<p>Title says it all, would love to get points of views.</p>
<p>For business, yes. Wharton is arguably the best undergraduate anywhere for business, disregarding personalities of the student. </p>
<p>In admissions standards? Yes.</p>
<p>Once upon a time, Wharton was one of the least prestigious undergraduate divisions in the Ivy League. It was the only undergraduate Business school, and was not respected as much as the Arts & Science colleges. Similarly, MBA programs were not as prestigious or selective as Law or Medical schools. The business schools began raising their profiles in the 1970s, and by the '80s they were as competitive as other Ivy divisions. Wharton alumni were especially prominent in the financial world, and Wharton has become one of the most elite colleges in the country. In short, the Wharton brand means something very different from what it meant forty or fifty years ago. One alumnus is a perfect example: Donald Trump used to advertise himself as a “Penn” alum; in recent year he broadcasts his Wharton degree loudly. If you want an undergraduate business degree, there is none more prestigious than Wharton, but I’ve noticed that other Ivy colleges now have Business majors. Columbia certainly did not have one forty years ago, and it does now (much to the shock of some older purists).</p>
<p>The Donald transferred from Fordham (perhaps with Fred’s help). However, hs daughter Ivanka (Penn alum) is supposed to be brilliant.</p>
<p>Cornell has the Dyson School of business which is part of their College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS).
Whether it as prestigious as Wharton I do not know, but I do know my D visited both and decided Cornell was the school she wanted to apply to ED. If she is denied, then Wharton and Mcdonough at Georgetown are her next to apply to. </p>
<p>" Columbia certainly did not have one forty years ago, and it does now (much to the shock of some older purists)."</p>
<p>Well…it’s a special concentration, not a major. Students still have to complete a liberal arts major; there’s now a set of business courses they can choose to take along with that. It’s like what some other schools call a business emphasis or secondary field that you can build into your curriculum.</p>
<p>Admission wise yes…, for undergraduate business, yes again.</p>
<p>I realize I’m not answering your question but you’d be surprised how many folks out there are familiar and heard of Wharton and not know its the business school for the University of Pennsylavnia (at least in my neck of the woods).</p>
<p>A lot of people. at least where I’m from, have no clue what/where Penn is or don’t comprehend the fact that it’s not Penn State.</p>
<p>@midwestbandie if you go to Wharton/Penn, probably not where you’re going to be spending your time though.</p>
<p>In finance, there is a clear hierarchy where Wharton & Harvard give you the best recruiting opportunities out of undergrad, considerably better than the other schools mentioned. Among the two, they are pretty equal, but for the very “best” positions, you will generally find more Wharton kids than Harvard kids. I don’t think that is so much a reflection of those firms having a bias for Wharton as it is that the interview processes are highly technical (lots of finance/accounting/etc) and the business education helps out there. If you go to Harvard and want to be competitive for top finance jobs, you need to do more work on your own outside of class to prepare.</p>
<p>So in the short-run at least, Wharton probably gives you the best recruiting opportunities of any school, slightly edging H. That said, remember that as much as you hear about the amazing job opportunities available at schools like H/W, you are talking about a handful of kids that actually can get these jobs. So you don’t want to make your college decision based on that, unless you know you can pull a 3.9 GPA, good soph year internship, good networking, and really know you are passionate about landing at Silver Lake or Blackstone RR/M&A over JPM.</p>
<p>I say why not. It’s a great school.</p>
<p>I don’t know about the narrow range of what some call a good job though. Wharton offers specialties in different areas of business, real estate, operations, marketing, etc and all of these can lead to the C-suite level in corporations as well success as an entrepreneur. </p>
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<p>Ivanka is also a transfer student…from Georgetown.
I don’t know if she was brilliant, but she certainly was late to class frequently.</p>
<p>Wharton is not on the same level as hyps for the very simple reason that is just a business school and not a complete college. If penn officials were smart they would have leveraged wharton’s bigger name recognition relative to penn in order to bring penn undergrad on par with hyps in terms of recognition. </p>
<p>Wharton is not a college, it is part of the college named university of Pennsylvania and it is sad that many people know wharton and not penn. Penn(ugrad excl wharton) or wharton separately cannot compete wi hyps because penn does not have the name recognition and wharton even tho it has the name recognition has a relatively limited scope since it just a business school and not a complete college. </p>
<p>So they both need each other in order to compete with the more prestigious colleges (hyps) and if penn admins were smart they would have realized this and integrated the schools more on the ugrad level instead of promoting such fragmentation to the level that many think wharton is a separate college. This fragmentation also acts to the detriment of penny’s non-wharton ugrad programs which are excellent and often at the very top. </p>
<p>Also just a side note I don’t like putting Yale in the same bucket as HPS because even tho it is extremely prestigious, for many areas of study such as engineering or most sciences or even economics ( with an interest in being in business later rather than academia), many would choose Penn over Yale. This would be very rare for Penn vs Harvard, Princeton or Stanford. </p>
<p>@Penn95 You are mixing up the terms College and University. Wharton is a college in the University of Pennsylvania. Penn also has the College of Arts and Science and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. When people say Penn for undergrad it’s usually the CAS. And if we are talking about placement in the business world, we can ignore CAS because most of those students are not gunning for the same jobs as Wharton students are. We can also eliminate Penn Engineering for the same reason. </p>
<p>I’m not sure what you mean by Wharton can’t compete with HYPS. Goldman is the #1 recruiter at Wharton and McKinsey is also among the top 5 recruiters. Wharton’s placement is simply outstanding. Beyond that, job history matters much more than name brand undergrad. Getting offers from top Private Equity and Hedge funds requires much more than a top Ivy pedigree. </p>
<p>@WhartonnotHYPS How would you know? You posted a ‘chance me’ thread in August. You obviously don’t go to the school. </p>
<p>@AnewCrown I mean college as in undergraduate institution. Wharton is part of an undergraduate institution. Of course there is nothing more prestigious for business than wharton but also to correct you many people in CAS are going after the same jobs as wharton( math, Econ majors) as well as engineering students and with a great level of success( look at the statistics). </p>
<p>What I was trying to say above is that in my opinion you can’t really compare wharton to hyps in the sense that wharton offers a very narrow scope of study (just business) compared to the other schools. I know many people who choose hyps over both wharton and penn(non wharton) because they think they are going to get a very narrow, and skin-deep education at wharton(sort of true if you ask me) but also want a school with a greater name recognition than penn(non wharton). </p>
<p>Also I was trying to lament the tendency of the last few decades to distance wharton as much as possible from penn and trying to make it look like a I separate institution when in fact it is part of penn. This lack of integration hurts both wharton and penn as a whole. </p>
<p>To give you an example of a school that has gotten it right, Yale school of management has been increasing its profile with incredible pace over the last few years because it’s strategy to integrate with the rest of the school as much as possible and reap the benefits of the Yale brand. </p>
<p>Penn has the opposite problem, it has a b-school that is very illustrious butte institution as a whole is not on the same level and I believe integration on the ugrad level is key to solving that problem. Because I don’t think penn/wharton will be able to compete with hyps otherwise. Let’s be real, business is not something hard. You don’t have to study business to go into business and many of the very best students would prefer to go to an institution with a greater overall prestige and recognition (than penn) and get a more well rounded and substantial ugrad education than wharton can give them. </p>
<p>@Penn95: In my opinion you are wrong on both points.</p>
<p>First, the idea that Wharton cannot compete with HYPS because the very best students will want to go to an “institution with a greater overall prestige and recognition” is ridiculous. For students who want to go into business, i.e. everyone applying to Wharton, their primary concern is recruiting opportunities and professional development. I dont know if you are in college or still in high school, but the novelty of going to a “prestigious college” wears off quickly. The focus quickly becomes preparing for your next stage in life, and for business students that is finding a job.</p>
<p>Second, Wharton and Penn are already highly integrated in terms of classes and the student body. Wharton students take classes at the college and anybody in the college interested in business can take classes in Wharton. Plenty of students do multiple degrees.</p>
<p>Penn CAS doesn’t need help; it’s a great school, yes it is a notch below HYPS in most fields of study, but that will not be fixed by greater integration with the business school. The top students in the country who want to pursue academic studies in fields like math, economics, or physics will choose schools like UChicago/Harvard/MIT/Princeton over Penn because they offer far superior classes, faculty and resources for those disciplines. Those kinds of students don’t give a crap about Wharton.</p>
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<p>Don’t underestimate the excellence and eminence of Penn’s College of Arts and Sciences. While obviously not as esteemed in general as Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, many of the departments in the College are ranked among the top 5 or 10 in the country, with others ranked among the top 20. And at the undergraduate level, Penn’s College is quite comparable to Chicago in terms of the quality of its programs and students. It’s really a matter of choice between Chicago’s rigid core curriculum and Penn’s more flexible distributional requirements, as well as the additional opportunities Penn offers an undergrad in the College to take courses in Wharton, the Law School, Annenberg School, School of Design, etc., a breadth of academic opportunity not available to liberal arts undergrads at Chicago. But there are PLENTY of students in Penn’s College who chose it over schools such as Chicago, Columbia, Brown, Duke, and many other schools that are highly regarded for their undergraduate liberal arts programs. </p>