The Wharton School

The focus of the school is to prepare their students to be business leaders and be competitive in the job market. The skills we learn are practical, the curriculum is structured to give us a taste of everything and provide every opportunity to pursue interests, and the staff is amazing.

While there is a strong emphasis on teamwork and collaboration, very little time is spent on what makes a good team. This should be communicated early on in the academic career at Wharton. This, however, is a minute concern. Being thrown into teamwork really was one of the best ways to learn how to navigate it expertly.

Wharton is full of extremely smart and driven people, both peers and staff. Being surrounded by these people is an incredible motivator, and it is very easy to learn from people around you. Wharton also does excellent research and it is very easy to draw some of the greatest minds to speak and present here.

I think the grading curves make the school more competitive than necessary and inflict extra stress and anxiety that students really should not have to deal with. For example, I have had classes in which curves were applied to 10 or less students, which seems a bit ridiculous.

It seems that the Wharton name automatically draws people's attention. In general, there are a lot of different opportunities open to students. There is a consistent strive to keep courses relevant to new emerging industries and trends. There are plenty of organizations/clubs and resources available for you to take advantage of.

I think in general there has to be a bit of a paradigm shift. We often expect A while rewarding for B, meaning we ultimately want to achieve understanding of subject matters yet in our effort to try to quantify everything around us, this seems to get lost in the mix as pressure on students builds to get the highest possible numbers. The program is strong and the Wharton brand definitely makes things easier in the job search, but I fear that perhaps that brand equity is sometimes taken for granted which is a scary and slippery slope.

The quality of the firms that recruit Wharton undergraduate students is unmatched by any other school in the world. There are some firms, which will only recruit at Wharton and nowhere else, and having access to these companies is incredible. The quality of my classmates also always amazes me and the connections I have made here will help me forever.

There is almost too strong an emphasis on pre-professionalism. Many of the fine and liberal arts are lost on business students. Getting a stronger cross-disciplinary education would likely help critical analysis of the "big picture".

The level of theoretical and practical insights that the professors bring to the classroom is unparalleled based on my discussions with friends at different business schools. I feel extremely prepared for working full time in my chosen field, and I believe a large part of that is due to the education at Wharton.

Wharton should continue to improve on all fronts - certainly the school can produce even better programming for students, but one improvement that I've noticed over the past few years especially is a genuine care for student life from the top down. People here understand that college can be stressful at times and it's been nice to see people come together instead of the stereotype of this school as "cut throat".

Our business program is fantastic all around. We have exceptional faculty, great academic, professional and extracurricular support, and most important, some of the world's smartest and also kindest people. I am truly lucky to be a member of this community.

I feel that sometimes the high-quality liberal arts classes offered through Penn are not fully taken advantage of. This is not particularly a fault of Wharton as they have designed the curriculum to encourage broadening one's horizons, but I think students would do well to fully utilize that.

The unique alumni network sets Wharton apart. There are alumni in every industry who are willing to help, give advice, and introduce students to friends and colleagues. There is also unparalleled access to the top thinkers and actors in every field. There really is no better place to learn.

Teaching quality in the core curriculum needs to be improved. Focus is on passing exams rather than learning. Yes, the subject material is often dry - it takes a truly special lecturer to make accounting and statistics interesting. But I've seen a few here and they're amazing. The ones who are just average, though, make it very difficult to learn. Most of my learning is done on my own.

Perhaps the greatest strength of the Wharton program is its brand recognition and reputation for excellence. This allows Wharton to bring in high-profile executives nearly every few weeks to give talks and nab the top financial firms on the Street to recruit in droves during OCR. What I find particularly amazing is that many graduates of Wharton who went there for undergrad don't need to go out and get an MBA down the road because the Wharton degree takes them pretty far already. That is impressive and very unique for an undergraduate business program.