How hard is UPenn?

aj725
Sun, 10 Apr 2005 19:00:01 +0000

Business school doesn’t require top grades but your life is certainly made easier if you have them–you have fewer worries re: if and where you’ll get in and what you’ll do if you don’t get into a top school after wharton undergrad etc.

Wharton is competitive but its definitely possible to get top grades–if you are aiming to have a 3.7-3.8+ its certainly do-able and I definitely wouldn’t choose a different, smaller school just based on the assumption that you won’t get a high GPA at Wharton. If you’re thinking of law school, the Wharton name will help you out a lot when you’re looking for law firm jobs; its a rarity–most graduating attys were psych or poli sci or maybe econ majors. Coming from wharton you’re regarded as someone who understands what businesses need to remain functional–especially helpful if you go into transactional law, corporate litigation etc.

Once you get to wharton, you’ll figure out what study methods work for you. For people at wharton whose gpas aren’t as high as they would have wished coming into college, its not because they aren’t capable, its because they either don’t put in enough time or haven’t found a good study routine. Lots of wharton classes, particularly finance, have a good deal of group work. You’ll find that a lot of people don’t put a lot of time into those cases and problem sets to learn how to do the financial analysis. They feel they’re working hard because they attend all the group meetings, but once a ‘group leader’ emerges who really gets the concept and can do the project pretty quickly, they’re content to sit back and let that person find the answers, without even asking how the valuation is done, whether it could be done differently etc. Getting good grades at wharton is about being proactive–when you’re doing finance problems, think about how you should structure the analysis, think about why structuring it a different way would be right/wrong. If you do your HW actively, come exam time, its a lot easier to spot the trick questions.

Its not like you have to study 24-7 to do well. Many people do very well by studying a solid 2-3 hours a night, w/o IM, internet, phone calls etc, starting about 2 weeks before a midterm. If you’re in class about 3 hrs a day, doing reading for next days classes for about 2 hrs and then spend 2-3 hrs studying for a midterm thats 2 weeks away–that’s only 8 hrs of your day, leaving plenty of time to go out, hang out with roommates, watch TV etc.

PM me if you have other questions. And don’t pass up Wharton just because of GPA concerns.