At Wharton, It's Downshift to Accelerate

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Grant Allen
U Penn
Class of 2007

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As with many other schools including Dartmouth and Darden, it is technically up the students to decide if they will communicate their grades or not. Effectively, this is a student cartel, an agreement that we decide how to best communicate our achievements—whether grades or general leadership or purely professional—to would-be employers. Among our peers, Stanford and Chicago remain decidedly in favor of GND and Haas last year moved to full nondisclosure.

Obviously, espousing grade disclosure sets up some perverse incentives, namely the incentive to defect from this student-enacted and student-enforced nondisclosure cartel. For instance, say, a job offer hinges on disclosing or not, when you do not have other signals such as Director's List (our top 10% academic designation) placement to demonstrate your academic prowess.

Unchanging Culture

Happily, most students are sticking with it. I, for one, was recently asked by Google (GOOG) for my grades; I promptly explained the policy, they were cool with it, and I shot them my Duke transcript alone. Many of my friends think this is strange since I've done well (I was in that dreaded 15th percentile band my first quarter, with good grades but no Director's List designation or other flag to openly communicate this fact). But I feel GND is central to the Wharton culture and I'm willing to do what I can to perpetuate that.

In the end, this is a seemingly serious change this particular year but I have confidence it will not change Wharton's culture significantly over the long term. In fact, all the first years I work with have said that during recruiting, and during DIP specifically, hardly any employers asked for grades; consulting firms certainly did not. Wharton will continue to be academically inclined, slightly competitive, and forward-thinking. It will continue to be one of the best business school educations the world over and our network of 80,000-plus alumni will continue to support fresh MBAs regardless of the regime under which they graduated.

The pendulum may have swung a bit far in one direction and course correction become necessary, but The Economist isn't going to stop ranking us where it does (No. 1) because students now strive for a 'B' instead of just taking a 'P' (which may correlate to a 'C' and, let's be honest, there are few folks here used to getting 'C's). We recently conducted the second annual GND poll and, with 84% of WGA students participating, found that 94% of students were in favor of grade nondisclosure.

Climbing Mountains

As a result, the student government will continue to support GND, educate students on their rights, and perpetuate an inclusive, less competitive community where students need not worry about their academic marks if they choose to focus on other components of their graduate business education.

Personally, I view extracurriculars (being an SBDC consultant my first year, leading alumni affairs within the WGA, sitting on the alumni association board, co-chairing our $1-plus million class pledge, mentoring first-year cohorts as a Leadership Fellow, among other things) to significantly surpass any class I've taken in terms of the net education received. Wharton has limitless extracurricular opportunities and these are hands down what have made my experience here a superlative one. Wharton offers the most leadership opportunities—from running major conferences like the VC/PE conference recently featuring Stephen Schwarzman and Tim Draper, to climbing with classmates the highest active volcano in the world—of any school.

While these amazing opportunities often require serious commitments of time, energy, and maybe more money (climbing Kilimanjaro will set you back $10,000, Antarctica even more), they will accelerate your personal development as a business leader armed with both sets of skills: the hard skills born of a research-based, sometimes tough, academic environment and the softer skills of communication, planning, coaching, group formation, and leadership. And isn't that the point of B-school? Well, that and pretending you're still in college?

Allen is an MBA Journal writer and member of UPenn Wharton's MBA class of 2007.