Hello, I’m currently a senior in high school and I’ve applied to the Wharton school for my undergrad- a degree in finance. I was wondering what my chances are of getting in?
Academics:
Unweighted GPA- 3.73
Weighted GPA- 4.29
Full IB program
ACT- 32 (superscore- 33)
PSAT- Got a letter of commendation
National Honor Society
Excellence in Business award from my school
ECs:
Varsity tennis and cross country
A lot of volunteer work (meals on wheels, co-headed a school wide project with limbs, and have raised money for special schools in India)
President of politics club
State Science Fair- Superior rating
Secretary in Student Government
Junior Mentor
Tutored kids in math in my elementary school
Essay and Letter of Recs:
I personally believe I have a solid, unique, and personal essay. I also got very good letters of Recs.
I have a feeling that my chances aren’t that good, but I would still like a second opinion. Thank you!
Oh yeah, Wharton is one of, if not the, best business schools in the country. The chances are very low to begin with; I’m just wondering if I have a relatively good shot.
I have no opinion on whether you have a good shot of getting into Penn or not. Just wanted to quickly clear up some factual inaccuracies from the posts above.
Wharton is the "base" university. There is no distinction between Wharton and Penn. They are in fact one institution. Wharton just happens to be Penn's business school's name. Similar to the way the school of engineering at Columbia is called the Fu Foundation School of Engineering, Wharton merely connotes the division of Penn in which one is pursuing their education.
Wharton is not significantly more difficult to get into than Penn's other undergrad schools. There is currently no evidence that Wharton's acceptance rate is lower than that of the other three schools since Penn doesn't report admissions rate by individual degree program. Instead, Penn reports one, overall admissions rate for all four undergrad programs (the College, Engineering, Wharton, Nursing). That being said, it is usually assumed that Wharton has an acceptance rate that is around 1 or 2 percentage points lower than that of the College's and Engineering's (others have indicated that Engineering's is now the lowest- but no conclusive evidence has been produced to that effect). Even if Wharton's and Engineering's acceptance rates are about 8% - 9% and the College's is about 9%-10% (which is what is generally assumed to be true, though no concrete evidence exists to fully corroborate the theory), that means the difference in acceptance rate between Wharton and the College is no greater than the difference in acceptance rate between Stanford and Princeton- which is to say, the difference is negligible and one is not genuinely more likely to get into either school over the other.
Good luck in your college application process, Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions about Penn!
I dont think you have a good chance, if a chance at all. Your ACT and GPA are far to low to be a “overall” student without much business acumen, and you have no business acumen (such as DECA, internships, etc) to account for the low GPA and ACT. I hate to be a downer, and hell you could prove me wrong, but I just dont see it happening.
I applied Wharton ED and was straight up rejected. I know this is because I didn’t have strong business EC’s and tried to ride in on my high GPA, scores, and math EC’s. After penn, I was accepted to UChicago and UMich before cancelling the rest of my apps. Likewise, I know someone our age who runs a cyber security company with multiple Fortune 500 clients (super successful) who was also rejected by Wharton, and presumably for his relatively low scores (not too low in my opinion, but this is the Ivy League.) He went on to be accepted to UMich’s impressive Ross BBA program and Boston College, and is waiting for regular decision.
The moral of the story is that Wharton is THE undergraduate business school, and they only accept business students. Without a hook/legacy/urm, you need a combination of high stats and impressive business EC’s. Your ACT shouldn’t be too low to disqualify you from admission, and you could have a shot depending on the depth and reasoning behind the business award that you received. Do you run your own business or participate in DECA/FBLA/something of the sort? That would greatly help your chances!! Again, regular decision at ANY ivy-league, let alone Harvard/Princeton/Yale/Columbia/Wharton is very tough. Good luck and you’ll just have to wait and see.
Business related ECs are not required to get into Wharton. If you went through the acceptance threads of previous threads, you would see that they rejected many applicants with very successful business experience, and accepted many with zero or near zero experience. They want to educate leaders of tomorrow, same with other top universities. It is the admission officer’s job to judge whether you have such potential.
If you do not have big hooks, you should have top notch credentials to be admitted, similar credentials to get into HYPSM. Many RD Wharton students turned down the acceptance of these schools, and many ED students have high probability to get into HYPSM.
@Pase66@FrontElevation SEAS has had the lowest acceptance rate of the four undergrad schools at Penn for the pas couple of years. Of course not saying SEAS is harder to get into than Wharton, but the difference is not big these days. It is equivalent to the difference in difficulty between say Stanford/Harvard and Yale/Princeton. What is substantially more difficult to get in are the coordinated dual degree programs at Penn. These are at the HYPSM level of difficulty to get in and many dual degree students at Penn have turned down HYPSM for them. During my time at the university, I personally didn’t meet many RD Wharton kids who had turned down HYPSM but I sure met many dual degree kids who had done so.
@chrizzlez It is not necessary to have a super-focused business applicant profile. There are many students at Wharton who do not have that, and I can say that from personal experience. What you need are truly top notch stats and a well-crafted/convincing story of why you are interested in business. Business is an inter-disciplinary field by default. Wharton would be foolish to recruit only people with heavily business-focused background.
@Pase66 to answer your original question, your scores and grades are a bit lower than the Penn averages. The average GPA for the Penn class of 2019 was 3.93 and 92% of the class had a GPA of 3.75 or higher. You ACT is just slightly below the average I think. ECs are solid but not exceptional. Overall you are within the feasible range for admission but you will face very tough competition.
@f2000sa I’d agree, I just think that unless students are what I would call a “monster,” (the type of kid that can get into HYPS and likely letters from other ivy-level schools) in terms of non-business credentials, then it’s pretty imperative that business is in your app somewhere
Thank you everyone for your input! @PennCAS2014 Thanks for the insight and offer for me to reach out! I seemed to have been under the misunderstanding that Wharton was harder to get into than the “base” university. @ANormalSeniorGuy It’s fine: I would prefer a realistic outlook than getting my hopes needlessly high. @chrizzlec I don’t have any other business related extracurriculars (though I did help run some non- profit events, which had a lot of business applications in them). Thank you, though! @f2000sa To be honest, I don’t think my credentials are out there. If anything, if I get accepted, it would probably be due to my essay. However, thank you. @Penn95 Yeah, I figured I would be facing tough competition: like people said above, I don’t really have a “hook” to leverage. Again, if I get accepted, my essay would probably be the deciding factor.
