Undecided - 04-03-2017 | Clear Admit DecisionWire

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April 3, 2017 2:16am ET

Enrolled: Undecided

Admitted: Northwestern / Kellogg , UPenn / Wharton

Applied: U. Chicago Booth, Columbia, Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan, Northwestern / Kellogg, Stanford GSB, UPenn / Wharton

Entering Year: 2017

Location: Europe

Notes:

6 interviews at M7 schoools - only MIT rejected outright.
Hoped for GSB but interview was very boring and that was it.
Waitlisted at HBS and Booth. Obviously, if I get off the waitlist at HBS I will go there.
Wharton and Kellogg gave $0.
Post-MBA likely in finance.
Kellogg is very friendly and sends emails, not much of that from Wharton yet.

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Show Comments (21) Last: April 12, 2017

Anonymous Likes Earned: 0 On balance, I'd choose Wharton in your circumstances (given finance aspirations) but what type of finance are you looking at? If IBD, then you can get in no matter where you go. Here are some reasons why you may want to consider Kellogg... 1. Pedigree. Wharton students have slightly better pedigree but not by much (MBB, 2nd tier PE but plenty of very average backgrounds). I base this on the dozens of admits I’ve met. 2. Wharton employment report. 4 pages of weakness or arrogance. Hard to say which it is but 8% of the student body doesn't complete it and no employers are broken out. Further, I think MBB placement rates at Wharton are actually very low given the number of sponsored students based on the older articles available through Forbes and P&Q. 3. Strong undergraduate program overshadows MBA program. I think a lot of what Wharton sells is based on its extremely strong UG program but the UG population feels almost zero loyalty to the graduate population based on what Wharton alums have told me. 4. Shark tank. Wharton has more finance types of the soul sucking variety. Not everybody is like this, but a lot are. 5. You are just a number. Gigantic program where you truly are just a number and in Wharton's case a very large one (highest tuition in the nation). 6. Tribal. People congregate by race, sexual orientation, religion. It's a feature of every school but it's a fact of life at Wharton. 7. Weak careers service office than other M7 as per P&Q. Also explains the 60+ people who don’t respond to the Wharton employment survey. 8. Weak alumni connection. Ron Perelman, a Wharton alum, donated $100m to Columbia Business School and has never donated a substantial sum to UPenn Wharton. 9. Kellogg and Wharton have the exact same number of Fortune 500 CEOs as per P&Q. 10. Kellogg and Wharton have similar 10 year post-MBA earnings potential per P&Q. Wharton’s is 5% higher but that is surprisingly low considering most of its grads enter finance in one form or another. Kellogg grads are taking on more strategy roles vs. finance roles. The former is in my experience a more straightforward path to CEO longer term.I'm writing this so I can feel confident in the decision I'm likely to make. If my facts are wrong or I've misinterpreted something, please share. Thanks (0)

Anonymous Likes Earned: 0 Wow, the longest reply I have ever seen. (0)

Long poster Likes Earned: 0 I'm going through the same decision making process and felt the need to write it out to justify likely choosing Kellogg over Wharton. In your case, I would probably choose Wharton but I don't know enough about your background to say for sure. That being said there are at least 10 reasons below to choose Kellogg over Wharton from my point of view. I'd love it if somebody challenged me on these points (0)

Anonymous Likes Earned: 0 Appreciate the analysis that's not just ranking based. (0)

Anonymous Likes Earned: 0 Both of these schools can get you to where you want to go, career-wise. The question is, which environment do you want to be in for the next two years of your life? I personally chose Kellogg over Wharton because I just got a much better vibe when I visited there--it felt like a real community. Wharton, by contrast, felt somewhat isolating. Wharton is definitely a more cutthroat environment. For example, students regularly charge $100+ per hour to prep first years for interviews. It's just not as collegial. You should go to DAK and see if you have the same experience I did. (0)

Anonymous Likes Earned: 0 You can still apply for scholarships at Kellogg--look for "merit and need based scholarships" on the admitted students portal. (0)

OP Likes Earned: 0 Thanks for the great input. Finance likely being institutional asset mgmt and not PE or IB, just don't want to sit in the office for long hours and don't necessarily find a great cultural fit for IB/PE. Though I don't mind trying product management in tech, maybe there is a fit? Long-term goal is probably going back to Europe once loan is repaid and some $ made, and in this case Kellogg does not have a well-known brand here at all for the employers. On the other hand Wharton is a huge program and reading how 50 people apply for some 8-strong company visits or how 500 people compete for PE jobs doesn't necessarily sound promising either. A friendly community is a huge plus for Kellogg in my view and since being admitted I have received several emails from various people at Kellogg, while I haven't got much interest from Wharton, maybe they think people should run after them. Even my partner received an email from the Kellogg partners club. The 10 reasons you stated are valid and can justify choosing Kellogg, perhaps most people have reservations regarding brand strength or something. (0)

OP Likes Earned: 0 Regarding money, Kellogg gives out merit-based scholarships when they give you an offer, not sure how need-based scholarships work but everyone was invited to apply for financial aid by the deadline and results are yet to come out. (0)

Anonymous Likes Earned: 0 I'm making the same decision and leaning Wharton due to its stronger entrepreneurship program, its closer proximity to my family and network, its stronger global brand, and the fact that I prefer Philly to Evanston. I'm just a bit hesitant because Kellogg really does seem to have an awesome culture with very friendly students and alums. I want to go to both admit weekends but they are the same weekend :/ (0)

Long poster Likes Earned: 0 Fair play. Wharton's brand is stronger in European finance, and this is a concern I have too. That being said, imagine you work for 3 years in an asset management or product management role. At that point, you're going to have a track record with the firm and a network. That network will include a lot of people in the MBA program but not everybody. I tend to believe that though Wharton may have a marginally better alumni base, Kellogg's is probably more loyal given its students respond to the employment surveys and students don't charge one another for interview help. So, at the 3 year mark or so, you'll have experience and an alumni and professional network that can help you get a role in Europe. Even if you were sending your CV into an online system, I couldn't imagine somebody saying "Ooh Wharton" what a great CV, he gets the interview or "Ah Kellogg"..."ding. However, it's very unlikely that you'll just be submitting your CV through an online system. At that stage, it's the soft skills that are going to matter in securing a role, and I feel that Kellogg sets you up better for that. Again, though, I'm in the same boat and trying to make that difficult choice (0)

OP Likes Earned: 0 My friend, looks that you are all set on Kellogg though! Or is it that you are trying to convince yourself that? :) Try to come up with 10 reasons for Wharton now and see how they compare. Honestly, I did not expect much from Wharton coming to the TBD but people I met were humble and down-to-earth and made me re-think the Wharton stigma somewhat. (0)

Anonymous Likes Earned: 0 1. More international recognition for Wharton. 2. Marginally "smarter" student body. 3. More people and hence more clubs and resources (0)

Anonymous Likes Earned: 0 Go to the friendly school. Kellogg is your best bet. UPenn is kind of full of itself. (0)

Anonymous Likes Earned: 0 Wharton is overrated. They literally live on the word “Wharton.” That is the one and only thing they have that word and the “prestige” it has evoked for 100+ year. Realistically they struggle in so many ways. I would agree with the first poster. They are obsessed with themselves. They have bad alumni relations and can’t come close to matching the scholarships at HBS, Booth, and GSB. They do have more sponsored MBB students and many that have to recruit do not place as well as MBB. This is the arrogance that comes out in there awful employment report. (0)

Anonymous Likes Earned: 0 Continued: I went to their dumb welcome weekend and watched the video where 30 people in a row say welcome to Wharton. They literally live in the 19th century on that one word, when it was superior to HBS, GSB, Chicago GSB, etc. If they properly reported their employment stats, they would be tied with Booth at #2 in the USNWR rankings. (0)

Anonymous Likes Earned: 0 Kellogg will get you IBD easier since they have less competition for it due to the structure of their class. (0)

Anonymous Likes Earned: 0 Also, Wharton has the highest tuition in the world. Like in world history and they proudly proclaim that they raise it 4% YoY no matter what. You can literally just work as joe the plumber, invest that cost, let it compound and have a few extra million to burn in retirement. (0)

Long poster Likes Earned: 0 I've been debating it, and probably going with Kellogg. I honestly cannot see any difference in intelligence that the Wharton adcom was trying to sell me on (no joke). There are actually quite a few people who got into Wharton AND with scholarship and I'm in shock that they got in to any M7 program. One couldn't string together a coherent thought if his life depended on it. Kellogg students were generally far more socially aware which is what matters if you actually want to get ahead in the world. I'm not trying to sell you on Kellogg. I'd prefer a smaller class size there but decision is close to made up in my mind. Kellogg student called me to introduce himself. Far more helpful than anybody else I've spoken with. He introduced me to two other people in clubs that I was interested in and they responded to emails in a matter of minutes with very helpful information. No brainer for me, but really you can't go wrong either way (0)

OP Likes Earned: 0 So far 6 people from Kellogg wrote to me but Wharton was just being "Wharton" as prestigious as it is... I see your points and perhaps some of the posters here were rejected by Wharton but others state valid reasons. Probably the job will be the same coming out of school, but the 2 years will count as fun or as something else. (0)

Anonymous Likes Earned: 0 Or some posters got it and gladly turned them down. They went to their admitted student weekend, saw what it was about and ran away. (0)

Anonymous Likes Earned: 0 Wharton for Finance is obvious. will make your life a lot easier later if you get the Wharton brand when pursuing finance jobs. you'll be happy at either program, but wharton makes sense for finance career (0)