My biggest takeaway from the interview experience is that Wharton really cares about your ability to interact with your peers.
I arrived about 20 minutes early and had the chance to meet most of my group members prior to the beginning of our group-based discussion. I also had the opportunity to meet many other applicants as I waited for my group to be called in for our discussion.
Once we were in our discussion room our administrators (two current students) introduced themselves, and then our group went around the table providing similar introductions. Next, the administrators gave us guidance that we would have roughly 45 minutes to complete our discussion and provide a recommendation. The administrators said nothing else until we were finished as a group.
I expected that each applicant would have a strict 60 second time limit to introduce their idea and that the administrators would monitor this limit. My experience was very different. I went last, but all 5 applicants that went before had a very specific plan for their idea and took closer to 2-3 minutes to articulate their idea. I stuck to the 60 second introduction I had prepared, and from that point on, we all dove into our discussion.
All of the group members were very polite, and we quickly settled on the idea that seemed the easiest to work on given our time limit. I could definitely tell the members in the group who wanted to push their thoughts/ideas more than others. One or two seemed content to simply ask questions and only interjected their own thoughts once or twice. One of us acted as the team scribe, and before we knew it, the 45 minutes was up and we presented our ideas.
After the group discussion ended, we filed out of the room and awaited our turn for the one-on-one interview with one of our group administrators. All group members agreed that our group portion went well.
The one-on-one interview felt just as unstructured as the group portion. My interviewer basically said “We’ve got about 10 to 15 minutes. What questions do you have about Wharton?” Moving forward, the discussion was completely led by me.
Looking back, I would encourage Wharton to have their administrators take more of a lead, both in monitoring the group discussion and in providing more perspective in the one-on-one interview.
