Meet The Wharton School’s MBA Class Of 2024

“COMMUNITY BUILDING IS SECOND NATURE”

While ‘big” may be one word associated with Wharton, the Class of 2024 have lauded other aspects of the school’s experience. For Shriya Kumar, “Excellence” is the word she associates with Wharton thus far. “The sheer exposure to mammoth diversity in terms of organizations, races, cultures, and thought processes in the classroom pushes you out of your comfort zone, forces innovation and drives inclusivity. This is a short shot formulation to success and becoming an authentic leader.”

Nihar Bobba, a venture partner and investor from Palo Alto, uses “Ambition” to describe his Wharton classmates, adding they are connected by “a consistent drive to be better and do better.” That includes being highly supportive of each other. In Lauren Kim’s experience, she finds that “no one at this school feels like they can meet a stranger.” When they do, they quickly become friends who go above-and-beyond for classmates like Shriya Kumar.

“As an international student, moving to a country where I do not have any immediate family members pushed me into fight for survival mode,” Kumar recalls looking back on her first week at Wharton. “I was trying to do it all myself. I felt anxious, overwhelmed, and alone. Endless trips to target, IKEA, and Walmart without a car can be exhausting. One evening, on a casual stroll with a classmate, I casually told her how I felt. The very next day I see her and two of her friends, also at Wharton, at my door. They had rented out a car so that they could help me settle in. Community building is second nature at Wharton. I never thought people who I was competing with for the same jobs would become my Wharton family.”

A CLASS PROFILE

This fall, that family features 877 students, which falls in line with pre-pandemic numbers. Similarly, Wharton received 6,316 applications during the 2021-2022 applications cycle. While that number is 1,019 applications fewer than the previous year, it also fits the traditional applicant submissions over the years.

One area where the Wharton School has surged is the percentage of females in its MBA cohorts. Last year, women comprised 52% of the class. However, the real hurdle is repeating – and that’s exactly what Wharton achieved. This fall, the school admitted 50% women, turning a feat into a tendency. Along the same lines, 35% of the class is made up of international students – Wharton’s 2nd-highest representation in this area over the past decade. Overall, the Class of 2024 covers 77 countries, with 11% of the class being First Generation and another 8% identifying as LGBTQ+. Overall, 29% of the Class includes Caucasian Americans, with Asian Americans (23%), African Americans (7%), and Hispanic Americans (5%) also representing large segments of the class.

In terms of testing, Wharton first-years collectively posted a 733 GMAT average. Verbal and Quant GRE averages each hit 162, while the class’s average GMAT settled at 3.6. As undergraduates, the Class of 2024 fits neatly into three categories. Both Humanities and STEM majors account for 34% of the class, followed closely by Business at 32%. In contrast, professional experience is more thinly segmented – with greater differences between industries. Consultants hold 27% of class seats. Combined, Investment Banking, Investment Management, and Financial Services represent a 20% share of the class. Technology (12%) and Non-Profit and Government (11%) also hit double digits, with the rest of the class including students who’ve last worked in Healthcare, Energy, Consumer Products, and Media and Entertainment.

A STARTUP POWERHOUSE

If you asked business school deans and MBA directors which program blueprint they’d follow, most would put the Wharton School near the top. For one, the program epitomizes all-around excellence. When these deans and director were surveyed by U.S. News earlier this year, they ranked Wharton as the top MBA program for Finance and Real Estate – and #2 for Marketing, Accounting, and Business Analytics. And the school notched some of the highest scores from academics in areas like Entrepreneurship, International Business, Management, Operations, and Information Systems.

Entrepreneurship is one area where Wharton has invested heavily in recent years. Most recently, the school opened Tangen Hall, a 68,000 square foot, state-of-the-art hub that houses Penn’s startup and innovation communities. It includes every advantage imaginable: 3D Printers, Maker Studios, Digital Media Lab, Design Studios, Retail Lab, and Innovation Spaces. Earlier this year, Wharton received a $10 million dollar gift from alum Richard Perlman to beef up programming in Wharton’s Venture Lab, including fellowships, curriculum development, workshops, and expert-in-residence support. Call it a play-to-your-strengths strategy, with Wharton building on the successes of student entrepreneurs who launched game-changing enterprises like Warby Parker and Harry’s.

Manuel Godoy and Bernardo Garcia launched their startup, Félix, as MBA students. A platform designed to make it easy for Latinos to send money abroad, the venture garnered $2.6 million in funding before they graduated in 2021. According to Garcia, Wharton’s startup infrastructure was instrumental to getting their venture off the ground. For one, their classmates served as focus groups, supplying them with feedback on everything from product features to pitches. The founders also applied lessons gained from coursework and advising given out by seasoned faculty experts like Zeke Hernandez. Even more, Godoy notes, Wharton’s famed Venture Lab opened a world of possibilities to their venture.

“The program gave us access to a community of like-minded students and allowed us to participate inside the VIP-X accelerator,” Godoy adds. “Additionally, Venture Lab organized the Startup Challenge where we won the Most Innovative Startup and Wharton AI for Business providing us with grants that enabled us to continue building our product. We also participated and won other entrepreneurship competitions in the school like The MBA Fund and Dorm Room Fund which have been amazing in this journey. But most importantly, everyone at Wharton was rooting for us!”

NEXT STAGE: ONLINE DEGREE

Along with entrepreneurship, the Wharton School is building on another strength: online learning. Next spring, the school will launch its Global MBA Program For Executives. Lasting 22 months, the Global MBA is expected to draw 60-70 students to start with 75% of the courses being conducted in online synchronous format during early mornings and late evenings. The Global MBA also makes Wharton the first M7 program to launch a full-time MBA degree program.

“The evolution of the Wharton executive MBA is a reflection of our entrepreneurial spirit and dedication to innovation in educational pedagogy,” writes Erika James, Dean of the Wharton School, in a statement. “The past two and a half years have proven that high-quality academic programs can successfully extend beyond the traditional in-person classroom experience. By coupling best-in-class virtual instruction with meaningful residential learning opportunities, we can extend the reach of a Wharton MBA education to even more leaders who are poised to grow economies and transform industries across the globe.”

Indeed, Wharton fits among the most ambitious business schools. The program is never content to rest on its laurels and always on guard against being pigeonholed as a “finance school.” A better term, perhaps, might be “data-driven” with a bias for analysis and evidence. In the same vein, Wharton could be described as “proactive” – as in being tuned into trends and unafraid to make immediate investments into emerging opportunities: the kind that enable their graduates to make a swifter and deeper impact in their chosen industries. Case in point is Wharton’s Bay Area campus, which enables students to tap into the area’s robust startup and funding ecosystem on the opposite coast.

AN INTERVIEW WITH BLAIR MANNIX

This year alone, it ranked #1 for the 11th time by The Financial Times, not to mention again reigning as the world’s top business school for research. Sure enough, recent data shows Wharton alumni enjoy the largest return on their MBA degree than any other program. So what can Wharton do for an encore? This summer, P&Q reached out to Blair Mannix, the Director of MBA Admission at Wharton. Here is what MBA applicants, students, and alumni can expect from Wharton in the future.

P&Q: What are the two most exciting developments at your program in the past year and how will they enrich the MBA experience for current and future MBAs?

Mannix: “The Wharton School was very pleased to be a frontrunner in gender parity in business schools. The energy on campus in and around our Class of 2023 with 52% women was unmatched. We are also proud to report the Class of 2024 arrived with 50% women, and both classes had the strongest academics indicators we have ever had.

Additionally, Wharton just appointed Renita Miller as Wharton’s first-ever chief diversity, equity, and inclusion officer. She comes to Penn from Princeton University, where she spent over four years as the associate dean for access, diversity, and inclusion and the executive director of the pre-doctoral fellowship initiative at the Princeton Graduate School. Renita will work to integrate inclusive practices into core academic activities of the school, such as supporting diversity practices in staff hiring and development, increasing opportunities for meaningful progress in conversations, and helping promote diversity, equity, and inclusion understanding and engagement among students and alumni.”

P&Q: If you were giving a campus tour, what is the first place you’d take an MBA applicant? Why is that so important to the MBA experience?

Mannix: “Huntsman Hall for sure, the core Wharton building on campus. It’s the life of Wharton, where everything happens. It’s where students take classes, work on projects together, and catch up over lunch in the café or outdoor green space. We love that Huntsman Hall is centrally located on campus, at the center of the University of Pennsylvania, which puts the culture of business at the forefront of a large University which is unique. The energy you feel while walking into Huntsman Hall is unmatched. The smell of fresh baked cookies at the entrance café also helps!”

P&Q: What is the most innovative thing you have introduced into the MBA program in recent years? How has it been a game changer for your program?

Mannix: “It’s a privilege to talk about Conversations that Matter, a life-changing six-week diversity program based on self-reflection. Through the curriculum students explore different pillars of their identity. Each cohort is comprised of 15 students and is guided by facilitators from Wharton’s Office of Student Life. The program meets weekly for two hours, and each session covers a range of topics and breakout activities that foster a meaningful connection amongst participants. Topics include freedom, prejudice, acceptance, freedom, identity, and race.

The pandemic was a good time to get construction projects done and in 2021 we opened Tangen Hall, the first student and alumni entrepreneurship hub at Penn, and largest space of its kind on any college campus. It has a life of its own and is the home of entrepreneurship and innovation across the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School of Business. Members of Tangen Hall have access to labs to support hands-on activities to design, prototype, build and scale their ventures.”

Next Page: Profiles of 11 Wharton First-Year MBA Candidates.