Phil Cooke, Wharton’s MBA Class of 2024
Phil Cooke, Wharton’s MBA Class of 2024Age: 30
Hometown: Born in Tokyo, Japan, but calls Philadelphia, PA “home”
Undergraduate Institution and Major: Princeton University, Philosophy
Pre-MBA Work Experience (years, industry): Family Office (4 years), Chairman’s Office of an information solutions conglomerate (2 years)
Why did you make the decision to attend business school? Why now?
As a philosophy major and longtime student of classical composition, I had no structured education in business prior to my MBA. Throughout my 20s, my professional roles and nonprofit board work increasingly put me up against exciting, new business challenges. I largely succeeded in managing them, but I realized I needed a more robust business foundation to really excel. I also knew that I needed stronger technical skills to pursue the kind of work I wanted to be doing long-term. Business school offered a rigorous environment to acquire that core skillset while also affording the opportunity to grow in other ways as a teammate, leader, and individual.
Why did you choose Wharton? What factors figured most prominently into your decision of where to attend?
Every school has its strengths and weaknesses. What differentiated Wharton to me, as a generalist coming from a humanities background, was that I knew I’d receive outstanding training across both the quantitative and qualitative elements of business.
Wharton is often talked about as a “Swiss army knife” in terms of its program strengths. Beyond its excellence in finance, it’s got heavy-hitting faculty, students, and programming across every area of business: organizational psychology, leadership development, marketing analytics, healthcare administration, global business—you name it. I loved knowing that my MBA would provide a technical foundation second to none (well, except perhaps the most hardcore of quants) without sacrificing in terms of the opportunity to develop so-called “soft skills” and broader business awareness.
Moreover, as a native Philadelphian and unrelenting advocate for folks moving to the area, it was hard to turn down the opportunity to stay local. In my view, Philadelphia is the perfect city for MBAs, offering outstanding food, easy transit to New York, affordable rent, manageable scale, fantastic organizations to get involved with, and tons to do. The world is really your oyster here.
What do you think is your most valuable or differentiating contribution to the Wharton MBA Class of 2024?
Curiosity and variety. I love learning about different problems, people, and perspectives, and business school is the perfect environment to do just that. I’ve also found that classmates enjoy hearing about some of the more eccentric places my life has taken me, whether that’s my upbringing overseas as the son of a foreign service officer or my year at a monastery speaking Latin.
Tell us a fun fact about yourself that didn’t get included on your application:
Perhaps one of my greatest joys in life is planting trees. I grew up on a property where I did a lot of ecological stewardship, and it’s just so gratifying and clarifying to be outside, getting your hands dirty, and helping the world become just a little more beautiful. It’s my favorite thing to do after any momentary setback or disappointment: long after whatever trivial issue you’re worrying about has ceased to matter, there’ll be a lovely tree (or, more likely, many lovely trees) happily growing because of you.
Post-MBA career interests:
Professionally speaking, I hope to be an investor and value-creating partner for growing companies. At the same time, I hope to lend my private sector skillset as a board member for nonprofits in the arts, education, and beyond.
Advice for Current Prospective Applicants:
–What is one thing you would absolutely do again as part of your application process?
Prepare for interviews actively. It sounds obvious, but it’s amazing how much stronger you will come across if you have done your homework and know what you’re talking about. If you have a “non-traditional” background or have “non-traditional” post-MBA plans, knowing how to communicate both in terms of the forest and the trees is critical, and that’s a skill that takes practice. Everyone has their own methods for preparation—whether that’s flashcards for common interview questions and how you plan to answer them, mock interviews with friends or coaches, or something else—but the most important part is that your preparation is highly active.
–What is one thing you would change or do differently?
Talk to current students, and do it well in advance of submitting your application.
MBA programs don’t uniformly excel at conveying the nature of their programming and offerings to prospective applicants. At the same time, a big part of the application essays requires researching schools (usually through their websites) to find the opportunities that are most relevant to you. As a result, I found the whole online school research component sort of frustrating, since there often wasn’t enough context and detail provided to understand how the offerings work and, therefore, to communicate what you’d take advantage of as a student.
The best way to get around this problem is to talk with current students. When I was applying, I called up friends and former colleagues in top MBA programs, and they instantly listed 5-10 programs I should look into and explained how they worked. Afterward, I got connected with others who were pursuing those programs to gain more inside perspective. Their insights really helped me bring my application to life and communicate my understanding of the extraordinary opportunities at each school.
Of course, you have to get these insights early enough to make the most use of them in your application. So, learn from my mistake and reach out months or at least weeks in advance of your deadlines—not days. (Your friends will appreciate it, too.)
–What is one part you would have skipped if you could—and what helped you get through it?
While I enjoyed many aspects of the application essays, there were some that I didn’t particularly care for—in particular, word limits. MBA programs are in the tough position of having an extraordinary quantity and quality of applicants, and they need an efficient way to understand their applicants’ motivations, passions, backgrounds, and goals so that they can make admissions decisions. As a result, as much as essay prompts tell you not to overthink it or to just be yourself, you sort of have to fit yourself into their way of looking at what makes a strong candidate. That’s life—but it meant that there was a lot I wish I could have shared about myself that couldn’t make it into my essays without sacrificing the clarity of my story.
My advice: at the end of the day, business school is a bridge between your past experience and future goals. With some exceptions, I’m sure, virtually every MBA application essay comes down to that. So, if you’re finding yourself devoting space to aspects of your background or interests that aren’t directly related to that, you should probably take a step back and re-evaluate. Having second readers who are familiar with the process is a helpful way to get out of your own head and refocus on what needs to be communicated in your essay.
What is your initial impression of the Wharton students/culture/community?
People here are extraordinary. The variety of backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and skillsets at a school like Wharton is inexhaustibly interesting to me. I also find the vast majority of people to be deeply thoughtful, warm, humble, trusting, vulnerable, and actually relatively relaxed, given the amount they have going on. I’ve sometimes heard people from outside of Wharton suggest that the school’s culture is competitive and cutthroat, but in my experience, it’s just not. By and large, people are looking out for and rooting for each other pretty much constantly.
What is one thing you have learned about Wharton that has surprised you?
People here are really willing to be vulnerable—and frankly, I expected them to be anything but. In my view, Wharton deserves some credit as an institution for doing a really great job creating that kind of culture, starting with our first days during pre-term.
Vulnerability matters because it’s the precondition for so much else: real connection, real discussion, and real growth. How else do you achieve those things if you’re unwilling to be imperfect? And what’s even the point of doing an MBA—beyond your most short-term career moves—if you don’t experience them?
What is one thing you are most anxious about in your first year?
There is just way too much going on at any moment—by a factor of several times. I think a lot of business school anxiety is rooted in the impossible but irresistible goal of getting all your ducks in a row across so many dimensions: recruiting, academics, social life, extracurriculars, travel… the list goes on.
For me, it’s been an excellent exercise in focus. You can’t do it all, and even if you could, you’d be miserable. So, ask yourself what you care most about and why, and then focus on doing that.
What is one thing you are most excited about in your first year?
Personal growth. Business school is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to step back, reflect on your values, figure out what really interests you, and pursue it wholeheartedly. It’s exhilarating to be a student again and to have so much possibility ahead—all while being alongside others who are in the same boat.
