Wharton Round 1 Interview Invitations Roll In
For applicants who’ve applied as part of Wharton’s Round 1, interview invitations have been rolling out in droves this week. A great tool for those awaiting invitations is Metro MBA’s sister site, Clear Admit. Clear Admit features LiveWire, where applicants can share real-time admissions decisions.
A distinctive feature of Wharton’s admissions process is a team-based discussion interview format (TBD). TBD places applicants in groups with five to six peers, and presents them with real-life business scenarios in order to assess their problem-solving skills. This process allows admissions officers to observe how potential students function both individually and in a group, as opposed to assessing the candidates in a more “on paper” fashion.
TBD interviews are conducted by Admissions Fellows, second year MBA students who have been carefully selected by the admissions board. Participants receive a prompt in advance of their interviews. An excerpt, (quoted from Clear Admit’s coverage of TBD) from a past prompt is as follows: “For this discussion, imagine that [a professor], has asked for your recommendation on an idea for a new Global Modular Course (GMC) or another global academic opportunity for 2015. Keeping in mind that the purpose of a GMC is to provide students with local immersion, course concepts and emerging business issues, please work as a team to come up with a global learning experience to help contribute to a new course offering following either the GMC format or some alternative.”
Applicants are asked in advance to provide solutions to the prompt, and then to convey the solution in a presentation. More information on TBD can be found on Wharton’s MBA Admissions site. Further resources at Clear Admit include a Wharton Interview Guide, as well as helpful first-person reports from actual program interviewees.
About the Author
Maggie Boccella
Maggie Boccella, a lifelong resident of Philadelphia, is a freelance writer, artist and photographer. She has consulted on various film and multimedia projects, and she also serves as a juror for the city's annual LGBTQIA Film Festival.
