Calling all Wharton Applicants: (2016 Intake) Class of 2018!!

FROM Wharton Admissions Blog: Visiting Campus

The Round 1 application deadline is quickly approaching on September 29th! As you are wrapping up your applications, we wanted to highlight that our Campus Visit Program will start up again on Monday, September, 21st. The visit program takes place on Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays throughout the academic year, and…Read More The post Visiting Campus appeared first on MBA Program.

Almost done! Little nervous, have low GPA (3.07), but hoping my GMAT (760) will help me. Also, do they take into account what your undergrad degree is? I have a BS in Aerospace Engineering from a US Top 10 engineering school (Texas)

Yes, all schools definitely take your undergraduate institution, degree, GPA and the classes you took into consideration. They're looking to pull together a mix of all different backgrounds, so it might help that you have a fairly unique undergraduate degree. Best of luck!

In for R1, a reapplicant.

I wanted to use the optional essay to take about subpar undergrad performance (3.23 in econ from competitive liberal arts college)...but it seems there are 2 places I can do this - the first is the 400 word optional essay 2, and there is also the 250 word essay that says "First-time applicants can use this essay if you feel there are extenuating circumstances of which the Committee should be aware (e.g., unexplained gaps in work experience, choice of recommenders, inconsistent or questionable academic performance, significant weaknesses in your application). " It seems that if you are discussing your grades they expect you to keep it to 250 words...can anyone confirm this?

You definitely want to address your GPA in the shorter 250-word essay spot about extenuating circumstances. Keep it as brief as possible and just be honest about why you didn't do as well as you could/should have.

Use the 400-word optional essay to tell them/expand upon something positive about your candidacy that isn't covered by your other materials. To not use the 400-word optional essay space would be wasting an opportunity to give them more insight into your personality and/or achievements!

Best of luck!

A quick question. Under section "Work Experience/Resume," if you have multiple roles under one employer, what is the best way to enter those information? Adding same employer multiple times?

Thanks!

Wharton doesn't give explicit directions about this, but HBS does and I advise clients to use the same approach with Wharton: only list the employer once. The reason I advise this route is: 1) There are fields for "beginning and ending positions"... so that would mean they're already assuming you weren't always necessarily in the same role, and 2) on Wharton's app there are no fields allowing you to explain what you did, detail out accomplishments, etc., so it's not like you're missing out on the opportunity to expound about each separate role anyway.

Hope that makes sense, and best of luck!

for round 2. good luck to everyone!

Hi everyone, I'm in for Round 1, good luck to all!

A quick question in the application. It seems like there are two places where Wharton asks for your awards, one under "personal information" (2,000 characters), and the other under "academic background" (1,000 characters). Any difference between the two apart from word limit? Thanks!

The second section under Academic Background is for school-related awards only. The one under Personal Information can be for both school and other professional/community awards. Most of my clients put their school awards in BOTH sections unless there's not room in the first section for them. But most people don't have a ton of awards, so it's usually not an issue.

Good luck!

Hi SBCErikaOlson, thank you for answering the questions from various posters and keeping this thread informative.

I had a quick question for you. I saw that you mentioned in one of the posts above that we should utilize the optional essay of 400 words to mention about something that has not been covered by the other required essay. I was still trying to figure out what types on things would fall under the requirements of essay 2? IMO, the standard fit questions, why MBA, why Wharton, why Now etc are already covered in the required essay. What topic(s) would you advise people touch upon in this essay optional essay of 400 words?

Thanks

I'm a reapplicant - interviewed and denied last year. Since it's the same essay topic as last year, is it ok to reuse some or all of a previously submitted essay?

I wanted to write a new optional essay and obviously a reapplicant essay, but make only minor changes to the required essay. Has anyone received any advice on this? I can't find any guidance on resubmitting an essay on the Wharton website.

Thanks!

Since the required essay is pretty career-centric, I usually tell people to use the optional one to tell the AdCom something else about their candidacy that's more personal and that probably doesn't have anything to do with your job... but that might still be something your fellow classmates can learn from. Have you traveled somewhere unique? Are you really passionate about, say, foreign films or cooking elaborate meals or some under-the-radar sport? Have you done something with an organization outside of work that is important to you? Remember that the "outside of class" stuff is just as important as your actual coursework when it comes to the value you're going to get out of 2 years on campus. So if you show them what else you can bond with classmates over or perhaps teach them or get them inspired by, it might give you the edge. They're looking for real people who others are going to like to hang out with and the optional essay is a great way to give them that kind of insight into your personality.

Hope that helps!

This one is really tough to comment on without seeing the essay itself, but my gut says I would probably not advise submitting the exact same essay word for word. I've worked with several Wharton reapplicants who were successful (IMHO, Wharton is one of the most reapp-friendly top schools) but I always had them rewrite their essay, even if it's essentially making the same points but only in a new/fresh way. I understand why it would be tempting and would seem to make logical sense to reuse it since it got you to the interview stage before--and I do think it's probably fine to recycle the majority of it -- but it kind of seems like you should've learned SOMETHING new about the program and should've adding SOMETHING different to your current skill set or have even a slightly different "personal goal" now versus compared to a year ago. Again, it might be totally fine to reuse it 100% and I'm certainly not trying to freak you out or make you doubt yourself, but it's just not something I've had experience with or advised anyone to do in the past.

SBCErikaOlson,

Thank you for an excellent and detailed reply.

So based on your recommendations, would you agree that this optional of Wharton should be similar to Essay 3 of Columbia " CBS Matters, a key element of the School’s culture, allows the people in your Cluster to learn more about you on a personal level. What will your Clustermates be pleasantly surprised to learn about you? (Maximum 250 words)" ?

Thank you again for your reply.

Well, there's a 150-word difference between the two essays, so it's hard for me to say if something you choose to write about yourself for the CBS/Cluster question would be meaty enough to expand for Wharton's optional essay. I also always caution people on reusing material to the extent that it's obvious a response was written to answer another specific question -- AdComs see right through that and would have a right to be insulted if they suspected you pulled an ol' cut-and-paste on them without giving each application the effort it deserves.

But in GENERAL I would say that the type of personal quality/experience/skill/story you'd share for that CBS essay might certainly be something you could consider re-positioning for Wharton's optional essay. Just remember that the optional essay DOES have a "question" in a sense... it's something like "What additional information do you think we should know," so just be sure your response reflects that and not, say, "What matters most" or "What someone would be pleasantly surprised to find out about me" or "Introduce yourself" or the like.

Good luck!