Wharton 2011 MBA Essay Questions

If you think that Wharton is the right place for you, we encourage you to apply. A successful application combines substance, presentation, and good timing. It should tell your own story and make each element of your application as strong as possible. Use our online application system to apply and to check your status. The system walks you through the required steps, including electronically submitted transcripts, recommendations, and essays.

The Admissions Committee is interested in getting to know you on both a professional and personal level. We encourage you to be introspective, candid, and succinct. Most importantly, we suggest you be yourself.

Wharton has changed its application questions significantly. Only #3 is a holdover from last year.

Required Question:
What are your professional objectives? (300 words)

This is a direct question that requires little explanation. What are your professional post-MBA goals? 300 words should allow you enough space to discuss short- and long-term goals. You could take a day-in-the-life approach to this question, but you don’t have to do so.

Respond to 3 of the Following 4 Questions:

Which three questions should you choose? Easy. Choose the ones, that when added to the other elements of your application and each other, add valuable insight into you. Minimize overlap.

Essay 1: Student and alumni engagement has at times led to the creation of innovative classes. For example, through extraordinary efforts, a small group of current students partnered with faculty to create a timely course entitled, “Disaster Response: Haiti and Beyond,” empowering students to leverage the talented Wharton community to improve the lives of the Haiti earthquake victims. Similarly, Wharton students and alumni helped to create “Innovation and the Indian Healthcare Industry” which took students to India where they studied the full range of healthcare issues in India. If you were able to create a Wharton course on any topic, what would it be? (700 words)

This is a great place to show your knowledge of Wharton and possibly also reveal why you are interested in attending Wharton. (but you don’t have to say “I want to attend Wharton because…”) Although the question doesn’t ask why you want to create the class, I recommend you include your motivation. Why are you interested in this subject? How will it help you achieve your educational goals? Obviously, don’t say you want to create a class that already exists.

2. Reflect on a time when you turned down an opportunity. What was the thought process behind your decision? Would you make the same decision today? (600 words)

Unlike the two previous questions, this question asks about the past. It asks about “a time when…” No hypothetical situations or fuzzy plans will do. It must have really happened.

I think this question is seeking to know your attitude towards risk and opportunity, because the two are almost always related. First choose a time when you turned down an opportunity. Consider opening with the offer, the process of weighing the pros and cons, the moment when you actually turned it down, or perhaps the feeling of relief when you finally made up your mind.  Discuss your reasons for declining the opportunity and how you feel about the decision today. With 20-20 hindsight, would you make the same decision? Why?

3. Describe a failure that you have experienced. What role did you play, and what did you learn about yourself? How did this experience help to create your definition of failure? (600 words)

Like most failure questions, this is not an easy one to answer. It requires honesty and candor…and a little damage control. So choose a real failure, preferably one from a few years ago so that you can show how you handled a different situation with aplomb since the initial bomb. Also, try to use this question, and all questions, to bring out a different side of you.

4. Discuss a time when you navigated a challenging experience in either a personal or professional relationship. (600 words)

This question asks about a challenging experience in which other people are involved. Wharton doesn’t want to know about a challenge you faced in a lab or in solving a technical problem. It wants to hear about your ability to handle interpersonal difficulties. That ability is critical in Wharton’s learning teams and it is a critical to your ability to get along after you leave Wharton.

You can start your essay with the moment of tension or the moment you knew you had successfully navigated the situation. Then give the background. How did you overcome the hurdle? What did you learn?

If you would like help with Wharton’s essays, please consider Accepted.com’s Wharton Packages or our other MBA admissions consulting and editing services.

Additional Resources

• Best MBA Programs: A Guide to Choosing the One for You.
• Navigating the MBA Maze, an ecourse
• Five Fatal Flaws to Avoid in Your MBA Application Essays, an ecourse.

By Linda Abraham, President and Founder of Accepted.com.

• Harvard Business School, Yale SOM, Northwestern Kellogg, Chicago Booth, and Michigan Ross are all either in the midst of searching for or have just hired new deans. B-schools around the country are trying to revamp their programs, ramp up fundraising, and freshen the face of leadership in an effort to restore “the tarnished reputations of business schools,” states an article in the Wall Street Journal, “B-Schools Try Makeover.” We’ve discussed the MBA makeover quite a bit in this blog; see the following articles for more information: “The MBA Oath: Where Business and Ethics Meet…Maybe,” “B-Schools Implement Reform Long in the Making,” “Haas’ New Image: ‘Developing Innovative Leaders,’” “Chicago’s Ted Snyder To Become Dean of Yale SOM in 2011,” “Kellogg Names NYU Stern’s Sally Blount New Dean,” “HBS News: Dean Light to Retire,” and “Ross Sad to See Dolan Go.”

• A related article (”Changing Course” in The Economist) also highlights changes b-schools have made to heighten ethical awareness, modernize and make more relevant curricula, and to churn out good people, as well as good businessmen. HBS’s MBA Oath has taken a front seat in this discussion, as well as Berkeley Haas‘ curriculum reform. Haas’ Dean Lyons says, “This feels like exactly the time for a business school to take values seriously—not just post them on the wall, but to really go for it.” Lyons explains that the MBA Oath, while a good idea, needs to be transformed from a b-school conversation into an integral part of universal culture. Enforcing the important role of strong, innovative leaders is also at the forefront of Dean Lyon’s evolving strategy.

Related Accepted.com MBA Resources:

• B-School Zones
• Submit a Stellar Application: 42 Terrific Tips, an instantly downloadable ebook
• Navigate the MBA Maze, a free email course

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Top western business schools are also working to extend their reach to diverse and non-traditional b-school zones. Esade, for example, will be starting a manager training program in Cuba in an effort to expand its global footprint and to help build-up a developing business school education.

One thing schools are doing to strengthen their relationships with clients and other global programs is to take advantage of modern technology by distributing course materials online. IMD, Harvard Business School, and Wharton are leaders in this area. These programs are able to expand their executive education programs (at home and abroad) because of the simple technology of videoconferencing.

Such short programs in these far corners of the world have trouble attracting course participants, faculty/scholars, and corporate clients, but, according to Kim Taylor-Thompson, chief executive of Duke Corporate Education, optimism is on the rise. “There is an uptick. We’ve hit the bottom and we’re on the way up.”

Related Accepted.com Resources:

• Executive MBA: Applying to EMBA Programs
• Ace the EMBA: Admissions Advice for EMBA Applicants, a free, 6-day email course.
• The EMBA Edge: A Guide to EMBA Admissions, an instantly downloadable ebook.

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Robert Dammon, CMU Tepper associate dean and professor, explains the price-wage connection: “The kinds of students that the best schools attract are going to get the highest-paying jobs.”

Paul R. Dorf, managing director of the consulting firm, Compensation Resources, adds, “The cream-of-the-crop companies hire the cream-of-the-crop grads.”

Top-ranked b-schools generally offer the most expensive programs and generally churn out the highest paid graduates. Harvard Business School, for example, has the most expensive MBA program, and the best paid alumni.

PayScale, a salary-comparison company, recently evaluated salary data of 23,000 MBA graduates from Bloomberg Businessweek’s top 45 American business schools.

Their data shows that on average, MBAs from top programs make $2.5 million (base-pay plus bonuses) over the course of 20 years in a single industry. HBS alumni make closer to $4 million, while alumni from lower ranked programs (but still in the top 45) like Iowa Tippie, make less than half of that.

Another interesting comparison between the higher ranked and lower ranked programs was the growth of salary over the two-decade period. Graduates from Yale SOM, for example, were awarded with extremely high starting salaries, but then experienced only small increases over the following 20 years. Grads from University of Connecticut’s business school, on the other hand, received lower starting salaries that more than doubled over that same 20-year period.

Below are the top median salaries earned after less than 2 years out of b-school and then the estimated career total for a 20-year long career:

Related Accepted.com Resources:

• B-School Zones
• The Rankings: An Accepted.com Special Report
• Forbes ROI MBA Rankings for 2010
• BusinessWeek’s Top 10 Undergraduate Business Schools with the Best Returns on Investment

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The program’s curriculum will take advantage of Johns Hopkins’ strengths in the fields of public health and medicine, and will focus on ethics and emerging markets. Innovation and entrepreneurship will be strong school values.

Gupta comes with a strong background in fundraising, a strength necessary in building up a program from scratch, building an alumni network, and attracting top-rated faculty and incoming students. According to Gupta, finding senior faculty has proven to be the “biggest challenge.”

Certain hires, in particular Ravi Aron, a former professor from Wharton and USC Marshall, have jumped at the chance of participating in a b-school program that places a high premium on medicine and the life sciences. Another draw to the Carey School is the fact that there are no departments or department heads; consequently professors have more academic freedom.

Gupta has also poured endless effort into student recruitment. An international media tour and participation in MBA tours paid off for the new program: 500 prospective students applied for the program’s 80 spots. The diverse incoming class will be 50% international and 50% female.

Some particulars of the program include:

The program is still awaiting approval from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), at step necessary to achieve accreditation.

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While graduates from top business schools like Wharton or Northwestern Kellogg are seeing a positive pick up in the job market, other graduates, like those from NYU Stern and University of Texas-Austin’s McCombs School of Business, are faced with a job market that has not yet recovered from the 2009 recession.

At NYU, only 76% of students had a job offer by graduation in 2009; at McCombs, only a lucky 70% had that privilege. In normal, pre-recession years, more than 90% of students receive job offers by graduation.

Abby Scott, executive director of MBA career services at UC Berkeley Haas has dubbed this post-recession era as “the year of the networked job search.” Haas students explain that they can’t rely as much on “robust school-led recruiting effort[s]” as they can on individual efforts.

In terms of the sorts of jobs that are available, there are certain sectors that are seeing a rise in MBA hiring and some that are not. For example, jobs in retail or at luxury firms are few and far between, while jobs in consulting and financial services are on the hiring rebound, relates the WSJ article.

Rotational programs are also on the rise, receiving a 36% increase in hiring this year. Students are also opting to head abroad and search for jobs in other markets. Blair Sheppard, Duke Fuqua dean, explains that MBA grads used to rarely consider going overseas—salaries weren’t high enough to entice a loan-heavy graduate—but now, overseas salaries have increased, offering grads a wider, global job search.

The article continues to state that there’s hope for next year’s grads as evidenced by the increase in internships this past year. At Wharton, for example, on-campus summer internships increased 30%, a number close to pre-recession rates.

Job-Related Accepted.com Blog Posts:

• More Students Head to Mom and Pop For Jobs
• B-School Students See Light at the End of the Job Market Tunnel
• Good News for MBAs: Job Opportunities Abound!
• GMAC: MBA Employers Express Job Market Optimism
• The Make-Your-Own-Job Solution

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• As social media penetrates the business world, business schools have no choice but to jump on the bandwagon and make sure that their students are well equipped with social media knowledge, reports the New York Times article, “Business Schools Respond to Demand for Use of Social Media.” Top b-schools, including Harvard Business School, INSEAD, and London Business School, are now incorporating social media material into their MBA curriculums. Anthony Salcito, VP of worldwide education at Microsoft, explains that as businesses adopt and adapt to the commercial value of social media networks, universities need to keep their students up to speed on the profitable potential of internet marketing.

Related Accepted.com MBA Resources:

• B-School Zones
• Navigating the MBA Maze, an ecourse.
• Submit a Stellar Application: 42 Terrific Tips, an instantly downloadable ebook.
• MBA BlastOff: 45 Terrific Tips to Launch Your MBA Application, an instantly downloadable ebook.

Want our news sent directly to your inbox? Subscribe to the Accepted Admissions Almanac by clicking here!

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• A Stanford GSB blog post last week announced a call for all Grameen Fellowship and Reliance Dhirubhai Fellowship applications. The fellowships support Bangladeshi and Indian students with financial need (respectively) in obtaining an MBA from Stanford GSB. Visit the Stanford financial aid website for more information.

• The Consortium announced last week that UCLA’s Anderson School of Management had joined its network of top MBA programs with the unified goal of promoting inclusion and diversity in American business enterprises. UCLA dean Judy D. Olian says, “We’ll be enriching the learning experiences of our students through a student body that reflects a diverse set of perspectives, backgrounds, and life experiences, and that’s a strategic priority for our students.” (The Consortium Press Release)

• In the BusinessWeek article, “Building a Wharton for Emerging Economies,” Bruce Einhorn discusses the leaps and bounds the Indian School of Business (ISB) is taking to become a big league business school in an emerging economy. The b-school, which opened only nine years ago, has already moved up to the number one slot in Indian b-school rankings. ISB has become so popular in fact, that it will be expanding to a second $50 million new campus which will focus on manufacturing, infrastructure management, and other subjects pertinent to emerging economies. ISB has teamed up with MIT Sloan, UPenn Wharton, and Northwestern Kellogg to further their academic reputation—MIT Sloan and ISB, for example, have agreed on a faculty rotation plan between the two top MBA programs.

• Who knew that frats would become an essential ingredient to job networking in the business world? At Wharton, as the economy started shifting downward, the popularity of fraternities among business students moved upward. Business fraternities like Phi Gamma Nu, Alpha Kappa Psi, and Delta Sigma Pi offer Wharton students with mentors, career support, and a large, strong, family-like alumni network. “Getting to know more of the business world helps you decide what you want to do,” says Nancy Zhang, president of Phi Gamma Nu and Wharton sophomore. (The Daily Pennsylvanian)

Related Accepted.com MBA Resources:

• Submit a Stellar Application: 42 Terrific Tips
• Submit a Stellar Application II: 56 Additional Tips
• Financing Your Future: Winning Fellowships, Scholarships and Awards for Grad School, an ebook.
• Navigating the MBA Maze, an ecourse.

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• Understandably so, “[t]he public is increasingly displeased with colleges often being run like businesses,” reports a recent Daily Pennsylvanian article entitled “Cost of higher ed upsets public.” In fact, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, 60% of Americans think that all colleges care about is their bottom line. 69% of Americans recognize that with the price hikes, highly qualified people can simply not afford to attend college these days. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni is urging universities to make cuts and “demanding that trustees step up to the plate” because the public is “fed up.” According to Penn Dean of Admissions Eric Furda, Penn is working extra hard to reach lower income students. And, in response to the accusations of running universities like businesses, Furda explains that Penn truly does prioritize education over business. While there is undeniably a business side to college administration, says Furda, we need to always keep education in focus.
• In an interesting BusinessWeek article, “From B-School to the Big House,” Alison Damast describes an innovative new program that brings together the skills of MBA students with the ambitions of inmates in local prisons. The goal of the program is to help inmates acquire business skills that will then help them find a job upon release. “We’re hoping we can give [the inmates] some real-life business skills that will help reacclimate these individuals to the business world, get jobs, and prepare them to succeed once they get there,” explains one Emory Goizueta student. These prisoners are often quick learners—”crime is, after all, entrepreneurial,” Damast reminds us in her article. There are currently 61 MBA students from 16 MBA programs across the country involved in the Prison Entrepreneurship Program. Represented schools include Duke Fugua and UC Berkeley Haas.
• Wharton’s free online research newsletter has just gone Arabic, in an initiative to show off the top MBA’s program’s authority on business in the Middle East, reports the Financial Times. The Arabic version of Knowledge@Wharton (which will also be published in English) will focus on the role the Middle East plays in the global economy. Wharton also publishes a Chinese version (in Chinese and English), an Indian version (in English), and a Latin American version (in Spanish, Portuguese, and English). According to a Daily Pennsylvanian article on the same subject, an Australian version of Knowledge@Wharton will be launched next month.

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