<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I will be attending wharton this fall. I'll be the first one to admit that my quantitative/ mathematical prowess was not the strong suit of my application. I got a 2280 on the SAT (800 verbal and writing, only 680 math) and 3 800's on SAT 2's (Literature, Biology, World History) but only a 700 on Math 2. I figure what sealed my admission was the small business I founded and operated throughout high school that made about 20K of profit a year. I can definitley do math, I am not bad at it, I recieved A's in all my high school math classes (including AP calculus which I got a 4 on) at a school known for its academic rigor but I feel like my success in that subject was achieved more through hard work and discipline than a natural affinity for the subject. Anyways, my question to all past and present whartonites is as follows: based on your knoweldge and experiences what is the correlation between math prowess and success at Wharton? In your honest opinion, do you think that someone like myself (who is definitley not weak at math but isn't particularly strong at it) will be prevented (by their natural math ability) from achieiving A's in certain Wharton courses. In other words, are Wharton's classes the type of thing where a student can make up for their lack of math prowess by working that much harder than his peers who are better at math and recive top grades. Or do you feel that there is some sort of predetermined plateau in terms of GPA and grades that working really really hard won't break through. Bottom line: can one make up for lack of math taelnt by working hard or not? Thanks! Honest answeres only! Ps: My goal gpa is 3.7 or higher.</p>
<p>I’m not a Wharton student, but a lot of my friends were. I definitely don’t think that Wharton students use a ton of advanced math in their coursework (linear algebra, ODE’s, PDE’s, etc.). Most math you will be using will be introductory statistics and maybe some single variable calculus. Especially as you move up to higher level courses, you will need to do a lot of group projects, presentations, etc. So I wouldn’t worry about it. I think that it if you work hard, you can overcome any deficiencies in your math abilities. For intro level classes like finance and accounting, there is a ton of tutoring services available too that are probably underutilized, so don’t be afraid to seek extra help.</p>
<p>The math at Wharton is not that hard. The hardest math will be in MATH104, which is the only required math course. It’s comparable to(but harder than) BC Calc. What Wharton requires of you is not so much math ability as it is quantitative reasoning. You need to do sophisticated thinking that involves numbers, but there won’t be many mathematical techniques needed. For example, I’ve seen math whizzes who aced Math240 in their freshman fall get to Stat101 the next semester and earn a B. Meanwhile, I know a girl who doesn’t like math and struggled to earn a B in Math104 who took Stat101 and earned an A+ because stat101 wasn’t testing math skills. Like most wharton classes, it was testing general reasoning that just happened to involve numbers.</p>
<p>conclusion: you don’t need to be a math genius to go to Wharton, but you need to be very comfortable with numbers. if you don’t like high school stats/physics/econ because you are wary of numbers, stay away from wharton because it’s all numbers based.</p>
<p>Just out of curiosity, what was your high school GPA (weighted and unweighted)?</p>
<p>I got straight A’s so unweighted 4.0 and weighted 4.3</p>
<p>Somewhat of a relation question: In your experiences, do students who internally transfer into Wharton or dual-degree often struggle in their Wharton courses (perhaps because they don’t have the foundation or haven’t taken basic intro finance courses)? Or are 2nd year Wharton students and transfers/dual-degrees generally on the same playing field?</p>
<p>Internal transfers(or people who picked up a second degree in Wharton) generally do very well in Wharton. Especially the ones who had to get a 3.8+ in SEAS to transfer in. Some dual degree program students(admitted as freshman) struggle. Admissions tries to place very strong students into these programs but it’s impossible to predict how a person will do at Penn.</p>