| Topic Name: |
Wharton and Drones |
| Message Name: |
First, your sample s |
| Date Posted: |
10/31/1999 |
| In Reply To: |
I just had my interview at Wharton last week and I was so disappointed in the school and caliber of students. Just about everyone seemed to be a drone, only talking about Wall Street and banking. No one I met had any impressive stats or seemed to be all that interesting. For example, while I was waiting for my interview I spoke with three first year students in the office, two were from small schools I never heard of and the third was from Rutgers for God's sake. They had worked for Prudential, Anderson IT and Citigroup; hardly impressive by anyones standards.
I think the problem is that Wharton's class is too big (795 for '99 and over 800 for the class entering '00). They dilute the talent and cheapen the quality of the class.
I've also visited Kellogg, Columbia and MIT and left with much better impression of those schools. They all have smaller fulltime student bodies and the caliber and energy seemed higher.
I know Wharton is a good school but, after my visit, it's not going to be my first choice. |
| Message: |
First, your sample size was three people. That's hardly of sufficient size to draw any credible conclusions. I went to Wharton. Now I work at McKinsey and Company, arguably one of the most exclusive companies on the planet, so we people from all the top schools. My experience (from a LOT of data points) tells me that the Wharton backgrounds are every bit as exclusive as Harvard, Stanford, MIT, etc.
You're right Wharton has a large class, around 800, but that's only one measure. You also have to think in terms of number of applicants. It's running around 10,000 applicants this year. Of these, about 1,000 will be admitted. That admission rate is as low as HBS's, which also has a large class. Schools like Columbia and even MIT and Kellogg have higher admission rates with smaller class sizes. Why? FEWER APPLICANTS
As far as this exclusive undergrad background or whatever other proxy you're looking for, I'd encourage you to look at the product of the school, NOT the input.
By your argument, you'd buy a car because it uses premium unleaded, but turns a 10 second quartermile, rather than a car that uses regular unleaded but is able to turn a 5 second quartermile.
The number of people leaving Wharton to go to the creme de la creme of companies is huge. The number of companies started by recent grads is also huge. (Look at Business 2.0's article) That's the performance measure you're looking for, not the input, though let me reiterate that my experience from Wharton is that the people have very impressive backgrounds. You find a few at EVERY school that make you wonder, "How the hell did this person get in?" So see, maybe you'll have a shot!
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