Just out of curiosity, what career path do you have in mind?
I’m sure you’ve been told this a million times so sorry for being the million+1, but I think it’s important to recognize that you very well might change your mind from those currently-appealing career plans for any variety of reasons. So I think planning on where you go to college based on what might happen 9+ years from now (upon graduating from med school) could be a little premature.
If you want to go to Penn because you want to go to Penn, that’s a little bit of a different story. If that’s the case, and you think you want to go to med school, then the posts you see around here regarding “choosing a school that’s a good fit for you and (if multiple places are good fits–that’s most likely) choosing the least expensive one” apply to you.
If you want to go to what you determine to be the “best” place for undergrad because you don’t know what you want to do with your future, then that may very well be Penn or even Wharton.
If you want to go to Wharton because you think it will be the easiest route to an MD MBA, you should consider a few points in my opinion. One is that the thing that seems the easiest and thus “too good to be true” usually is, especially with regards to medical education. Another is that gaining admission to med school is no small feat, and you won’t be “rewarded” for having attended Wharton or Penn, and you won’t have concessions granted if your GPA is lower as a result. Med schools care about being able to train students to become doctors. Sure it’s cool if you have great business savvy (I think it should be a requirement, but they don’t listen to me!), but if you don’t have the scores, grades, and medically-relevant extracurriculars, you’re almost certainly out of luck. You might also consider whether MD MBA is actually the correct degree path for the career you’re envisioning (eg, might MHA be better because it would lead to similar careers with considerably less time and money spent on education?).
Personally, I wanted to be a surgical subspecialist in high school. I thought I wanted to study biophysics and biochemistry in college. I ended up studying biology with a variety of interesting-to-me minors. I met some great internal med docs with exciting academic careers and changed my mind to internal medicine, which is unquestionably a better fit for me. I thought I wanted to add an MPH to my MD, only to realize that the “work” I wanted to do with my MPH wasn’t really MPH work at all; my interests fell more into the realm of health care policy and quality (which can be a component of MPH, but not at my school, and I didn’t want to pay for both degrees). Finally I met some great pediatricians with exciting academic careers and changed my mind to peds. Who knows where I would be now had I shelled out the big bucks to go to the private university with the great biophysics and biochemistry departments (one thing’s for sure–I’d be in even more debt!), remained dogged in my pursuit of a surgical subspecialty (so not for me!), or prematurely added a second degree to my MD (even more debt!).
Point being–you don’t have to have your entire life decided by the time you’re 17, as much as your parents and guidance counselors and friendly internet strangers think you should 