<p>If we get the ratio of total students working at a bulge bracket investment banking after graduation to total number of students applying for the position, is Wharton’s ratio still higher compared to peer schools like HYPS, Columbia, UChicago, Dartmouth, and the like? </p>
<p>How about schools in the next tier like Duke, NW, GTown, UVA, UMich and NYU?</p>
<p>Doesn’t Wharton Practice grade deflation?</p>
<p>And don’t large corporate recruiters know that?</p>
<p>If you say that a 3.3 student at Wharton is equal to a 3.8 at Ross, wouldn’t talent recruiters also deduce the same thing and take that into account when hiring?</p>
<p>Also, since grade deflation is practiced, how can everyone get a 3.3 or 3.5 so easily when there are only so many of these grades to give out? Isn’t that, in fact, the practice of grade inflation? So which is it?</p>
<p>The recruiters at BBs will simply take the 3.8 wharton students AND the 3.8 Ross student, since there are plenty of both to fill the spots. Although a 3.3 at Wharton could equal a 3.6-3.7 at Michigan, the BBs want class diversity too and dont want everyone to be from the same school, so for example goldman sachs will take the top students from both schools, but it is easier to be a “top” student at Ross/Uva/ND than wharton…
I think this difference is only visible at the top tier. ie- a 3.3 at wharton does not equal a 3.8 at Duke/Dartmouth/other top target.</p>
<p>@giantman: Rule of thumb for undergrad prospects are 1. Wharton, 2. Harvard, 3. Princeton… and then the other top schools (YS, Dartmouth, Duke, etc.) in a cluster after that. The top students at Wharton will have the best options, as there are some elite firms that will only recruit there.</p>
<p>@Madaboutx: Generally speaking, the Wharton curve that students experience in the core (as well as some upper-level courses) will serve as a grade deflator. There are, however, ways to make sure your CUMULATIVE GPA remains as high as possible. In some cases, this will be taking upper-level courses with more lenient curves or no curves at all (this is a mixed bag), but the easiest way is to take less challenging courses in liberal arts requirements. At the end of the day, on your app or resume, you’re listing your overall GPA, so many Whartonites will try to take choice courses outside of Wharton to keep the average respectable in case the curve is dragging them down. Considering 43% of courses are taken outside of Wharton to earn the degree, not not surprising for a good number of folks to end up above 3.5 and that the average GPA is usually reported to be somewhere in the 3.3-3.4 range. But, of course, there are also just rockstars who kill at everything and get those 3.8+ GPA’s. The cream of the crop.</p>
<p>@goblue2018: I would agree a 3.3 at Wharton would not be as competitive as a 3.8 at another top target, provided that student had relevant coursework. But, I could see a 3.5 at Wharton being just as competitive as a 3.8 at Duke, for example. Then again, I’m not a recruiter, so I am speculating some.</p>
<p>The Wharton curve is not grade deflation. Wharton students can complain about it all they want, but the fact is that curving to a B+ is actually very reasonable. In fact, I took an upper division science course which WAS EXPLICITLY NOT CURVED and still the grade distribution was very similar to that in Wharton. While we usually don’t have strict curves (that we know of) in the science courses I take, the average is always usually between a B and B+.
Also, I have heard that in Wharton courses, there is definitely a way to brute force learn the material. In hard science courses, this is not true. You can study all you want and may receive a perfectly acceptable grade that is not an A.
Several of my science major friends have taken classes in Wharton, especially finance and say similar things. If you are a very diligent student, you will do well in Wharton. The reason investment banks want people with high GPAs is because getting a very high GPA shows a lot of discipline. While it’s true you have to be intelligent to get a high GPA, the higher you go the less it really means. Most people who have very high GPAs (not all) have inflated their coursework to an extent. Others have sacrificed other opportunities such as extracurriculars to maintain this GPA. In the end, it is better to have a good (probably around 3.7) GPA and participate in activities outside the classroom than to get a 4.0 having spent all your free time studying.</p>
<p>Exactly Poeme. When I was at Wharton, most of my core classes were curved to either a B or B+. In the upper-levels, I encountered that same curve quite often, but I do know of professors who would not use it (either they would get a natural distribution anyway, or they simply did not care to use it). </p>
<p>Overall, this is reasonable and I would call it deflationary (in the sense to maintain a really high GPA you have to be at the top of the curve in every class), but I wouldn’t call it grade deflation (as we think of it) because a B+/B is a much more friendly grade to set the curve to rather than a B-/C+ that you might see in the hard sciences like many of my friends did. Add to the fact that there are certainly ways to game your way to a high cumulative GPA by taking the right classes, and some Whartonites have opportunities to finish with 3.8 and 3.9s. </p>
<p>But, as you pointed out, it almost always means sacrificing time spent on extracurriculars, which help make for more well-rounded candidates (and teach students many things as well) or it means not challenging oneself and taking the easy way out. The former I have seen examples of with resumes I have received to screen for jobs in the past, though the latter is something I knew from classmates. I don’t necessarily think either is desirable, but you can’t fault people for trying to give themselves the best chances possible.</p>
<p>I think this is a much better conversation because people come in here and say a 3.5 is easy but this discussion shows how some students finagle things to get the high GPA or sacrifice ECs to get it. Then there are the truly super smart, sometimes photogenic memory types that ace everything.</p>
<p>So it sounds like Wharton is hard work if people are truthful about it for everyone except the truly brilliant. A good recruiter should be able to sort that stuff out.</p>
<p>bump Are there any Whartonites here who got hired full-time at a major Wall Street investment bank and can speak from personal experience?</p>
<p>As someone who turned down Wharton for Chicago, I can say I am extremely happy I did. It seems to me that most of these people hope to get IB jobs, become moderately wealthy, and hop from IB to something else, hoping to climb the corporate ladder, and gain the “prestige” associated with the mgmt positions in banks/finance. Too bad the people who make real money are entrepreneurs and inventors. Also, just remember finance is not a necessary industry and is one of the most easily “cuttable” if you will. God, I can not imagine going to school with a bunch of job-whoring, butt licking, career climbing, parasites. BTW, have fun working 100 hour weeks and losing everything you valued about your physical appearance. I would say try some psychedelics or smoke a doobie, but of course, that would make me look inferior to you by your egocentric values.</p>
<p>I agree kiddo64, this is the aspect of Penn I dislike the most. I love everyone in my own department and the overall academic environment, but the intense snobbery and elitism coming out of Wharton is often very irritating. Don’t get me wrong, many of the students are great and are both very creative and entrepreneurial. These are the ones you hear about building start ups and doing really cool things. However, it feels like a large portion of the class is just gradually sucked in to this investment banking vortex and only cares about money and so called “prestige”. A lot of the guys have some kind of inferiority complex left over from grade school and feel that working at a top bank gives them some sort of power they always wanted. I don’t interact with these people daily and kind of drifted from most of them after freshman year. The only way I hear all of this is through Facebook and the rumor mill. You don’t have to engage with this aspect of Penn if you do not want to, but it’s presence can be irking.</p>
<p>Look the most commonsensical thing to do is to check the website of those employers where you are interested in working. Here is a link to Goldman Sachs’ website specifically for students like you: [Goldman</a> Sachs | Students and Graduates](<a href=“http://www.goldmansachs.com/careers/students-and-graduates/]Goldman”>http://www.goldmansachs.com/careers/students-and-graduates/)
Good luck!</p>
<p>Poeme, that sounds pretty rough. Hopefully you haven’t encountered too, too many folks like that because while I was at Wharton, my overall perception of my classmates was pretty good. Then again, my focuses were always in different spaces than the Wharton mainstream (policy, marketing, non-profits and social impact), and the personalities were a bit different there. I was always somewhat dismayed, however, at how many people were interested in banking and consulting just because it seemed lucrative and not necessarily for any passion or true interest in the work. For a school that focuses so much on leadership and leadership potential in the admissions process, it surprises me how many chose to follow the mob so to speak rather than walk their own path and do something that might truly be more interesting for them or a better fit. You’re at Wharton. Take full advantage of it. There’s more to the business world than Goldman Sachs.</p>
<p>^ To follow up on that, Wharton and Penn continue to invest significant resources to ensure that Wharton is known for much more than just its placement in IB and consulting, for example:</p>
<p>[Penn</a> Wharton Public Policy Initiative](<a href=“http://publicpolicy.wharton.upenn.edu/]Penn”>http://publicpolicy.wharton.upenn.edu/)</p>
<p>In fact, the IB/consulting obsession is a relatively recent phenomenon in Wharton’s storied 133-year history. When I was a Wharton undergrad in the 1970s, about a third of Wharton undergrads went straight to law school, and many others went into large manufacturing and retail corporations, national accounting firms (before they were so associated with management consulting), marketing firms, and a wide variety of other business and government enterprises. Indeed, the prominent Wharton alumni often cited at the time were people like Reginald Jones (CEO of GE), William Paley (CEO of CBS), Robert Dunlop (CEO of Sun Oil Company), Walter Annenberg (CEO of Triangle Publications), William Brennan (US Supreme Court Justice), etc.</p>
<p>Of course, there were Wharton undergrads who went into the financial sector–including Wall Street investment banks, etc.–and management consulting, but it just didn’t dominate the Wharton ethos and image like it apparently does among many folks today. I guess we can thank the go-go financial craziness of the 1980s and 1990s for the current obsession, such as it is. But those of us with a longer view–and deeper knowledge–of Wharton realize that it’s MUCH more than simply a feeder into elite IB and consulting jobs, with top-ranked departments of Management, Marketing, Real Estate, Accounting, Entrepreneurship, etc. in addition to its top-ranked Finance department, and it always has been much more.</p>
<p>It is a shame that the investment banking craze has become so visible at Wharton seeing that it does have so much more to offer. An M&T student once said to me that “you can nerd out at Wharton but most people don’t choose to do so”. I have noticed though that the IB craze gets worse in junior year. Many of the Wharton kids I was friends with freshman year seems really creative and friendly, but I definitely have noticed a change in many of these people throughout college. People with plans to go into law going to work for a bank etc.</p>
<p>I dont think the Wharton IB craze is as huge as you guys are making it seem… only about 30% of recent grads go into IB which really isnt that much and is on par with lower ranked schools like ross and uva. sure more wharton grads are going to GS/MS but the overall percent is the same so I dont see how the wharton IB atmosphere would be so different from other undergrad bschools?</p>
<p>
I think it’s more perception than reality, quite frankly (and especially based on many posters here on CC). As you point out, the placement statistics reveal greater diversity of career paths and, as I discussed above, Wharton’s current and historic academic strengths are much broader and deeper than just Finance and IB. But Wharton’s success in IB placement is really unsurpassed, and perhaps only rivaled by that of Harvard, and I’m sure that contributes to the obsession with IB–and especially BB IB–that’s often on display here on CC.</p>
<p>It’s not about percentage, it’s about perception. If you have been on campus during OCR, you will know what I mean.
There is also the fact that a lot of kids will do IB internships in the summer before senior year and then do OCR again in the fall for consulting because they discovering IB is not as glorious as it seems. It’s monotonous work for very long hours.</p>
<p>I don’t understand how a high schooler would want to go into IB for any other reason than making money.</p>
<p>Yes it in monotonus work, but arent the payoffs much greater?? Im sure the holy grail of jobs at Wharton is PE right out of undergrad, so isnt IB–>PE the next best thing? I am actually suprised how relatively few grads go into IB…
IB is pretty much the end goal for many students who enter wharton, and basically isnt their whole wharton undergrad experience a waste if they decide to go into real estate/marketing/commercial banking? Only about 50% go into consulting/IB which is a pretty low figure for the #1 bschool in the country</p>
<p>To put it bluntly,most people go to wharton to make a ton of money after they graduate (evidenced by the fact that only 1% go into nonprofit sector after graduation) and IB is the quickest way to make money+best exit opps so why dont more grads go into the field</p>
<p>Define “a ton of money”. I know you don’t mean a literal ton, so if you consider a ton of money around 70k (what the avg. Wharton undergrad makes in IB), then you should look at Comp Sci and how people can make 150k with 5 years of experience.</p>