undergrad GPAs that were lower than many other competitors. 
  
  
• Ross (University of Michigan) ascended into the Top 10 from #13, while Tuck (Dartmouth College) dropped to #11. Stern (NYU) and Fuqua (Duke University) share the #12 spot. Many other programs in the top 25 leaped forward, including Emory University’s Goizueta Business School, rising five places to #21 and Mendoza College of Business (Notre Dame) gaining 11 places to rank 25th. 
  
  
• Outside the Top 25, Washington University’s Olin Business School in St. Louis rose seven spots to #29 and the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business rose eight positions to place #47.

While U.S. News had dropped standardized test scores from its online MBA ranking earlier this year, it kept the average class GMAT and GRE scores in its formula for the full-time program rankings. 

The rankings were based on a survey of all 493 institutions with master’s-level business programs in the U.S. accredited by AACSB International. A total of 363 survey recipients responded; the final rankings are based on 134 business schools that provided enough data on their full-time MBA programs and had large enough 2021 graduating classes seeking employment for valid comparisons. The rankings also include some programs conferring degrees such as Master of Science in Management and Master of Science in Industrial Administration.

U.S. News 2023 Top 10 Full-Time MBA Programs

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U.S. News 2023 Top 10 Part-Time MBA Programs

Hoping to start business school in 2023 at one of these top-ranked programs? Check out our MBA Admissions Consulting & Editing Services and work one-on-one with an expert consultant to create an application that will get you ACCEPTED!

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Related Resources:

• Do MBA Rankings Matter?
• Top 10 or Bust: Dispelling 2 MBA Myths
• Is an MBA Worth It, or Is the Sky Falling Down on the MBA Degree?
• Financial Times Ranks Wharton as #1
• M7 MBA Programs: Everything You Need to Know

The post U.S. News MBA Rankings 2023 [Full-Time & Part-Time] appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

The Financial Times has released its global rankings of the best MBA programs and has considerably shuffled the deck. Several top-ranked programs fell several notches, while others rose considerably. For the first time since 2011, Wharton has returned to its status as #1 in FT’s list. 

Other programs that made giant strides in the rankings include Columbia Business School (ranked 8th in 2020), and Kellogg (Northwestern), now #5 (11th place in 2020). One reason for such huge fluctuations was that five of the top U.S. programs (Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT, and Columbia) were not listed at all last year at all, skewing that year’s results. 

Other highly rated programs that suffered serious tumbles in the rankings include London Business School, Tuck (Dartmouth), and UVA Darden. In fact, 69 of the 91 schools ranked fell in the rankings, many of them by double digits.  

Compared with last year, many of these schools’ rankings looked like riders on a roller coaster, with some plunging far below and others rising by as much as 20 points to unprecedented heights. 

As we have cautioned before, it’s vital to keep these rankings in perspective. They are based on many variables that have little or nothing to do with the quality of the curricula per se.

Do you see yourself in one of these top programs? Find out how working one-on-one with one of our Admissions Consultants can help get you ACCEPTED!

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Related Resources:

• Top 10 or Bust: Dispelling 2 MBA Myths
• Top MBA Programs Get STEM-Certified to Attract Int’l Students
• B-School Selectivity Index: Discover the Schools Where You are a Competitive Applicant

The post Financial Times Ranks Wharton as #1 in 2022 Rankings appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

Looking for the best possible admissions advice?

How about admissions advice from the admission committee members themselves?

Linda Abraham, founder of Accepted and host of the Admissions Straight Talk Podcast has a collection of highly enlightening interviews with directors of admissions and adcom members of top business schools!

Listen in as Linda asks her adcom guests pointed and to-the-point questions about the schools, the admissions process, how to get in, and…how to get rejected.

Listen, enjoy, and apply successfully!

For a varied menu of thought-provoking and informative conversations with business leaders, entrepreneurs, MBA students, and more, check out the Admissions Straight Talk Podcast:

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The post From the Mouths of MBA Adcom Members: How to Get Accepted appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

According to the Wall Street Journal, salaries for business school grads have bounced back after flattening at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. In fact, these salaries are hitting record highs as consulting firms, banks, and tech firms try to entice top business school graduates to join them.

University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and University of Chicago’s Booth School both stated that this year’s graduate median salaries grew $5,000 to reach $155,000. This is a record starting salary for Wharton grads, with 99% of students looking for jobs receiving an offer by late summer. Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business’ MBA graduates’ average annual salary also hit a record, with salaries going up 4% to over $141,000 compared to last year. 

“Everyone is in a bit of an arms race in terms of compensation,” stated Maryellen Reilly, deputy dean of Wharton’s MBA program.

MBAs typically earn more out of grad school

In comparison to other grad degrees, the MBA is more likely to pay off in the job market. By two years after graduation, grads from most business programs tend to earn more than they borrowed. 

According to the nonprofit Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), last year’s pandemic led to a flattening of median salaries for US MBAs at $105,000. This year’s graduates can expect to make up to $115,000, which is an all-time high. 

These students can look forward to job offers from a variety of industries. According to Sheryle Dirks, associate dean for career management at Fuqua, “MBAs have more diverse types of job opportunities than ever before.” She added that salary offers in finance, consulting, and tech are showing the largest increases among Fuqua’s 2021 expected graduates. 

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Gaps continue between men and women

Regardless of higher salaries after graduation, there continue to be gaps between men and women MBAs. According to the Forté Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for advancing women’s leadership through business education, women’s enrollment in full-time business school programs peaked at 41% in 2021, up from 39% in 2020. 

Respondents to a 2020 Forté survey reported that women made an average of $147,412, 20% lower than the $177,112 reported by men. 

The pay gap increases with the number of years of work experience. There was an $11,000 gap for those with 0–2 years of work experience post-MBA, and a $60,000 gap for those with 9+ years of experience. According to Forté, women with 3–5 years’ experience earned an average of $152,000, compared to $172,000 for men with the same amount of experience. 

Women were less likely to receive promotions and more likely to have a smaller number of direct reports. “We’ve definitely seen right out of business school the choices men and women are making are similar—similar jobs with the same types of opportunities,” said Forté Foundation Chief Executive Elissa Sangster. “But once they move into their careers, a number of different things come into play.”

Nevertheless, now seems to be the time for both men and women to take advantage of the increased demand for MBA grads and the resultant rise in compensation. Keith Bevan, a partner at Bain and Co. consulting firm, echoes the trend across many firms to attract more MBA graduates to keep up with expanding client needs. “It’s just a more competitive market,” he said. “It’s a great time to be looking for a job after school.”

Would you like to ride the MBA salary wave? Work with one of our MBA admissions experts to unlock your competitive advantage and get ACCEPTED!

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Related Resources:

• Is an MBA Worth It, or Is the Sky Falling Down on the MBA Degree?, a podcast episode
• MBA Students Pay Off Student Loans Faster Than Other Grad Degrees
• M7 MBA Programs: Everything You Need to Know in 2021-2022

The post Starting Salaries for MBA Grads Climbing appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

Most grad students take out student loans to finance their higher education and can end up saddled with debt running into hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time they graduate. According to a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal student loan data for nearly 600 programs, graduates of approximately 98% of universities that offer MBA programs usually made more money two years after graduation than they had borrowed. Contrast this with law schools, where approximately 6% of programs had grads with higher median salaries than debt for the same time period.

There are many reasons that students pursue an MBA – the promise of a significantly higher salary, the ability to enter a new industry, or the pursuit of an executive track to name a few. However, the high cost of getting an MBA, which can range from $100,000 to $250,000 or more after living expenses are added to tuition and fees, can be enough to change many potential students’ minds. Despite the relatively low-interest federal loans available to grad students, the amount that students can borrow is fixed at $41,000, leaving some students with no choice but to take out additional higher-interest (but unlimited) Grad Plus loans. So it is encouraging to potential MBA applicants to see that what has long been thought of as a “no-brainer investment” does essentially pay off.

However, there are other factors which skew the data somewhat. There have been efforts to diversify the applicant pool for business schools, yet a significant proportion of MBA applicants still enter programs with professional experience, often in finance or other high-earning industries, thereby accelerating their career paths and making the post-MBA cohort a financially healthy group. Moreover, the data in the Wall Street Journal’s analysis reflects federal government loan programs and does not include private loans.

Not everyone who graduates with an MBA sees significant increases in salary. According to Paulo Goes, dean of Tulane business school, 2020 grads have had an especially difficult time since a lot of companies stopped recruiting MBA graduates during the pandemic. The impact of this slow-down is seen in graduates’ placements and salaries.

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For-profit business schools had a lower rate of students who repaid their loans after two years. Strayer University in Washington, DC had 2% of students fully repay their loans during the two-year period following graduation, with about 33% asking to temporarily stop payments. Strayer students borrowed a median of $74,000, but half of the grads earned less than $57,000 two years post-graduation.

Approximately a dozen other business schools revealed median debt loads that were greater than grads’ median salaries. Several schools stated that this is because students attended their expensive dual-degree programs. Roseman University of Health Sciences reported the highest debt to earnings of any program, with students borrowing a median of $172,000.

Even so, there is much to be gleaned from the data that would make an MBA worth the time and investment. Analysis shows that at several elite programs, including Harvard Business School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the median starting salary after graduation permitted more than half of grads to pay off their federal student loan debt within two years. 

Interestingly, some of the most expensive MBA programs had some of the lowest debt load. Graduates of Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business borrowed a median of $41,000 in federal loans without turning to more expensive Grad Plus loans. Harvard Business School graduates had a median of $41,000 in debt, and median salaries of about $172,000. According to Chad Losee, Harvard’s managing director of MBA admissions, approximately 56% of the class of 2020 graduated with some debt, averaging $79,000 in combined federal and private loans. 

As Poets & Quants points out in its analysis of the Journal’s article, earnings are a reflection of the graduate’s chosen industry and the job’s location. Harvard reported a record pay year with 7% of the latest class taking positions in hedge funds and investment management jobs. The median total compensation for last year’s grads was $203,307, including a median salary of $152,682, sign-on bonuses of $27,500 reported by 54% of grads, and $132,500 in other guaranteed compensation reported by 27% of grads.

It is also worth noting that business schools have been increasing the number of scholarships they award to students over the last decade. Harvard distributes scholarships to defray the cost of its MBA program, distributing $40 million in fellowships to its MBA students last year. Approximately half of the enrolled students received scholarships averaging more than $42,000 per student in fiscal 2020.

P&Q top 10 business schools debt-income ratio

There seems to be much reassurance in the data that an MBA from a top school will indeed open doors to a lucrative career and allow one to pay off debts sooner than other programs.

Are you considering an MBA to maximize your earning potential? The stats show that the investment is worth it, but it takes an outstanding application to impress the elite schools. Our experienced MBA admissions consultants work with you one-on-one, throughout the process, to help you get ACCEPTED!

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Related Resources:

• Is an MBA Worth It, or Is the Sky Falling Down on the MBA Degree?, a podcast episode
• Top MBA Application Essays: How to Answer Them Right
• Top 10 or Bust: Dispelling 2 MBA Myths

The post MBA Students Pay Off Student Loans Faster Than Other Grad Degrees appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

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What makes Wharton’s MBA program unique, and how to demonstrate to the adcom that YOU belong there [Show summary]

Blair Mannix, Wharton’s Director of Admissions, shares the ways the admissions committee aims to reduce stress in the application process and offer a positive experience. She dispels myths about the Wharton admissions process and offers advice for students seeking acceptance to the MBA program.

From the structure of a TBD to why standardized testing is here to stay: Your guide to the Wharton admissions process [Show notes]

Welcome to the 440th episode of Admissions Straight Talk. Thanks for tuning in. Are you ready to apply for your dream business schools? Are you competitive at your target programs? Accepted’s MBA Admissions Calculator can give you a quick reality check. Just go to accepted.com/mbaquiz. Complete the quiz, and you’ll not only get an assessment but tips on how to improve your qualifications and your chances of acceptance. Plus, it’s all free. 

It gives me great pleasure to have back on Admissions Straight Talk Blair Mannix, Director of Admissions at Wharton. Blair first came to Penn as a graduate student where she earned her Masters in Higher Education Management in 2010. She joined Penn’s undergraduate admissions staff in 2008. She’s been at Wharton’s since 2012 and became Director of Admissions in 2017. She was last on Admissions Straight Talk just under two years ago. And what a two years it’s been. Let’s catch up on life and admissions at Wharton. 

Blair, welcome back to Admissions Straight Talk.

Can you just start by providing a basic overview of the Wharton MBA program for listeners who may not be that familiar with it, focusing on its more distinctive elements? [1:56]

Absolutely. It’s difficult to put Wharton into five to seven sentences, but I will try. So, Wharton was the first business school in the United States, established in 1881. Wharton’s first MBA class was in 1921 so this year it was actually the 100th class that Dean Erika James welcomed in August, which was really, really exciting. It is a perfect bookend in terms of 100 years of classes for me that this year’s class is more than 50% women, which I’m sure we’ll talk about. But it just feels like this beautiful bow. One hundred years, 50% women. That’s great.

What I think makes the Wharton education distinct is that it’s very hands-on. It’s very practical. It’s very tactile. You’re never going to look at a problem from 30-feet away. You’re going to get right into the guts of it and try to figure it out. And that’s what we teach because that’s what we believe that businesses need.

We’re known for innovation across many disciplines. We are certainly known for finance, and we’re really proud of that reputation. 100 years of the best finance education you can get, but we are many other things, and I think that’s important for people to understand.

There are two distinguishing centers that I really want to mention: The Stevens Center for Innovation in Finance, which is financial technology and the Harris Center for Alternative Investments, which is VC, hedge funds, and a hub for all of those research projects, corporations, communities, students, and businesses. These are both at Wharton, which is really exciting. I’d love for your listeners to check out the Stevens Center at Wharton or the Harris Center at Wharton. 

The last thing I’ll say that I think is a differentiator is we’re a pretty large program, 864 students, but we really work hard to make sure that it is a robust social experience. Business is a team sport. It’s not a solo sport. You have to meet and interact with your classmates, and we stop at nothing to make sure that that happens. 

So to summarize, I would say: first in its class, started in 1881, finance, tactile, practical, and then a robust social life as well.

That’s great. Thank you. Can I add something? [4:19]

Please.

One of the things that I’ve been struck with, whenever I’ve interacted with the Wharton admissions staff, is the amount of time and attention devoted to supporting students. There are so many options at Wharton, and I think Wharton is very intentional and very dedicated to helping each student find their path through all those opportunities. [4:49]

I’ll just say two words on that. We have a group called the Advising Support Network. Everything at Wharton is an acronym. We call it the ASN. Basically it’s your personal board of directors, advisors across academics, career management, student life, and leadership that will help guide you through two years. You’ll never be more supported than you are during a Wharton MBA.

What COVID-19 adaptations has Wharton made that you think are going to stick? [5:26]

I love this question, because the way I think of this is everything has changed. Everything has changed in your personal life, your professional life, in school life, everything has changed for all of us. So, there are a couple of things, and actually probably more than a few things that are going to stay post-COVID. I don’t know if there are any parents listening. A lot of the schools have gone to outside the building drop-offs. And I have a feeling that teachers like that. They’re like, “I don’t want these parents coming in.” I’m sure that will stay, there are just so many things personally and professionally that will stay. 

At Wharton, a couple of the things I like to mention are virtual advising appointments. That board of directors that I mentioned, your advisors across five different divisional offices, they’re going to continue advising in-person if you would like or online, virtually via Zoom if you would like that. Sometimes it’s just more efficient for schedules, particularly the students’. If you’re recruiting in New York and you want to take a Friday advising appointment, you can do that. So, why would we get rid of these beautiful advances? So hybrid advising across all departments will stay. Hybrid recruiting in the Career Management Office – corporations, companies, staff coming to campus, there were so many wins in the virtual recruiting space that we will now dovetail into a hybrid recruiting space. Really big Wharton alums that wouldn’t necessarily fly from L.A. or San Francisco to come to a recruiting event on campus can now pop in virtually. I think the wins in that space will stay as well because they’re just so clear. The last thing is admissions recruiting will, at least for the foreseeable future, remain hybrid.

I’ve done a ton of focus groups with our prospective students on whether or not they enjoyed meeting us virtually or enjoyed meeting us in person , and I’ve really gotten a plethora of answers. A lot of people say, “No, I really liked seeing you guys in New York. I really liked you guys coming to Houston.” And some were like, “Listen, I can get the information online at 7:30 at night and have not had to leave my house. I loved it.” So, for at least the Wharton MBA admissions staff, hybrid admissions recruiting is here to stay.

In the past, Wharton offered many global study opportunities. COVID probably put a crimp on the global gallivanting that the MBA students enjoy. What’s going to come in place? How do you see it coming back, if it’s going to come back? Is it going to be hybrid? What do you see happening? [7:47]

What a funny statement, a global gallivanting. That is the most perfect way to describe it. I feel like that’s picture-perfect, Linda. There’s a lot of global gallivanting at Wharton. It’s part of the culture, part of the program, something that we’re proud to give our students just because business is global, the world is global, Wharton has been global for decades. That’s one of the reasons folks come to Philadelphia to be in the program. 

Like you mentioned, there’s been a pause on global gallivanting for the last 18 months for sure, but Wharton doesn’t like to take things lying down, so we actually welcomed the first cohort of students, our Lauder Institute cohort, which is a joint degree, a masters in International Studies and an MBA in two years. They’re actually in Alaska right now. We sent about 70 students, and they’re studying Indigenous cultures relative to the American history context. I actually just got an email from them yesterday that they’ve had a lot of bear sightings. They’re not climbing mountains in Kathmandu, but they are doing similar things in Alaska because we were not going to take those experiences lying down. They’re also going to Iceland in October as part of that program. 

I think these are the two early breadcrumbs you can see of Wharton trying to ramp up our global gallivanting because the larger programs like our Global Modular Courses will kick back up in January. So, we’re really excited about that.

Is the hope that the Global Modular Courses will actually include travel as opposed to being more virtual? [9:45]

I think I’ve learned a lesson during the pandemic to not try to predict anything. Certainly, some of 2020 I did that, and I wasn’t always correct. But yes, the world is opening back up. People are vaccinated. Vaccinations are required at the University of Pennsylvania, so my hope is the plans for that can go full steam ahead. But who knows what will happen? We could get hit by a meteor. Who knows?

What are some myths that you’d like to dispel about Wharton?

I love this question. You mentioned meeting some of my admissions colleagues on the road. We are such a small subset of the Wharton community, but often, we are some of the first faces people meet so we hope desperately that we can get across this notion. The first myth I’d like to displace is that Wharton’s a cutthroat place. We hear so often, “I thought Wharton was cutthroat and competitive, and then I meet you guys, and it’s not like that at all.” And I’m like, “Well, we’ve done one portion of our job, but really my job is to convince people that we’re not cutthroat before you meet us. I always feel like people saying that is actually a detriment. I feel like I needed to do a better job on the forefront. So, people think that way about Wharton, but it’s actually a massively collaborative place. Group interview prep is one of the most common things you’ll see on campus. They’re not all competing for the same jobs. They’re actually helping each other.

And we have grade non-disclosure. For 40 years, the students vote and say that they all agree not to share their GPAs with potential employers. So, that cuts down on the competition in the classroom, which is something that’s bedrocked to our culture.

You mentioned finance. We’re really proud of our finance background, and clearly, we’re doubling down on that as it relates to some of our new centers in innovation and financial technology, but really, if you are not a finance person, I really want people to understand that you have a home at Wharton. People don’t always understand the depth and breadth of expertise we have across disciplines. 

The last thing I’d love to dispel, which is kind of cultural and kind of admissions, is this phrase I hear a lot: “I’m a traditional student.” or “I’m a non-traditional student.” And I just kind of want to dispel the idea that there is a traditional and non-traditional student right now in 2021. I had never used that lexicon in almost 10 years of sitting on the Wharton ad com. What is traditional? We’ve seen the diversification of our applicant pool. I can only speak for 10 years. So anybody listening to this, I would love for them not to say, “Oh, I have this background. I’m non-traditional,” or, “I have this background. I’m traditional,” because it really just doesn’t operate like that anymore. We have talent, and we want that talent to be at Wharton. Whether or not your background is deemed in the historical context of non-traditional or traditional, that’s not something we really talk about. But I just like to say that out loud sometimes.

Wharton requires either the GMAT or the GRE. You’re not accepting the Executive Assessment? [14:27]

Correct. 

Are there any plans to accept a wider variety of tests? Any plans to lessen reliance on the GMAT/GRE, either by going test-optional, offering waivers or opening the door to other tests? [14:37]

Such a good question, and thank you for asking it. We have no plans to diversify from the GMAT and GRE, and I will get into that. No plans to go test-optional. No plans for waivers. We’re really excited to have added the GRE onto our docket. Obviously, this was 10 years ago, but we’ve seen a lot of admissions businesses do that like law school admissions now accept the GRE.

It really opened the aperture of talent that feel like they can find a home at one of these programs, and that’s something we’re excited about. The reason we’re not looking to diversify the testing or go test-optional or go test waiver is we are Wharton. We do a ton of data dives on the back. Wharton’s such a data-driven place so we wouldn’t just have an admissions component and a criteria and not study it. Admissions has a full-time data scientist. She is the smartest person I’ve ever known. She and I share an office. Our walls come apart, and we talked before COVID, literally person-to-person through the walls every day. She has done more than one study that says how predictive testing is to your success in a program. So, that’s why we’re not going to go optional or offer waivers.

I will say that testing is predictive of your success in the program, but a wide variety of scores are predictive for different pieces of success in the program. So, when people say, “Wharton’s GMAT mean is X. I have to hit that to get in,” if anything, we pay attention to the GMAT and GRE way less than any human being outside my walls would ever believe me, and nobody will ever believe me. But I swear, we pay attention to it way less than people think. But it has been proven as significant, and that’s why we’re going to keep it as part of the application.

What other elements are you finding to be very significant in terms of being predictive of success? [16:33]

Well, there’s a white paper on my desk right now that is waiting to be published so, maybe I shouldn’t give them now, but I will say two things, neither of which will be surprising. Both quantitative, testing, transcripts, things like that, and a lot of qualitative things that Wharton and my staff particularly have spent the last seven years trying to quantify the unquantifiable. There are a lot of soft skills that we’ve been trying to quantify a lot of the stuff in your extracurricular lists, how do you quantify that? A lot of your behaviors in our team-based discussion, which we’ll talk about, how do you quantify that?

We’ve quantified more of the soft skills and those have been predictive of success. I’m not trying to leave you hanging but it is sitting on a white paper and I think it needs to be approved. So when it is, I will tell you.

What happens to applications after the applicant hits submit? [17:28]

I love this question. My bones and my bread and butter are in the fair and accurate evaluation of candidates. I could do that all day, every day, and did for years until I was fortunate enough to be put into this role kind of as my core job. 

So, after you press submit, one question that always comes into this is, “Does it matter if I apply in July or if I apply one day before the deadline?” Nope. It does not matter. We will not read anything until every application is in, the deadline is closed, and then we start reading them the next day.

Each application gets two blind reads. And when I say blind, it means I read the application, somebody else on my staff reads the application without having any knowledge of each other’s commentary on the talent coming across in the file. And that’s really important because bias in evaluation, bias in hiring is rampant and problematic, and you can do … and we do … a lot to get the bias down. You can never get rid of it. Blind reading is one way to do that.

So, two readers read the application in a blind context. Then, we actually- and people are surprised by this one- but we sit in committee for a week to 10 days to determine the interview class. I tell our staff all the time, if we don’t get it right now in terms of talent selection, we will not have the opportunity to get it right later. That is actually one of the biggest weeks of our year, those three weeks, round one, round two.

We announce the interview class all in one day. It’s very important to me to get that stress level down. We’re not doing drips of interview releases. You find out if you were interviewed on one day and it’s within one hour of when I’ve told you we’re going to release it on the website, or I feel like I have failed. If I say mid-day on Wednesday and it gets out at 2:00, I’m like, “That was a failure.”

The day it comes out, the hour I said it would come out, we run through our team-based discussion interview. When it comes back from team-based discussion again, we’re trying to quantify the unquantifiable. Certain behaviors that have been indicative of success in the classroom and future careers are what we’re looking for. An additional read is done by a different staff member, third touchpoint on the file, third read in order to decrease bias. So there are three readers and one interview reviewer. 

We do blind interviews, meaning the person walking into the interview doesn’t have your resume and hasn’t studied up on you. There are different academic opinions about that, but the way Wharton believes, and I believe this because I’ve studied it a lot, is you can be really biased for or against somebody if you have a piece of documentation walking into the room. So, we feel very strongly about getting a different viewpoint.

Wharton has two required questions and one optional which is, “Please use this space to share any additional information about yourself that cannot be found elsewhere on your application and that you would like to share with the admissions committee.” It has a 500-word limit. It gives a lot of latitude. Is it truly optional, and do most admitted students write one? [20:31]

Such a good question. The answer is it’s truly optional. To answer your second question, “Do most admitted students write them?”, this is in service to probably the answer of the first question: I don’t know. I don’t know if most admitted students write them, and that probably can prove to people that the first answer is a real answer. It’s not required. I really don’t know.

The reason we have it worded like that is because there’s just something in the admissions business that is lacking in terms of trying to get to know applicants. Essays kind of get there, but they don’t fully get there unless there’s a whole overhaul on how we do admissions. I’m really looking to give somebody a chance to just be a human being and tell us their story. So that’s why we have it written like that.

The advice I give is twofold. If you want to talk about why you had a C in statistics your sophomore year, write me a bullet: “I had a C in statistics. I got mono. I’m really bad at statistics. I wanted to let you know that. Something happened with my family, and I didn’t do really well junior year.” That’s just a bullet point. That’s great. Please put that.

But the other piece of advice I give is: finish your application and walk away from it for a couple days. If you feel like there’s a story that you need to tell somebody reading it to have that person understand who you are and how you’ve operated through your life and career, write that story. A lot of times, there’s a project, a client, a deal that really kicked you into wanting to come to business school. Sometimes there’s not a place for that, and detailing that whole story, even if it’s just 150 words, can be really, really helpful.

If there’s a piece to your story that can be just unpacked in a couple of words, write that there. Also, leave it blank. Also, give me bullet points.

It seems to me that the professional story is pretty much covered in the required essays, but somebody might have a non-professional story, obstacles overcome, a triumph, whatever, that is part of their story. It doesn’t necessarily relate directly to their profession. Are you interested in that too? [22:50]

Yeah, you’re right. The first essay is the professional essay, so a lot of those professional, I call them pivot moments are explored in that first essay. But, again, I have read absolutely 10,000 hours of applications, and it would be not correct to say that everybody’s true professional story can be gotten across in 500 words so, a lot of times, I do see professional stories in that optional essay. Again, it’s up to the student what component of their life they still need to get across to the ad com.

We’ve touched briefly on the TBD. What is an interview like at Wharton, and what are some of those soft skills that you are looking for? [23:48]

So this is how I like to talk about the team-based discussion. I like to get the stress level from high to low. I think I’ll get it to medium but I’ll try for medium-low. A couple of things on the top, on the macro. As I said in the intro, business is a team sport and not a solo sport. Wharton is a team-centric culture, and team-centric learning experience. Why would we have a solo inbound? So almost 10 years ago in 2012, we did our first team-based discussion based on these principles, also based on the principles that one-on-one interviews, whether they’re behavioral or another style, can be very biased.

What if somebody sat down across from me and we went to the same school or have the same passion in an extracurricular. I can’t turn that off in my brain in terms of bias or no bias. And so, we like to run a skills-based interview, team-based, obviously, for the other reasons that I mentioned. So, that’s ideologically why we do it.

As I mentioned before, every interview notification goes out the same day. When you get invited to interview, in that email, you get two things. One, you will get your prompt. We’re not going to torture you and not give you your prompt until 20 minutes before the session. You will have your prompt. You will have step-by-step instructions, minute by minute, of what the team-based discussion will look like.

You will also get a series of slots across three weeks of which you can sign up to do a team-based discussion. We do not orchestrate the groups. One, because that would be a logistical nightmare, and two, because of the diversity of our applicant pool we find that the groups are actually naturally very diverse, especially now that they’re virtual. Virtual interviews over Zoom will continue through the next 2021/2022 cycle. We have actually been running team-based discussions via Zoom since 2012. So, we were Zoom beta users, none of this was new to us. 

This is what the interview feels like. You will get a prompt. You will get a problem to solve in that prompt, something that is very generic. We are not going to ask high finance questions. That’s not fair to the fighter pilots. We’re not going to ask education questions. That’s not fair to the energy space employee, right? Or the investment banker, totally not fair to the investment bankers. Something that’s very general, approachable, and typically Wharton-centric. 35 minutes in a Zoom call, a discussion on how to solve that problem. The way I say it to students is, “It feels like you’re meeting at work.” You’re at work, and you’re trying to solve a problem in 35 minutes with five other strangers.

To dovetail to the second part of your question, there are skills, of which I’m actually not going to share, not because they’re in the white paper, they are, but because that’s the whole point of the team-based discussion. There are behaviors and skills that have been academically researched that if you have them and if you do them, you are better and stronger in teams and in the classroom and in your future career. So, that’s what we’re looking for on the macro.

Right under that in stuff that I like to talk about is that a lot of folks think that in any admissions context you would hit the interview marker and you either do well and get admitted or do poorly and get denied, right? I’m actually really excited to say that it doesn’t work like that at Wharton. I cannot speak for the rest of the business schools, but it doesn’t work like that at Wharton, and this is why.

There are some students that have gotten all A’s in computer science, physics, mechanical engineering. That’s a certain type of person. That person is not always the room runner. Someone who sees and feels people’s energies and knows how to solve a problem and bring quiet people in and advance ideas and build on others’ ideas, that’s a skill. We’re a school. We want to teach you that skill, but we also want the people who have that skill innately coming into the interview process to learn from people that got A’s in physics. That’s why we feel pretty strongly about this because we’re admitting students all the time that do really well in the application process but maybe not so well in the team-based discussion and vice versa. 

Is there also an individual component to the interview? [28:23]

Yes. There’s an individual component, 10 to 15-minute one-on-one after the group interview where you’ll discuss the role you took on, if that’s typically a role you take. I’ll give an example, in your work meetings, anything else about your CV that you want to detail, and then, of course, questions for the interviewer. Here’s an example of how this manifests itself.

I interviewed someone about five years ago, and he sat back in the team-based discussion and was more kind of just providing commentary on the side, kind of steering the group with a subtle sentence here and there. And I asked him about it in the one-on-one, and he said, “Well, I own my own company, and it’s a small company, under 10 employees. And we have a staff meeting every Monday, and I like them to solve problems. So, I’m just used to sitting at the table and kind of slightly redirecting the conversation.” And he said, “So that was what I did.” And that was what I saw so it was a really interesting one-on-one post group interview.

It’s something you can’t prep for. You really can’t prep for it, so we tell people in the instructions upon invitation to interview that they can’t really prep. You can prepare your introductory commentary, but after that, it really is innately kind of who you are and how you react to others. And that’s something that we had a lot of success with over the last decade.

What are the most common mistakes you see applicants make in the application process? [30:11]

I always have such a tough time with this question just because when I read applications I just don’t think of things like that. I think an answer that I have had solid feedback on giving in the past that has helped people is this. A lot of students have asked me the question, “Hey, I work at a company that doesn’t have a standard promotion structure.” For example you come in as an analyst. Typically you get promoted to senior analyst, and you kind of move through the structure.” They say, “It’s a flat organization. I’ve been there for four years with no promotion. What do I do? Are you going to think negatively of that? How do I communicate to you that it’s a flat organization?”

And I say, “Let’s flip the question. And let’s flip the answer.” You don’t have to communicate to me that it’s a flat organization, but that you’re a different person now than when you walked in the door four years ago. So, your resume needs to reflect that. Okay, fine you don’t have a different title, but you’ve learned different things. You’ve become a different person. So, I encourage people to write resumes kind of like skills development ladders. It’s not a great way to describe it, but it’s the best way I’ve found that you come in and you know A skill and B skill, and then the next year you learn this and you learn this and you take on this. And then the third year, you’re a different person. Having me follow your professional growth in that way, first of all, is more satisfying than following your title growth and that can really help your application because you’ve grown even though you haven’t grown in title. We love to see that.

Let’s say somebody had a dip in grades or perhaps a period of unemployment due to an emotional issue, depression, anxiety, whatever it might be. Should they keep it a secret? Should they hide it from you? Is it going to be held against them if they disclose it? [32:21]

No. So, two things I think about this question. One, and I’ve said this often, we’re human beings reading other human beings’ stories. To me, that’s part of a lot of people’s journeys and if that’s an authentic part of your journey, it needs to be in the file. The second thing is, especially in 2021, the struggles of mental health have become so much more in the forefront. I was actually just listening to a podcast that Adam Grant did, one of the Wharton faculty and the title was Sad Days Should Be Allowed Just As Much As Sick Days.

Especially in 2021, I think it’s much more in the forefront of the culture, so I would say, please talk about it if it affected your employment or your grades or something like that. We are humans trying to understand other human beings’ stories.

What about people who had academic infractions as an undergrad, or perhaps a misdemeanor on their record? [33:43]

I would just say there’s a question on the application, “Have you had an academic infraction or misdemeanor,” and you need to answer that truthfully.

I say that because we’re going through a situation right now where somebody did not mention that truthfully. You sign on your application that everything is true and accurate to the best of your information. So, just kind of on a broad base, it needs to be truthful.

In terms of an evaluative-based, it really depends, to be honest. What we have seen though- again through the lens of human beings trying to understand other human beings’ stories- is that say you had a disciplinary infraction. This honestly happens all the time. You had a disciplinary infraction, plagiarism when you were a sophomore. You’re now 29 years old. You are not the same person that plagiarized that one paper in sophomore year English.

So, in that case, it’s not going to be a big deal, right? But if it was something more serious in terms of a pretty serious crime committed last year, we may look at it a little bit more closely. It just depends on what it is. But I would say the vast majority of things we see come through are very benign and even if they’re not benign, they’re so far away from your current reality that we don’t give them a ton of weight.

What advice do you have for applicants wanting to join the class of 2024, those applying this cycle? [35:51]

I would say engage with the resources that the Wharton admissions committee is putting out. One of the ideologies I had when taking this role three years ago was, how do I be as transparent as possible, and how do I democratize the information? If you’re not checking out our website, we’ve actually been pumping out a ton of content, application tips, webinars, etc. I did an application tips webinar on YouTube that’s gotten over 25,000 views and I’ve just gotten feedback that it’s been really helpful to people.

We also started a new program called Ask the Ad Com and we’ve been doing these biweekly, where we just crowdsource questions and try to answer them as quickly as possible. I would just say engage with the stuff that we have going on and know that the folks that are trying to give you this information are not hiding anything. We’re just trying to be as transparent as possible to democratize the information.

I know a lot of people normally answer that question by saying something like sit with your authentic feelings and really figure out why you want to come to business school. And that’s a tough thing for someone in my seat to say because it’s so personal. A lot of folks don’t need to sit with their authentic feelings. They know exactly why they want to come to business school. And maybe some other people listening will really need to do that.

I will say that you’ll have a better success record in business school no matter where you go if you come in with really focused and dedicated reasons for being there. I’ve actually heard people saying putting it on a little card, three things, just to have them be your true north. So, I think exploring those in prep is never a bad thing, but we’re trying to help you craft the best application you can so take us up on it.

What advice would you give to somebody planning ahead for a fall 2022 or later application? [37:40]

I would say the same. Engage with our content. We’re not going to be changing anything. We’re not going to be changing deadlines or rounds or essays. The world is already chaotic enough, so the Wharton admissions is committed to at least the next 18 months of not going crazy. So, a lot of the things you see online in terms of prepping for applications in this current cycle will remain the same going forward.

That would be my same advice, whether you’re prepping for round two spring 2021, fall 2021, or spring 2023.

What about applicants for the Deferred Admission Moelis program? [38:22]

My first goal with the folks that are applying to our deferred admissions program is to get this information in the hands of as many students as possible. I know this is probably common, but we talk about this all the time internally. We’re like, “Okay, it would be easy to go get this information out to the top 25 schools in the country, but that’s not actually what we’re doing.” We’re trying to make sure that folks around the country at a variety of state schools, private schools, small schools, big schools, urban schools, rural schools – everybody knows that this exists because I think this is a really interesting moment in time.

If you are 19 or 20, many times, if you’re not at the flagship Ivy League school on the East Coast, you’re not going to be thinking about an MBA. We want folks all over the country to be thinking that an MBA and especially an MBA at a top school can be a place for them. So, we have spent a ton of time, effort, and talent trying to make sure that that information is democratized.

In terms of prepping them, again, just knowing that it exists, I feel, is my victory in prep. The documents, webinars, resources on our website will be the same for them as it is for the full-time. I would encourage them to check it out and connect with our staff. We do a lot more one-on-one conversations for those folks than we typically have time for with full-time applicants. So, reach out to our staff, and we’ll be happy to have a one-on-one conversation with them.

Has Wharton started matriculating any people admitted through the Moelis Program? [39:55]

Yes. So, I believe 2016 was our first admission intake, and last year was the first year we started matriculating. And the matriculations are going to go up exponentially. It’s like two, six, 12, 50. So, that’s what we’re going to be doing. We have our second class, I believe, of Moelis Fellows who just entered into the class of 2023. And we’ll have exponentially more in the class of ’24. They’re some of the most talented students we welcome every year. They’re amazing.

Is there anything you would have liked me to ask you? [40:31]

The only last thing that I like to bring up, and I kind of touched on it around the edges is we talk about democratizing the information. We talk about being transparent with the information. We talk about making sure the reach for the Moelis Deferred Access Program goes as far and wide as humanly possible, but the main most important thing we talk about- and I don’t have it on little gold plaques on all our offices, but I probably should- is this philosophy, and I know you’ve heard me say this before, that’s called “Read To Admit”, which means every application we open, we are looking for reasons to admit you and not for reasons to deny you.

I think folks don’t probably think that’s a big deal on the other side of the desk, but it’s a huge deal. Your application is going to be read with people that are looking for your best day and not your worst day with positive headspace and not a negative headspace. So, don’t self-select out. If you’re thinking that business school at Wharton could be a place for you, just know that the people that are reading your story are on your side. And I just like to say that as many times as I can.

Where can listeners and potential applicants learn more about Wharton’s MBA program and admissions processes? [41:41]

Absolutely. A couple of resources that I want to call your attention to, I mentioned the application tips webinar, the Ask the Ad Com Webinars that we have on our website as well as all the information sessions you would expect. But one specific program I would love to call anybody listening’s attention to is our Admissions Fellows Program. There are a ton of questions that people have that full-time admissions committee members are not best suited to answer.

“What is it like moving from a partner from the West Coast to Philadelphia?” “How is it you recruit for consulting out of tech?” “What is it like to try to network into your next job through alumni?”

Students are better off answering those questions. We have 55 second-year students on our payroll. Please use them because I pay them to answer your questions. Admissions Fellows, right on the admissions website, you can search and filter their backgrounds by passport, and company, and internship, and leadership, and club, and you can connect with the person you want to connect with.

They have personal email addresses and links to calendars in which you can auto-schedule appointments too. So, please check them out because, again, they’re on my payroll, and they can give you some great intel!

Related Links:

• The Wharton MBA Program
• Ask the Adcom Webinars
• Wharton Admissions Fellows
• Wharton 2021-2022 MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines
• Mock Wharton TBD
• Get Accepted to Wharton, an Accepted webinar recording
• Accepted’s MBA Admissions Consulting Services

Related Shows:

• How to Present a Winning Wharton Application 
• Applying to Wharton Lauder? Do Your Research!
• A Bain Consultant-Turned Wharton MBA Starts Her Own Business
• Wharton’s Executive MBA, Where East and West Meet and Mix

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The post What’s New at Wharton MBA [Episode 440] appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.

Our recent masterclass, Get Accepted to Wharton, provided a wealth of must-have information on how best to approach Wharton’s application, both strategically and effectively. 

If you’re applying to this top-ranked, highly competitive program and you weren’t able to join us for the live session, not to worry: we’re making it available now for free, on-demand viewing. Grab something for taking notes, settle in, and watch it now!

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