Why one can still be bullish on Wharton

As the year wraps up, I thought I would reflect on one of the most interesting news items on B-schools doing the rounds. Thanks to a provocative article, What’s wrong with Wharton? that appeared in The Wall Street Journal, I decided to write this one in response.

The article in the WSJ spoke of how the school is losing its sheen and is no longer mentioned in the same breath as Harvard and Stanford. Within a week of the article’s publication, Ankur Kumar, Wharton’s then Director of admissions, resigned amidst speculation. Statistics show that all is not well with Wharton. The volume of applications at Wharton has declined steadily over the last few years.

Decline in applications In the last five years, the number of candidates applying to Wharton has plunged by 17 per cent, while for most other top schools, the application numbers are back to the pre-recession days. I believe there are two main reasons for this decline. First, Wharton was slow in responding to the changing market dynamics after the financial crisis of 2009. After the financial crisis, students started looking beyond traditional careers in finance such as investment banking and started looking at careers in technology and entrepreneurship. It was only as late as last year that Wharton revamped its curriculum and embarked on a rebranding exercise. Till now, students interested in entrepreneurship/hi-tech jobs preferred going to schools such as Stanford, MIT and UC Berkley rather than to Wharton. Wharton failed to smell the coffee.

The second reason could be the increasing shift of candidates towards one-year programmes.

They will rise I am convinced, though, that Wharton will turn things around.

The school has revamped its curriculum and the new curriculum is very flexible and truly innovative. I’m also very upbeat about the school repositioning itself to reflect the changing market dynamics. It is now increasingly becoming a hotbed of entrepreneurship. While six years ago, 1.5 per cent of the Wharton graduates started companies right out of their MBA, last year the figure increased to 7 per cent.

One of the biggest parameters for a top school is how successful the school’s alumni have been. From Jeff Weiner (CEO, LinkedIn) to Anil Ambani (Chairman, ADAG Group), Wharton’s alumni consist of the who’s who of the corporate and start-up world. Currently, Wharton has produced the second highest number of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and is only surpassed by the Harvard Business School. Wharton is a very strong global brand. It takes decades for business schools to build a strong global brand and Wharton (and its parent, University of Pennsylvania) remains one of the most recognised brands internationally.

At the same time, I believe that the school staff/students needs to find innovative ways to ensure that its rivals like Chicago Booth don’t overtake it. I believe Wharton will sail through these rough patches and emerge stronger.

( The author is the co-founder of Aristotle Prep – an online test prep company for the GMAT and GRE that provides and publishes books across seven global locations for students in more than 60 countries.)

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