Chat Transcript from our chat session conducted on 12 August 2018 with Wharton Current Student
Q1. Please give details of your profileMy background is - I am from India, did my education at IIT-Delhi (Mechical engineering). After, which I went to Japan, worked at Honda as a project manager and then switched to management consulting in Tokyo.
Q2. So, in your research for Wharton what all parameters did you take into account?Well, I had the following parameters:
1. Location: I wanted to be close to SF/Silicon Valley as I wanted to be in a tech background. Wharton had something which most schools apart from Stanford and UCLA didn’t have. Wharton has a semester in San Francisco where you can live in the SF campus for one semester.
2. School culture: I wanted to be in a school that had a strong culture and bonding. A lot of people think Wharton might be transacctional (post-the current presidency), and I used to be the same as well but I realized the culture here is extremely supportive to whatever you want to try (and extremely giving). Happy to elaborate later.
3. Growth opportunities and alumni network. Alumni Network is extremely diverse and since the class size is so big, you will literally find a ton of people sharing the same interest as yours. This is not the case with some of the smaller schools. Also, the alumni are response and will definitely respond to your query for any help/advice.
Q3. What is your no. of years of work ex.2.5 years: engineering/project management
2 years: consulting
Q4. I just had a question regarding informal extracurriculars. The charitable extra-curriculars in country (education especially), have 9 to 5 timings and clash with my job. My extracurriculars are very informal and include mentoring the kids of the underprivileged around me (drivers, sweepers, janitorial staff etc.) and paying for their education as well as guiding the completely uneducated parents on how to best educate their kids. Just wondering if schools like Wharton consider that as extracurricular work, since I have certificate etc. to show for it. I have no certificates for any of itYeah, I was in a similar position, to be honest they look for a whole round background and what unique aspect you can offer with your background. Not, everyone is doing a super contribution to society with a laundry list of activities. For me, my extra-ciriculars were focused more on mentoring new graduates and conducting career training for juniors. I was also active in the Fukushima area post disaster helping out the community.
FYI, they don’t ask you for proof of it, but it’s more of an ethical thing (if found later, you can be in big trouble). However, my recommender had apparently put in my mentoring aspect in his recommendation ( I found it out later when he told me a bit) so that probably validated it.
Q5. There is an essay this time "Describe an impactful experience or accomplishment that is not reflected elsewhere on your application. How will you use what you learned through that experience to contribute to the Wharton community? ". How did you connect your experience to the Wharton community?Hm, we didn’t have the same question as this one, but a similar one, refer below:
Essay 2: Teamwork is at the core of the Wharton MBA experience with each student contributing unique elements to our collaborative culture. How will you contribute to the Wharton community? A lot of these essays are about what unique thing you can bring to the table. For me, I am an extremely inquisitive person who loves cultural pyschology. (Note: everyone is different in this aspect so you got to think what differentiates you from the rest of people from your background). I used a lot of my personal stories of Japan, and what I learned over there about business and leadership that would be extremely unique and offer perspective on a part of the world that is less understood in the west. I then tied it in how I could apply the learnings to classroom to enhance the cultural understanding of the learnings and bring in a new paradigm of thinking.
Q6. Which component of the Wharton app you found most challenging and how you would advice new applicants to tackle it?For me, to be honest, it was about digging deep 3 levels down in each aspect of the application and being as specific as possilbe. A lot of students will try to copy paste a laundry list of activities and be extremely shallow int he application. However, my consultant early on was persistent that I narrow my focus and provide more specific concrete examples, which wiuold make for a more impactful and genuine story.
To give an example, I wrote inititally that I want to be a leader that wants to drive change in the technical industry and create value in clean tech. This was extremely shallow and I had to address, what sort of leader do I have to become? (Is it transformational, trasnactional, motivational?), what sort of value is that I am seeking? etc. etc.
This is where your consultant makes a big difference and I would honestly recommend a consultant who would be persistent and upfront about the process and holds his ground instead of someone who is deferring to you all over. For more, on this, refer to my tips on choosing a consultant:
https://gmatclub.com/forum/wharton-admi ... 67717.html
Q7. Did you get into the details of curriculm while writing your essays?I don’t get the question here, do you mind rephrasing it a bit? Are you talking about whether I touched on the courses that Wharton had to offer and how I gained value from those for my goals?Yes please elucidate that.TLDR answer: I did address that.
Long answer:
I gave my long term goal of being a business leader (it’s more specific than this), and I wrote the current definiciencies that I have in my toolkit (say, financial knowledge etc.). And I wrote how Wharton would help me in the process. A point to note here is to not just write down course names, but being specific on what you want to learn from a particular course. Also, not to just go for courses alone, but being holistic about all the other activities that Wharton has to offer (for example, you could be a non-profit board fellow or a leader of the restructuing club).
Q8. So roughly 6 weeks left for R1 submission deadline and I guess most of the applicants have started working on the essays. Any specific pointers you would like to provide them regarding essay writing?Oh jeez, this is going to be quite a stessful time. I started my essays at exactly 5 weeks before deadline (on 19th August after I finished my GMAT). What I will say is that we all go through this process and is literally hell.
1. You might want to get early from work to focus on the essays.
2. I hope you have already done a lot of self introspection already and have chalked a lot of stories that you think are usable
3. Also, second, I suggest you work on multiple essays at once and alternate having reviews from your consultant so that a. he is always busy and there is less of a loss of lead time in reviewing your essays, and b. you can have a more diverse set of stimuli to answer - this helped me out because I was able to incorporate the aspects of the Tuck essay to Wharton essay or vice versa. For example, Day 1: you send your Tuck essay to the consultant for review. Day 2: Work on Wharton essay, Day 3: Work on Harvard and get Tuck back. Day 4: work on Tuck and get back review for Wharton and so on.
Q9. I find it really hard to connect my extracurricular (teaching in a local school) to my job or to my long term goals Can leadership be an underlying common factor or does it have to have a certain flow?Perhaps you might want to put this question in Wharton profile evaluation page or Ask the Experts thread.
Q10. I have a terrible undergrad GPA - My college gives us percentages and not a GPA - so a 60%, and I understand that Wharton really stresses on the GPAWell to be honest, I am not sure if it is terrible or not. They look at holistically based on how tough your college was (for example, from what I heard, IITs are super tough, so a 8.0 GPA/8.0 GPA is counted around 4.0/4.0 for theirs but then again it depends as everything is relative). What I woudl say is, to address how, despite the low GPA, you can handle the finance courses (or why it was low, if it is) - with say a high GMAT score. You gotta talk with your consultant about this. And also remember that, they look at your holistic application, if you excel someplace else then they might even overlook this.
Updated on: 27 Aug 2018, 03:57
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