Penn / Wharton MBA News
Get the latest MBA news from Penn / Wharton.
Published: September 5, 2013
Wharton Start-Up Expands to Lend to MBA Students at 20 Top Schools
A company launched last fall by students at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School experienced success in its pilot phase, during which it served as a lender to Wharton MBA students and recent graduates, and so this fall will launch nationally to lend to MBA students at 20 top MBA programs in the United States, the Financial Times reports.
Wharton student David Klien is chief executive and co-founder of CommonBond, which last year lent $2.5 million to 40 MBA students and recent graduates from Wharton using funds raised primarily through crowdsourcing. Now, the start-up has raised more than $100 million through debt financing and selling equity. It will expand to offer low-interest loans to MBA students at business schools throughout the country, including Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, Columbia Business School and others.
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Published: August 18, 2013
UPenn’s Wharton School Unveils New MBA Website
Earlier this month, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania launched a redesigned MBA website, featuring a new look, streamlined content and greater interactivity designed to enhance the experience for prospective applicants. Included among the new features are updated student profiles, a new events calendar and student discussion forums.
“We hope that our new website provides you with clearer understanding of the Wharton Difference and how our program may be a good fit for you,” Wharton Director of Admissions and Financial Aid Ankur Kumar wrote in a post to her Notes from the Director blog.
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Wharton School Receives Large Gift to Permanently Endow Innovation Management Institute
How can decision-makers across industries best manage the risks and rewards of innovation? Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School have been studying that subject for years, and a recent major alumni gift will permanently endow an innovation management institute where that work will continue and expand, the school announced this week.
An earlier gift from Wharton alumnus William L. Mack, W’61, and his wife, Phyllis, established the Mack Center for Technological Innovation in 2001, and the couple’s 2013 gift has now transformed the center into the Mack Institute for Innovation Management, Wharton announced today. William Mack, a renowned global real estate and asset manager, was the founder and chairman of AREA Property Partners and today serves as chair of the Mack-Cali Realty Corporation board of directors and the Wharton Board of Overseers.
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Clear Admit’s Stacey Oyler Discusses Finding the Right MBA Fit with Bloomberg BusinessWeek
In a recent article about finding the right fit in a business school program, Bloomberg BusinessWeek turned to Clear Admit Senior Admissions Counselor Stacey Oyler for some guidance.
Oyler, who worked in admissions for Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and as a recruiter for McKinsey before joining Clear Admit, encouraged prospective applicants not to let a school’s rank in the various MBA rankings overshadow other important considerations. A top-ranked school can help catch recruiters’ eyes, but the school also needs to be the best match for what you want to do, Oyler told Bloomberg BW. “It’s two years and a significant financial investment,” she said. “So take the time to think about fit just as much as rank and reputation.”
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Published: April 16, 2013
Dean of UPenn’s Wharton School to Step Down in June 2014
The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania becomes the latest top business school to embark upon a search for a new dean, the school announced today. Dean Thomas S. Robertson, who has led the school since August 2007, will step down as of June 30, 2014.
In a letter to the Wharton community, Robertson shared that he will not seek reappointment next year when his term expires but will instead return to the marketing faculty to teach and pursue his research interests.
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Wharton | San Francisco Students to Host 2nd Annual Social Impact Conference
Later this week, students at Wharton | San Francisco, the West Coast campus of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, will host the Wharton San Francisco Social Impact Conference. The event, which will take place on April 4th, marks one of the first times students at the San Francisco campus have organized and run their own conference.
The event this week builds on an inaugural conference students organized last year jointly with the Wharton Social Impact Initiative, the Baker Retailing Center and the Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership. “The half-day event was attended by more than 120 Wharton students, alumni and friends and was a great success,” wrote Raghavan Anand in a Wharton Magazine blog post. “So we decided to continue the tradition, except to organize and run it ourselves this time around,” he continued.
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Published: March 25, 2013
Clear Admit Co-Founders Quoted in National, Local Press on Group Interviews for MBA Admissions
Clear Admit co-founders Graham Richmond and Eliot Ingram contributed to articles this week in both the national and local press, sharing their expertise in the MBA space and advising prospective applicants on how to prepare for the group interview component that some top schools are choosing to include as part of the admissions process.
Richmond’s comments appeared in a Bloomberg BusinessWeek article entitled, “How to Stand Out in an MBA Group Interview.” The University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business is the latest top MBA program to require applicants to work as a group as part of the application process, joining Switzerland’s IMD and the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Bloomberg BW notes. Though the schools are taking this step in an effort to elicit more off-the-cuff responses from applicants, there are still ways to prepare for these new exercises.
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Published: August 27, 2012
Admissions Director Q&A: Ankur Kumar of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania
~A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE~
Ankur Kumar, a Wharton alumna, joined the school’s admissions team three and a half years ago. In 2010 she was promoted to run admissions for the MBA program.
Kumar, who received her B.S. in finance from Wharton and her B.A. in economics from the College of Arts and Sciences, worked in investment banking and finance before returning to Wharton to pursue her MBA in strategic management. Upon graduation, she went into management consulting.
Asked to leave management consulting to join the Wharton admissions team, Kumar jumped at the opportunity to shape the program and have an impact. “For me, this transition was really a chance to leverage the skills I enjoyed about finance and consulting and bring them to a program I feel very strongly about and that is personal to me,” she told us.
In particular, her time as a Wharton student helped her appreciate the importance of having a diverse class of students who come from all over the world and bring with them a range of ways of thinking about business, she says. This is something she has pledged to keep top of mind as she brings together Wharton’s future classes.
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Clear Admit Featured in Financial Times Article on Changing MBA Admissions
Clear Admit’s own Graham Richmond was featured as part of an article this week in the Financial Times about changes taking place this admissions season at several top business schools. The article, entitled “The Creative Route to an MBA,” highlighted the shift at several top MBA programs toward requiring fewer essays from applicants, among other changes.
Several top schools, including Harvard Business School (HBS), Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, will require applicants to submit fewer essays as part of the application process than in years past. Clear Admit’s Richmond told the FT that he believes this is part of a trend by top programs to shift emphasis away from the essays and toward the interview portion of the application process.
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Harvard Business School, U Penn’s Wharton School Travel the Globe to Meet Prospective Applicants
Admissions staff from top schools like Harvard Business School (HBS) and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania are circling the globe in the weeks ahead to meet prospective applicants in the countries where they live.
Next week, HBS will host MBA Admissions events in Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai* and Beijing. South American events, in Peru and Argentina, are scheduled for later in the summer, in July. These outreach events are designed to give prospective applicants an opportunity to meet representatives from the HBS community and learn more about the MBA program and the admissions process. Interested participants are asked to register online to attend upcoming events. For a full schedule, click here.
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Published: January 16, 2011
Clear Admit Career Services Director Q&A: J.J. Cutler of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania
~ A CLEAR ADMIT EXCLUSIVE ~
Next up in our Career Services Director Q&A Series, we turn to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Here we reconnected with J.J. Cutler, who we first interviewed for our Admissions Director Q&A Series in February 2009. Since that interview, Cutler has been appointed deputy vice dean of admissions, financial aid and career management for Wharton, with direct oversight of the MBA Career Management Center. So it made sense to speak to him again in his new role for this series.
A lifelong Philadelphia resident, Cutler has deep ties to the University of Pennsylvania, where he got both his undergraduate degree and his MBA. After receiving his MBA in 1997 from Wharton, he worked for a number of years in healthcare consumer goods and marketing, including time at ARAMARK as senior VP of marketing, seven years at Johnson & Johnson and most recently as the president of Lindi Skin, a start-up offering skin care products specifically designed for people with cancer.
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