Resources

[Note: First-time applicants and reapplicants are required to complete the same set of essay questions.] REQUIRED QUESTION: What are your professional objectives? (300 words) 300 words. Get in, get out. Don’t faff around. In theory, they could have simplified it even FURTHER and said “In three bullet points, describe your professional objectives.” But they did afford you 300 words of essay writing to develop it a bit. Let’s figure out how to develop this sucker. Now, what does Wharton really wanna …
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Discuss a time when you navigated a challenging experience in either a personal or professional relationship. (600 words) There’s one word here that of serious note. “Navigated.” Let me pose this question. Is it possible to navigate a straight line? Not really. You… travel a straight line because the path is laid out for you and there isn’t a wrong move by definition. It’s a decision-less route. A to B. There’s no navigation required. GPS is irrelevant in a world …
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Describe a failure that you have experienced. What role did you play, and what did you learn about yourself? How did this experience help to create your definition of failure? (600 words) We’ve seen something similar in the HBS Mistake essay. And many others will ask this classic “failure” question. But before you get too comfortable, let’s roll up our sleeves and put this sucker under the ol’ PE microscope shall we? Hell if we can’t find some tasty little …
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Reflect on a time when you turned down an opportunity. What was the thought process behind your decision? Would you make the same decision today? (600 words) Not the best option if you’ve never turned down an opportunity. But before we dismiss it outright, let’s give it a second. What’s an opportunity? Couple assumptions in there. 1. It’s a legitimate offer of some kind. Yours to decide yea or nay. That someone or some “thing” (like a university or a …
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Wharton did what Greg Maddux used to do so well in his sleep: change it up. A fairly radical change of tack in their essay questions this year. Awesome, let’s dig shall we? Required question: What are your professional objectives? (300 words) Okay. For those of you brand new to Wharton’s ways, Wharton USED to be famous for giving applicants MORE space than most other schools. Typically a career goals question elsewhere allows for roughly 500-750 words, and Wharton was …
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Context, folks. Context. Two scenarios to illustrate: The blind date is almost over. It went VERY well. But now you’re both in the car, having arrived at her place. Scenario 1 – “So… would you like to come in for a nightcap?” Scenario 2 – She looks at you and says “One thing you should know about me… I love rabbits. Love em. I like them as pets, but to be perfectly honest I like them even more as friends …
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Tell us about something significant that you have done to improve yourself, in either your professional and/or personal endeavors. [500 words] Been seeing a lot of interesting traps with this sucker. The applicant pool is vast. Let’s simplify it and break this pool down into 3 categories, for the sake of discussion: 1) Kids who blow you away—their parents are CEO of Planet Earth, have donated a billion dollars to the school, are the President’s daughters, have academic records and …
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Describe a failure that you have experienced. What role did you play, and what did you learn about yourself? (500 words) We’ve seen permutations of this badboy elsewhere, probably because it’s a great question. We’re so used to thinking about how great we are, rarely do we introspect and examine the times we are UNSUCCESSFUL… and why. When talking about failure, the first task is to establish what it is we’re GOING for to begin with: THE OBJECTIVE. A failure …
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Tell us about a time when you had to adapt by accepting/understanding the perspective of people different from yourself. [750-1000] This is a sneaky one. And requires a bit of patience to really understand what’s being asked here. Implicit in this question is the value associated with “accepting/understanding the perspective of people different from yourself”; that value being, of course, “good.” When people are able to step outside their own way of thinking (whether or not they AGREE with the …
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“As a leader in global business, Wharton is committed to sustaining ‘a truly global presence through its engagement in the world.’  What goals are you committed to and why?  How do you envision the Wharton MBA contributing to the attainment of those goals?” [750-1000] A refreshing change from their classic big essay, probably designed to generate more targeted stories than merely calling for “career progress” which seemed to enable applicants to travel back to birth and slowly trudge through a …
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