<p>i’m strongly considering a career in business, but as a high school student, i find it hard to decide 100% on that now. is it stupid to go to wharton if you are not sure you want to do someting in business? i might want to be a doctor…what happens if i go to wharton and then decide i want pre-med? are there pre-med students in wharton?</p>
<p>There are premeds @ wharton, but very few, and I'm sure you'd feel like an outsider by pursuing med school.</p>
<p>IMO, you're much better off applying to the HYPS schools, where your opportunities in business will be equal to what they would have been had you gone to Wharton, and you'd still be free to pursue another career if you wanted.</p>
<p>While I think Wharton grads can pursue a variety of fields upon graduation, I wouldn't advise a pre-med person to go there, if only because of the notorious curves in some of the classes. For most everything else, though, it's a great place.</p>
<p>Truthfully, you have a few options here...</p>
<p>1) Do wharton as well as pre-med. Difficult but possible.
2) Start out with wharton and if you decide you want to go to med school, transfer to the college.
3) Apply to the college and do econ/pre-med reqs. This allows you to get the business jobs you seek while still not sacrificing the med school option.
4) Don't go to Penn.</p>
<p>Personally, if I were you (and I liked Penn), I'd go with 2 or 3.</p>
<p>I'd say go to Wharton and make sure to fill your liberal arts requirements with as many science and math classes as possible. If you go to Wharton and decide that business is absolutely not for you, you could either transfer to the college or double major.</p>
<p>If you could get into an HYPS, why would you go to Wharton and risk going through the ambiguity of a transfer process, and the grading scheme there, when you could go to another school and get the same benefits, guaranteed?</p>
<p>I would go to HYPS. You'll get the same business opportunities from any of these schools (and honestly almost all the Ivies are feeders into the top corporate jobs) AND in case you want to switch you'll be better equipped to enter med or law school given the fact you can avoid the harsh curves at Wharton.</p>
<p>Sorry to "hijack" this thread, but this is somewhat relevant: anybody know the average GPA at Wharton? What percentage of the class does the Wharton curve "allow" to have a 3.5+ GPA?</p>
<p>In response to the above posters, I was under the impression that Wharton provides a "better" background in business than HYPS, in terms of a practical education. I know its like comparing apples and oranges, but what are some advantages of each?</p>
<p>well... abhim... Wharton's education offers a more practical/hands-on than a more philosphical approach... I've heard their classes are more of a student-lead discussion rather than a prof lecture... And Wharton students start business classes their first yr rather than later on in their undergrad career... and Wharton undergrad students get exposed to some MBA classes...</p>
<p>wharton permits you to concentrate in healthcare management, which is a field not offered at many other schools; i'd think that knowledge of the inner workings of health systems would be a benefit to any physician, since they all have to deal with that sort of bureaucracy regardless of the nature of their practice.</p>
<p>see this for more:</p>
<p>what does HYPS stand for?</p>
<p>Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford. Although I think it's funny that the OP was asking Wharton or not Wharton, rather than Wharton or HYPS.</p>
<p>Anyhow, there are a lot of students at Wharton who aren't sure about what they want to do after graduation. Many students are interested in pursuing law school, less are interested in pursuing medicine. However, you can be pre-med and be in Wharton. You can actually complete the pre-med requirements and get a minor in something like Chem without adding any extra classes. I have a few classmates who are in med school right now (finishing up), and every year there are a few students who go into med school from Wharton. You can see the statistics on the career services website.</p>
<p>Just because you go to Wharton doesn't mean that you only study business and that you can only work in business. The curriculum and the degree are both flexible enough and marketable enough to allow you to pursue academic and career interests outside of business.</p>
<p>Wharton will of course provide you with a better background in business than HYPS since you cannot study business at any of those schools. You can study economics, but theoretical economics and applied economics are very different academic disciplines so don't get them confused.</p>
<p>Wharton is very hands on and very applied. We infuse group work and experiential learning (learning by DOING) in essentially every single course. That means that you're not likely to have classes where a professor comes in and lectures at you. Instead, classes are very discussion oriented (be ready for cold calling), involve a lot of case studies, and also use things like simulations or negotiations as learning and teaching methods. Those types of things you really don't see in a traditional liberal arts format.</p>
<p>Wharton students do start taking business classes their very first semester, and they always take a blend of business and arts & sciences courses during their 4 years.</p>
<p>As someone mentioned, a lot of courses are cross-listed with MBAs, meaning that you sit side-by-side with MBAs in class. If they aren't cross-listed, courses are taught on mirrored levels. So undergrads may take MGMT 282 and MBAs will take MGMT 782, but the class will be taught by the same professor with the same syllabus and materials. So our undergrads truly do get an MBA caliber or MBA quality education at the undergraduate level. And you can't do that at HYPS.</p>
<p>^ lol, that is EXACTLY the type of education that I think best suits me. Thanks WhartonAdvisor.</p>
<p>As for the OP, I recommend going to a school that will best further your career interests. If a career in Health Care Mgmt is for you, I'd recommend Wharton. Another benefit about Penn is that you can dual degree with CAS.</p>
<p>If you want to study business as an undergraduate, go to Wharton. If you don't want to study business, but want the same opportunities post-graduation for jobs in business, go to another ivy. </p>
<p>Studying premed during your non-Wharton classes wil be very difficult. The core classes are already hard, so taking organic chemistry and other requisite sciences will surely add a huge burden onto your workload. Be sure to combine this with the fact that grades are the most important thing for medical school admissions, and the Wharton curve isn't exactly conducive to this. </p>
<p>Granted, people are saying (myself included), to go to HYPS, but this is assuming you get in. If you don't, I think it would be a much harder decision to decide between Wharton and Brown, Dartmouth etc. In the case that you fortunate enough to get into an HYPS, I see no reason - in your case - to go to Penn instead.</p>
<p>
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If you don't want to study business, but want the same opportunities post-graduation for jobs in business, go to an ivy.
[/quote]
See, all this time I was under the impression that Penn was an Ivy... I guess that's UPenn, then, not Penn State. :p:rolleyes:</p>
<p>Sorry, I meant another Ivy. Completely my bad. </p>
<p>Just changed it.</p>
<p>I find it interesting that so many people are recommending HYPS to the OP, but nobody has yet to say a word about MIT. Why not? After all, MIT offers an undergraduate business degree, in fact, the 2nd ranked undergraduate business program after Wharton, which is something that HYPS lacks. MIT, unlike Penn, allows you to freely switch between majors. Furthermore, I am not aware of any serious disadvantage that MIT grads have vis-a-vis HYPS grads for the top jobs. </p>
<p>I can only see 2 reasons why the OP wouldn't want to consider MIT. </p>
<h1>1 - You don't like math/science. But if you are thinking about being a doctor, then you better be able to tolerate math/science. Heck, you probably wouldn't much like Wharton either with its emphasis on mathematical economics and finance. Hence, I think this is not a serious objection.</h1>
<h1>2 - You're afraid of the grade deflation because you're a premed. This, I agree, is a valid reason to not go to MIT, because I agree that med-school admissions is basically a beauty pageant. But this gets back to what was said before, which is that you then probably shouldn't go to Wharton either because of the tough grading there.</h1>
<p>
[quote]
In the case that you fortunate enough to get into an HYPS, I see no reason - in your case - to go to Penn instead.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Except that Penn kicks much more ass. The kid who lived across the hall from me picked Penn (SAS) over Harvard and he is not alone. Most definitely on the smaller side of the cross-admit yield, but not alone.</p>