Admitted - Booth ($) vs Wharton for Venture Capital? RE to VC?

VC is tough in general (even from H/S) but Wharton and Booth will both put you in a good position. One major advantage Booth has is its Chicago location and close ties to the VC community through The New Venture Challenge and the Booth VC lab. Regardless of whether you want to stay in Chicago or not, the best way to build your VC resume is to work for a VC part-time while getting your MBA. Almost all of the people in my class who wanted VC and stuck with it for the full two years ended up landing a job in VC (across Chicago, SF, and NY). I know people at Wharton who did this as well but given the lack of a tech community in Philly, they had to commute up to NYC once a week for a few days. VC is less about where you get your MBA (at least within say the M7/T9) and more about your personal brand and how you sell yourself. Most of the firms are small and don't do formal recruiting anywhere so it's up to you to be aggressive and convince them that you can add value.

Hey echoing everything Jessepinkman has said. There’s recruiting and avenues open up through the NVC, well connected professors, alumni network, the Polsky Center and PEVC lab etc. It is less structured than banking or consulting in that you won’t be served networking opportunities and interview prep on a platter, but if you’re motivated enough to seek out the various opportunities at Booth, you are sure to find something great. There are a lot of school year internships posted on our job portal as well for VC that interested candidates take up. A few school year internships will take you places. Do not know how it is at Wharton so can’t comment, but id say it’s pretty good at Booth. Only caveat, if you’re an international, VC shops don’t want to sponsor work auth; most internationals do VC in geographies where they have the right to work, after doing a few internships through school to get the experience under their belt. There is even an offered class called PEVC lab where you can land an internship through the class! Hope this helps!

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Thanks for kmwantstogoschool and jessepinkman for the input! Super helpful! It's great to hear that Booth has great resources for VC. I'm from Chicago so there's certainly an advantage in the location. My only concern is the breadth of the network at Wharton seems to be larger, specifically in areas like VC and PE (from what I've gathered, but could be wrong) and this could be beneficial in making a switch to VC.

Is there anyone you'd specifically recommend reaching out to that exited into VC from Booth? Also, it'd be great to hear the Wharton side of the story, as well, if you know anyone familiar with Wharton VC.

Thanks again!

Thanks for the votes! My biggest concern is taking out ~230k in debt to pay for Wharton. Can anyone shed some color on whether it's worth it to take on this amount of debt? Thanks.

here are a few
https://www.linkedin.com/in/costacristina/
https://www.ylventures.com/people/john-brennan/
https://www.ggvc.com/ggv_employee/oren-yunger/
https://onewayvc.com/team/lex-zhao/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sbstern/

Trying to ping a few Wharton folks to see what they feel about $230K in debt

I see this is an old thread, but I'll give a response if there are others out there interested in Wharton Real Estate VC. I'm a 2Y studying Finance and just finished our Real Estate Investments course (one of the two intro courses for the Real Estate major).

I agree with earlier posts that VC is hard to break into, especially coming from outside of PE/VC/IB. However, folks I've seen at M7 schools breaking into VC generally do so from a specific industry, and they'll get term-time internships. (E.g., I know a couple Wharton folks working term-time at VCs in healthcare and retail)

My thoughts for you, or someone in a similar boat is to think about what you want out of the program, what community is available for you there, and what you might do specifically to break into VC. Getting into VC from Booth, Wharton, Harvard will probably be similarly difficult, but how can you leverage your Real Estate background to break into a firm that's RE focused?

For Wharton in particular, there's a robust Real Estate community. Wharton arguably has the best Real Estate program, supported by the Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center. There are plenty of resources for career fairs, conferences, alumni networking, and financial modeling prep (through the Wharton RE club and access to Wall Street Prep) to support you.

I think in most top MBA programs, you'll also find great resources for financial prep, and VC-specific clubs. Wharton is no different in that regard.

Below are some resources I think could be helpful:
Wharton Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center
Wharton Real Estate Club
Wharton Real Estate Department (for courses and the concentration)
Wharton PE/VC Club