What’s New at Wharton MBA

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.

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