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Admissions Q&A Sample

No Tricks at Wharton

The advice the admissions department gives applicants is on the square, says director Thomas Caleel. So don't over-think your responses

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Thomas Caleel, director of MBA admissions at Penn's Wharton School since April, 2005, is a busy man. Each year, he reads 6,000 applications—every single one Wharton receives—and this year he will be making recruiting stops in more than two dozen countries across the globe.

Caleel is a Penn alumnus twice over—he received his MBA from Wharton in 2003, and a B.A. in International Relations from Penn in 1994. He worked at the Silicon Valley private equity firm Cagan McAfee Capital Partners before joining the admissions office of his alma mater.

	Thomas Caleel U Penn

Caleel spoke with BusinessWeek.com reporter Kerry Miller to dispel some myths about Wharton and the B-school application process. For one, he says that while the stereotype about Wharton being a "scary" place filled with hypercompetitive quant jocks just isn't true, it's no place to coast, either. "If you're looking for a school that's going to bring you in and hold your hand through the whole two years, we are definitely not that school." Caleel also talks about why "extracurricular activities" doesn't have to mean "community service," and why a 4.0 GPA, 750 GMAT, and two years at McKinsey aren't enough to guarantee admission at Wharton.

Here are edited excerpts of the conversation:

As a Wharton alum, what would you say is the toughest part of the application process?
The whole thing! These applications are hard, and they take a lot of time—not because we're trying to erect impediments to entry, but because this is an intensely personal process and we really want people to step back and think and answer the questions intelligently and learn about themselves in the process.

A lot of people just discount that. They view it as a game. They view it as, "O.K., I'm just going to polish up these essays and then crank out the rest of it at the last minute." Those people are rarely successful in the process. It's really the people who understand what we're trying to do and who do step back and do invest the time and do invest the effort and are self-aware enough to answer the questions who tend to be more successful in the process.

What do you tell candidates who ask how Wharton is different from other schools?
What I always tell people is that the question is not, "Why is Wharton different?" The question is, "Why is Wharton the right place for you?" Having gone through this myself, I did my process of elimination up front. I knew what I wanted out of school, and I just started crossing schools off the list, and I came down to the fact that Wharton was the right place that met all of my needs, and that's why I went there.

What we encourage people to do is to think about, really, why do you want an MBA? Why is now the right time? What do you look for in a school? Do you want a large school like Harvard and Wharton, with 900, 800 students in your class, or are you more comfortable in Stanford, that has a much smaller class size?

Do you want a large city, or do you want to be somewhere like Tuck, that's out in the countryside and more removed? Do you want a one-year program—should you be at INSEAD? And what are you trying to study? Oh, you're trying to study real estate. Great. You know, Wharton has eight real estate professors. Have you looked at the real estate conference? What's the Real Estate Club like?

That's the kind of level of diligence we want people to do. And if someone comes back to me and says...

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