I have no business experience and below average math skills. Should I bother with Wharton ED?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
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Note: I posted this in another forum, but didn’t get many responses. I thought the Penn forum would be very helpful, so I reposted here.

I would greatly appreciate some advice here. I really love Penn, especially Wharton programs of management/marketing. However, I feel like I might be wasting my ED card if I use it on Wharton, for several reasons:

  1. I’ve heard showing very strong math skills is critical for Wharton, but I haven’t shown that kind of skill. I’m gotten As in math and am taking AP calc this year (expecting a B, which I don’t think they’ll see), but my SAT math score isn’t amazing (730) and I don’t know how the math 2 subject test will turn out.
  2. My extracurriculars have nothing to do with business. However, I’ve had a lot of accomplishments with film, so maybe I could tie that in somehow with marketing.

I considered just applying to CAS and trying to transfer in later, but that seems unethical and also very tough to do. My stats are 2330 SAT (730 math), 4.2 GPA, top 2% of class, film awards, varsity sport, community service work with museum (including serving on youth advisory board and curating exhibits), couple great film internships. I’m also expecting some awesome recs and love writing, so essays should be strong (fingers crossed). So in conclusion, is Wharton too far a stretch? I could just apply there regular decision and use ED for another great school.

Thanks!

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There are lots of people who get in without a lot of business ECs. If you have strong ECs, I think that would be enough. You don’t have to necessarily have business ECs but try to show some leadership, such as being president of a club or something of the sort.
If you feel like UPenn is your #1 school, you should definitely apply. I heard transferring was hard tho.
Good luck!

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Hi there- your scores don’t appear to be disqualifying in any way. People with lower math scores get into Wharton every year. And on that note, it’s not particularly easier to get into the College either. The difference between Wharton’s acceptance rate and that of the College is about the difference between Stanford’s and Princeton’s (1 or 2 percentage points). Which is to say, applicants are unlikely to be accepted to either and the small difference in acceptance rates doesn’t translate into a meaningful difference in the quality of the students accepted. Unless you really think Stanford students are just on a totally different level than Princeton students… But if you do think that then we have more to worry about than your math skills :wink: – in all seriousness, if Penn is your top choice then you should apply ED. Transferring between the college and wharton isn’t ‘hard’ per se, it’s more about having a good reason to do it. I know people with great grades who did not get accepted for the internal transfer because they could not demonstrate that the college wasn’t adequately meeting their intellectual needs. Conversely, I had friends with academic records that were not particularly distinguished in any way that were readily accepted to internally transfer. It’s a gamble but it’s certainly not terribly difficult. That being said, since an applicant is unlikely to be accepted to the College or to Wharton, it makes far more sense to just apply to the school that you believe will best meet your intellectual needs rather than potentially being stuck in a program that doesn’t appeal to you given that your qualifications could have probably gotten you into either.

Good luck-- happy to answer any questions you have about Penn. :slight_smile:

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Your EC is good. But to be honest if you apply ED, you do need strong Math to have a chance in Wharton unless you are URM. Strong MATH means very high SAT general and Math II and perfect AP calc scores.