P&Q’s Must Reads: Wharton Goes Online, Launching A $214,800 Global EMBA

Hello everyone  –- Welcome back to Poets&Quants’ Must Reads, a quick, digestible recap of the top business school news, sponsored by CentreCourt, P&Q’s virtual admission events.

I’m your host, Kristy Bleizeffer, and I’ll be highlighting the most important P&Q stories you might have missed. So, let’s get to it. 

No. 1: Wharton Goes Online, Launching A $214,800 Global EMBA

It’s almost old news now that the pandemic hastened the move online for MBA programs. The U.S. market is now cluttered with more than 350 online MBA programs in the U.S. alone. But all eyes have been on the top five programs – Stanford GSB, Chicago Booth, Wharton, Harvard and Northwestern Kellogg – to see if and when they’d dip their toes.

University of Pennsylvania’s The Wharton School becomes the first with the launch of its Global EMBA, its first online degree of any sort. The program, which will welcome its first cohort in May 2023, will be 75% live online with five required in-person residency weeks. The cost – $214,800 – will be the same as its two in-person EMBA programs offered at its Philadelphia and San Francisco campuses.

You can find more details, including application deadlines, on our homepage.

No. 2: Meet The Indian Institute Of Management Calcutta MBA Class Of 2023

We continue our popular Class Of series this week with the MBA Class of 2023 from the Indian Institute Of Management Calcutta. Situated south of Kolkata, the city of Joka is lined with high-rises and greenery. Perennially under construction, Joka is a place where people want to be due to its prowess in healthcare and research. It is also where you’ll find India’s oldest IIM.

In this story, we feature profiles of 12 inspiring “Jokars” as the Calcutta students call themselves. You can find it, and our full Class Of Series from other top schools, in our students tab. 

 No. 3: Harvard Business School To Cover Full Tuition & Fees For 10% Of MBA Students

Harvard Business School has done more in recent years than any top B-school in the United States to make its MBA program more affordable. This week, it made another significant move to open doors for the most financially needy students and admits: It announced it is increasing scholarship offerings to cover the total cost of tuition and course fees for those in greatest financial need. That’s around 10% of its student body. HBS will also increase awards for those in the middle-income brackets. The moves join a series of steps over the past decade that school leadership says are designed to reduce financial barriers to enrolling in HBS’s two-year full-time MBA program.

Read more about this announcement on our homepage. 

No. 4: Our Weekly Round Up of  News You Can Use

No matter where you are in your MBA journey, we bring several helpful stories for you this week.

First up: If you’re wondering whether you should take the GMAT, the GRE, or try for a test waiver, we offer this story of another top business school that will continue to waive the testing requirement for this cycle. Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business tells us the waiver policy may continue even past the current application cycle. 

You’ll also find other helpful test prep news and advice in our GMAT/GRE tab on our homepage.

Next: The 2022-2023 recruiting carousel is kicking into gear, and we’ve compiled the upcoming MBA admission events from the top programs into one handy list. You can find it in our admissions tab. While there, you can also find advice for tackling this pesky questions from many MBA applications: “What other schools are you applying to?”

Finally, on the P&Q YouTube channel, we have specific and insightful advice on financing your MBA from our friends at Juno, a collective bargaining platform for finding the lowest-cost loans for your degree. You can also read more advice from Juno in our Financing tab.

And, that’s it for this week’s Must Reads recap. 

I also want to alert all the school seekers out there to CentreCourt’s upcoming MBA Festival events. Our next series, The MBA & Your Career, is happening October 4-5, and you can register for free on our events tab. 

Again, I’m Kristy Bleizeffer, and you can join me next week, right here, for a recap of what’s important in the world of business education. Thanks for listening and, as always, stay informed!