The Wharton School

-The EMBA program at Wharton, San Francisco is rigorous and perhaps the best when it comes to educating the students. But education is not an end in itself. Unless the program gets bolstered by an active career management office, it will lose some of its appeal to the local Silicon Valley crowd who see the students from other local EMBA programs placed better in local firms.

-Professors could communicate better on content covered in their classes. Often times, especially in finance classes, the same concepts were taught that we previously learned in another finance class. I understand that some review is necessary but perhaps a little less time on concepts previously taught.

-The caliber of students in the Wharton program is phenomenal. They did a fantastic job of screening to obtain truly brilliant people who are still very capable of communicating and leading.

-A pre-calculus class should be made mandatory for students without a mathematical background. The math camp offered during the boot camp week simply isn't enough. Many classes went into derivatives and log functions that we have not seen since high school.

-I can't say enough good things about Wharton. The program was extremely rigorous--to complete the same curriculum as full-time students while working full-time. The school does a good job explaining this, but many people still have misconceptions that the EMBA program is easier or has fewer requirements.

-Not sure how to accomplish this but more convenient office hours from professors (perhaps Friday evening) would have been helpful for students that needed extra help. The executive program schedule is so tight that office hours any other time is near impossible. Professors, however, were always available via phone or email. The faculty, academic rigor, in-person experience and curriculum is exactly the same as that of our full-time counterparts. The degree is the same - an MBA. This was important to me in selecting Wharton over other EMBA programs, which are more like "MBA-lite." However, the school needs to do a better job of connecting us to the campus and other faculty back east.

-Generally, I am grateful that we covered a lot of material. In many classes, however, I felt it would have been worthwhile to prioritize topics and possibly to have skipped a few in order to have spent more time and to have gone in-depth on issues, topics, and analysis that were most relevant in today's business world. Also, since class time is precious and limited, I would have preferred for more professors to have used their last session to teach material and to have given a take home final exam.

-The quality of the Wharton Executive MBA is excellent. The staff, professors and student are all top-notch. Wharton does a superb job of putting together a rigorous program and accepting a diverse set of students that thoroughly enrich the learning experience. Attending Wharton was one of the best decisions I have made!

-The school needs to up the game on career development and technology industry outreach. I didn't need to pay $165,000 to have the world's best finance education and still see no doors opened at local Silicon Valley companies or get asked if Wharton's EMBA program is an online one. The career management services should definitely work on getting internships at the EMBA level of experience. The marketing curriculum needs to increase its focus on the technology sector.

-It was an amazing experience for someone in middle management planning on rapidly advancing during and following the program. It may not be as fulfilling an experience for someone with minimal work experience as the discussions are some of the more useful parts of the program.

-There should be more consistent presentation of courses from class to class. Some have heavy use of electronic media and others don't. This addresses each professor’s style but does create some challenge for the student- especially for those with busy professions and traveling.

-The executive MBA program should definitely lay more emphasis on the "touchy-feely" components of management training. Unlike 25-year olds getting ready to be cogs in Wall Street and McKinsey, the typical EMBA student can hardly choose to ignore courses like "Management of People at Work". I wish there were more classes on strategic human asset management and ethics. The classroom experience would have improved if the human impact of every hard-nosed decision were brought up more often.

-Everything about the experience (excepting academics) was completely handled - a totally "valet" experience - so that we could focus on learning and spending time getting to know classmates.