Calling all Wharton 2011 Applicants

Not a current student but here's my guess on why they waitlist so many people:

When they construct a class they try to get a blend of bankers, consultants, IT guys, military, entrepreneurs, foreigners, women, yadda yadda. When the yield #s start trickling in and if, for example, they see they are low on Military guys, they want to have Military guys on the wait list to replace them with. Now take this example and expand it to the many different backgrounds/profiles that schools look for and you can see that the schools need at least a few people on the WL from each category. Furthermore, you need to consider the Waitlist yield, as in who is going to stay on the waitlist, and who is going to accept a spot from the waitlist if offered. I think if you back calculate all these #s you could probably come up with a reasonable estimate of how many you need for the waitlist and the # would be relatively high.

Let me illustrate with an oversimplified calc.
Let's say there are 10 MBA candidate profiles the school has in mind for their class. The adcom expects that on average, 4 people will enroll from the waitlist for each profile. The waitlist yield is 20% (between people removing themselves from WL, people not getting an offer from the Wait list, and people declining an admissions offer).

Given these assumptions, you would need 200 Waitlist candidates to fill out your class.

200 / 10 = 20 Waitlisters per profile
20 WLers at 20% yield = 4 Enrolled students

No idea if these assumptions are reasonable or not but I think that could explain it. Feel free to pick my calc apart.

And congrats on getting in to other great schools but hopefully the WL math works out in your favor at Wharton!

Your reasoning makes sense. My point was not how they come up with a number but why they are so different than other similar schools of the same caliber (top 5 schools by US news). Other places have a smaller number on the WL (even though they may have similar class sizes). Wharton (and trust me I was on like 4 WLs and got into 3) waitlists by far more people (even as a % of total class size) . Also schools start clearing up the WL as time goes on but Wharton just adds. Its less than 60 days before school starts and they still have people on the WL who applied in Oct. They barely took any off on the R3 notification day. Also their communication is poor both in quantity and quality, you should see some of the simple errors on their summer WL letter. Again I want to stress it is my top choice and I would go there immediately.

Anyways my point is that it surprises me for a school of such high caliber they take such an approach. Just makes no sense to me

i wish that was the case..but unfortunately my class is mostly PE guys, followed by IB guys and then MC and maybe a sprinkle or two of military ...

Wharton admissions does say that they try to balance the class as much as they can and after they have a number of diverse backgrounds, it really comes down to who is the best fit for the program and who is likely to attend.. keep in mind that those who are the best will likely be the best at HBS and Stanford..

Wharton typically is vary of people who will go to HBS and Stanford..so they push people on WL and see how many of those they think will get into HBS/Stanford and then make their decision to admit or ding..

As far as I'm concerned Wharton might have waitlisted this year the same (or <) % of applicants as any other top b-school did; and as far as we know you might be the perfect fit for those 3 other schools you got in but not for Wharton. (note: I'm not saying you're not an outstanding candidate - I'm just stressing the importance of fit).

Even if that's the case, how do you know that other schools don't have people who applied in October still on the waitlist as well; do you know the percentage of total applicants who are still waitlisted from R1 vs this percentage in the other top 4 US-News b-schools?

So you're basically saying that those who don't get in H/S "have to settle" for W?

Even though that might have been true until some point in the past I don't think it is anymore; I personally know quite a few people who chose W over H/S ('11, '12 and '13).

Can any admits help us neglected WLs out. Just saw the facebook group is down to 627. Quite a drop from when I last checked it. Is this indicative of class size? Or was there some sort of a deadline to confirm attendance and those who didnt were taken off. I know its a bit desperate but this is all we Wlers have to know if there are any open spots. Thanks

Dear Fellow Summer WLs

I have some not so good news. I met with a Senior Director of Wharton MBA Adcom recently and inquired about the chances of anyone getting in off the summer waitlist. He/ She said not to quote him/ her (as they would deny it if quoted) but that the class was pretty much full and it did not look like people would be getting in off the summer waitlist.

So I have further tempered my expectations and suggest the same to you all.

Oh well there is always next year.

Cheers

It is now back at 635 and lets not forget the 135-odd members of the Wharton-Lauder Group, who are not members of the Wharton Group, so we are standing at 770 at the very least....

keep your hopes up...

if you dont mind me asking how exactly did you meet with a senior adcom when everyone else on the summer WL can't even contact them...just don't trust everything you read here

Pics or it didn't happen.

Believe what you want; I have no incentive to lie to anyone here, especially since its not like we are sending in materials to buttress our respective applications.

Has anyone denied after int been able to get feedback from admissions and if so how?

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Does anyone know of any applicants being admitted since summer WL began?

I'm a Summer W/L'er who received an admit phone call and email today!

Not much time to prepare. Can someone direct me to a website where I can find out what I need to do in the next six weeks?

Congratulations!!! Did you apply for Wharton or lauder-wharton?

FYI two kids have dropped out of lauder-Wharton as of now...

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Congratulations and welcome to the class. Check these out. The second link is the book we were all mailed a few weeks back, walks you through the whole pre-term process.

https://spike.wharton.upenn.edu/mbaprogram/

https://spike.wharton.upenn.edu/mbaprogr ... d_wg13.pdf