2021 MBA Essay Questions: Wharton

Wharton changed its essay requirements slightly, and the new version of their Question 2 is much easier to deal with than in 2019.

The 2020 Wharton MBA essay questions were:

1. What do you hope to gain professionally from the Wharton MBA? (500 words maximum)
2. Taking into consideration your background – personal, professional, and/or academic – how do you plan to make specific, meaningful contributions to the Wharton community? (400 words maximum)

They also have a 250-word Optional Essay which reapplicants will use for an explanation of how they’ve improved since their original app; that optional essay is also available for new applicants to cover critical explanations that you feel the adcom needs to know. Never use the optional essay unless you have to! If there’s something important, then you’ll need to be brief. Wharton’s optional should be a real essay, not bullet points.

Jump down this page to a list of EssaySnark posts on these Wharton essay questions! Includes real essays we’ve reviewed for actual real-life BSers!

The renewed emphasis on the reworded prompt for Essay 2 should make it easier to handle.

How do you answer them?

Succinctly!!

Both of these essays are challenging but they’re not gawdawful horrible in terms of what types of anguish you’ll go through in getting a good answer on the page. Wharton’s essays could be tackled as your first application — not 100% ideal because it is SO competitive and you’ll need your essays to be outstanding (which first-project essays are not always) but in terms of difficulty level, it might be feasible to use them as your training wheels for figuring out how to present yourself and construct solid answers to essay questions. (Pro Tip: Harvard is not in this same category! Don’t do HBS first.)

As we’ve been saying: The essay guide for Wharton will help you unpack these questions and present your best self! The strategies we have established for BSers going back through time are tried and true, and 100% relevant for today’s application. Every year we see lots of successes from the BSers we work with on Wharton!

Along with our in-depth guide, we can also point you towards this post on “outside-in stories” that can be relevant for Wharton Essay 2.

[End 2020 questions section.]

2019 Wharton MBA Essay Questions

Identical to the prior year – except they made essay 2 shorter!

The 2019 Wharton MBA essay questions were:

1. What do you hope to gain professionally from the Wharton MBA? (500 words maximum)
2. Describe an impactful experience or accomplishment that is not reflected elsewhere in your application. How will you use what you learned through that experience to contribute to the Wharton community? (400 words maximum)

Unfortunately on Wharton Essay 2, they have reversed the most recent trend of loosening up word limits, and taken it from 500 words down to 400. They also tweaked the language for Essay 2 (which, #humblebrag, puts it squarely in line with how we’ve been advising BSers to write their Wharton Essay 2s for years!).

Because these questions were in effect already, you will find plenty of discussion around them here on the EssaySnark blahg!

In other school news: As of Spring 2020, Wharton has a new major in Quantified Finance which is also STEM-qualified, and thus gives yet another option for international students to work in the U.S. for three years total instead of just two.

[End 2019 questions section.]

2018 Wharton MBA Essay Questions

Almost the same questions as last year except that they tweaked Essay 2 to match the tips that EssaySnark has been offering BSers for a few years now!

1. What do you hope to gain professionally from the Wharton MBA? (500 words maximum)
2. Describe an impactful experience or accomplishment that is not reflected elsewhere in your application. How will you contribute to the Wharton community? (500 words maximum)

The “contribute” thing is the key!

Wharton’s Class of 2019 profile looks daunting. No change to average GMAT (730) however they’re now publishing averages on GRE scores, which is a clear sign that a) it’s fine to apply with one, and b) your scores must be decent if you do! Average GRE quant is 163 (85th percentile) and average verbal is 162 (90th). We expect these GRE averages to go UP this year.

[End 2018 question section.]

2017 Wharton MBA Essay Questions

Same questions as in 2016 – but the recommendations changed radically!!

Essay Questions:

1. What do you hope to gain professionally from the Wharton MBA? (500 words maximum)
2. Teamwork is at the core of the Wharton MBA experience with each student contributing unique elements to our collaborative culture. How will you contribute to the Wharton community? (400 words maximum)

They also have a 250-word Optional Essay which is required for reapplicants to use, to explain how they’ve improved since their original application, and it’s also for new applicants if there’s other critical details that are important for the adcom to know, which you can’t fit into the main essays.

Our Wharton guide has even more content and strategic advice for crafting great essays, based on the direct experience we had in working with lots of BSers who made it in last year!!

The Wharton Class Profile show the Class of 2018 stats which are largely the same as previously: Average GMAT is 730, 80% range is (gulp) 700 to 770. The worst news out of that is the fact that applications increased by 1.4% yet they REDUCED the class size by ten students, to 851. That could’ve been due only to factors of yield; it’s possible that it wasn’t an intentional class size reduction. Still, doesn’t bode well. Things were sooooo competitive last year and we do not expect it to be any different for the Class of 2019 when that data comes out this summer.

Wharton MBA recommendations

Wharton launched a whole-new way of asking for insights about you as a candidate from your recommenders. They have bucked the trend that other schools started with the attempt to “standardize” (which were never actually standardized) and embraced the fact that recommenders have to do some work. They are focusing on the specific traits that they feel matter most to their school and community. It’s not terribly difficult for a recommender to complete these but it is most definitely different than what they will be doing for the other schools you’ve asked them to write for you on.

[End 2017 question section.]

2016 Wharton MBA Essay Questions

As announced on the Wharton blog in June , they changed the questions based on feedback from applicants (yes we thought they were bad – so thank you Wharton!). Here’s what you get to deal with now:

1. What do you hope to gain professionally from the Wharton MBA? (500 words maximum)
2. Teamwork is at the core of the Wharton MBA experience with each student contributing unique elements to our collaborative culture. How will you contribute to the Wharton community? (400 words maximum)

IMPORTANT: THERE IS NO 400-WORD “ESSAY 3”!! Their website was wrong through most of the summer.

They also have a 250-word Optional Essay — ALSO IMPORTANT: IT’S **NOT** 400 WORDS; THEIR APPLICATION SAYS 250 WORDS ONLY as of app open on 8/1/16.

The Optional Essay is required for reapplicants to use, to explain how they’ve improved since their original application, and it’s also for new applicants if there’s other critical details that are important for the adcom to know, which you can’t fit into the main essays.

(Except for the word count confusion) this is definitely an improvement! Hopefully they are also fixing the confusing bits of their application instructions along the way (haven’t seen it happen yet but we are optimists).

Wharton MBA recommendations

For history: In 2014 Wharton went along with the party and had the same questions as Stanford and Harvard had. We’ve since seen more and more schools diverge from that. Having sort of standard questions is actually WORSE than having completely non-standard ones! What are your recommenders supposed to do with THAT!?

Here’s what the 2016 situation was:

• Two recommendations, one of which should be from your current supervisor if possible
• Three questions for your recommenders to answer which are slightly different from the “standard” questions that other schools ask – (review them here )

 
Other schools had two questions or four questions but no, Wharton had to have three!!

Lots of resources for choosing your recommenders available here on the blahg; if you want more help, our Letters of Recommendation App Accelerator walks through the specifics and lets you submit your recommenders’ strategy for feedback from EssaySnark. All of this will be updated once we know firm facts on requirements.

[End 2016 question section.]

2015 Wharton MBA Essay Questions

The Wharton app has some gotchas

We had hoped (especially now that we’re further into the new dean’s tenure) that Wharton admissions would make changes to their not-totally-amazing essay questions. But no! Same single-essay app, with an optional opportunity to submit other stuff. They actually made more changes to the recommender’s questions (see below and our blahg rant on the topic). More and more schools claiming to have “standardized” the recommendations are straying further and further from a “standard.” Oh well.

UPDATE: We did a last-minute essay critique on the Wharton “what do you hope to gain?” main essay.

Really?!?? They kept the same questions? THESE questions?

We explained why we’re not total fans of this in our Wharton app changes post on June 16, 2015.

These are really not the easiest to deal with. A full pitch in just 500 words? Whatever. Wharton isn’t doing you any favors with what they’re asking here.

• What do you hope to gain personally and professionally through the Wharton MBA? (500 words maximum)
• (optional) Please highlight any additional information that you would like the Admissions Committee to know about your candidacy. (400 words maximum)

They are also keeping the traditional “optional essay” – which is NOT the second question above – where they allow 250 words to discuss gaps in the profile – but boy their website does not make this easy to understand. It’s included under the so-called “Additional Question for Reapplicants” section. They say you can use the reapp essay for “extenuating circumstances” – anyone can. Not just reapplicants.

Say wha’? Wharton, why can’t you make your instructions clear??? Why use that header on the page saying it’s for “Reapplicants” when ALL APPLICANTS can use that space?

Aaargh!!!

Anyway, having two “optional” questions was definitely confusing last year, particularly when most schools say, “Don’t answer the optional question unless you have a situation that warrants it!” So what are people to do with Wharton Essay 2 (optional) – answer it or not?

They also have offered no instructions whatsoever whether a reapplicant needs to answer the “required” essay – which is exactly the same from last year – or not. Or, what is a reapplicant supposed to do when they need to answer the reapplicant question AND they have “extenuating circumstances” – it’s only 250 words! That’s hardly enough for just one of those topics.

WHARTON!! You confound us. Why not HELP your peeps in applying!??

[End 2015 question section.]

2014 Wharton MBA Essay Questions

They switched to just one required essay!

• What do you aspire hope to achieve gain personally and professionally through the Wharton MBA? (500 words maximum)

The “achieve” -> “gain” verb change is the only difference from the prior year’s question (besides deleting a couple of commas; they also changed the word “aspire” to “hope” sometime after first publishing the essay prompt, which was a little odd to us). We discuss the implications for that main verb change with this year’s question and how you should focus your writing in the Wharton MBA essay guide.

Wharton also has two optional essays – the first question, which maybe should be answered, is:

• Please highlight any additional information that you would like the Admissions Committee to know about your candidacy. (400 words maximum)

We recommend being exceedingly strategic in using this essay.

And, they have the traditional “optional essay” where they allow 250 words to discuss gaps in the profile.

Should you submit something there? Hmmm… That’s definitely a case-by-case assessment. Most people should not need to use that space. Our Comprehensive Profile Review can help you out if you need insight into the places where an optional essay (or optional info like this) is warranted, and the Wharton essay guide also covers both of these essays.

See section below for what Wharton asked in 2013 – the changes may seem subtle but they’re significant. You may want to study them.

The recommendation questions have also been streamlined. Here’s a post from the Wharton blog (6/2/14) that provides a bit of context on the changes.

6/3/14 We discussed the changes to the Wharton essays when they were first released.

[End 2014 question section.]

2013 Wharton MBA Essay Questions

This is what we said when two-years-ago questions came out… remember this analysis is old.

Here’s the Wharton essay questions – as we predicted, there’s fewer of them, and they’re more straightforward this year (Thanks Ankur! Ankur left; Maryellen is now in charge of admissions at Wharton)

Two essays:

1. What do you aspire to achieve, personally and professionally, through the Wharton MBA? (500 words maximum)
2. Academic engagement is an important element of the Wharton MBA experience. How do you see yourself contributing to our learning community? (500 words maximum)

We did a post about these essays: You lucked out: Wharton’s essays are sooooo easy this year.

[End 2013 question section.]

One required question

• How will Wharton MBA help you achieve your professional objectives?

Choose two more:

• Select a Wharton MBA course, co-curricular opportunity or extra-curricular engagement that you are interested in. Tell us why you chose this activity and how it connects to your interests. (
• Imagine your work obligations for the afternoon were cancelled and you found yourself “work free” for three hours, what would you do?
• “Knowledge for Action draws upon the great qualities that have always been evident at Wharton: rigorous research, dynamic thinking, and thoughtful leadership.” – Thomas S. Robertson, Dean, The Wharton School. Tell us about a time when you put knowledge into action.

[End 2012 question section.]