What matters is how clearly Wharton applicants tell their story and to do that, they must be self-aware, says Mr Thomas Caleel, Director of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. In an exclusive interview with PaGaLGuY.com, he talks about Wharton’s opening up to younger applicants without work experience, women candidates, the Grade Non Disclosure debate, Indian applicant trends and more.
Mr Caleel, thank you for agreeing to participate in this interview. How is the MBA at Wharton structured to delivered value to participants?
I think it’s important to start by saying thank you to you to give us this opportunity. One of the things that are unique about The Wharton School is that we provide a very flexible MBA opportunity. The idea here is what is the right thing for you, being the individual student? We don’t presume that there is one way that fits all people. So the learning environment is structured several ways. The first year you would do the core curriculum. We allow you to waive out of courses and you can pass out of those courses by credentials, if you have already taken that class before or by taking an exam. We have over 200 electives and we see no value in your taking a course you’ve already mastered. So we want you to pass out of that and put an elective in its place. We also offer something called the individualized elective. We have 17 traditional majors but we have the individualized major where you work closely with a professor and you use all the resources of Wharton and the university, keeping in mind that Wharton is part of University of Pennsylvania which is an Ivy League institution. That gives you the opportunity to pull all the courses and learning together that you need to get the MBA that you want.
How does Wharton’s MBA batch size affect the admissions process?
You see the glasses I’m wearing? That’s one of the effects of a large class size (laughs). Wharton has a very large class with 800 students in the class. I’m a graduate of The Wharton School, I finished my MBA in 2003 and a large class size is something that attracted me. I wanted more people around me, more access. An alumni base of 81,000 alumni spread across the world, that’s one advantage. The second advantage is that if you are interested for example in doing venture capital in India, chances are that within the two classes that are currently in school there are several students that have done that. And you can reach out to them very easily, shoot them an email, meet them for coffee, and you’ll find that students are very receptive. Likewise say if you want to work in investment banking of the San Francisco office of an investment bank, there would be people of your class who would be coming from that office. So they’ll tell you what the people are like, what the culture is like, how you prepare for the interviews. It also allows us to have a tremendous reach. So 38 percent of our class is international plus 7 percent permanent residents (of the US) representing 70 countries. So in my mind we’re moving towards a global sense of economic community. You now have people in your class from every corner of the world and to me that creates a much more robust dynamic learning environment.
Indians form one of the largest chunks of international students at Wharton. How come so many Indians get admitted to Wharton?
Well, I think India is very unique and there is tremendous respect for education here, a tremendous culture around education here and Indian schools are very rigorous, they produce exceptionally gifted and bright talented students. The other thing we’re seeing from our Indian applicant base is diversity. It’s not the typical track that one thinks of when one thinks of the typical MBA applicant from India. We’re getting people from the government, military, police force, we’re really getting some interesting diversity within that applicant pool. It’s important to stress that we get over 6,200 applications a year from all over the world and there’s no such thing as the Indian applicant pool. And when you as an Indian applicant are applying to The Wharton School, you are competing against all the rest of the applications. You’ll notice if you track over time that representation from various countries varies from year to year because each year the applicant pool is different and the quality may be higher or lower. So the number of admits (from India) too vary year over year.
What is the profile of your class of 2008 and do you strive towards structuring your class in a certain way?
It’s the question we’re always asked… how do we maintain diversity? Or do we admit people who might not be qualified for diversity? The answer to that is absolutely not. One of the luxuries at Wharton is that we attract a phenomenally capable, talented and diverse applicant pool and we believe very strongly that to be admitted you have to earn your place. We believe in performance over pedigrees. You know when you’re admitted to Wharton that you’ve earned your spot and so have the persons on your right and left. We of course look for a broad representation and diversity, we don’t like to skew too far in one direction. But at the end of the day if we see an increase in qualified candidates from a particular demographic or country, we’ll move the number.
How would you evaluate an Indian IT prospective candidate with a 770 GMAT, strong academics and work experience vis-a-vis a candidate with a 600+ GMAT, uniquely strong and offbeat work experience and average academics? What would your concerns be and how would you like such candidates to satisfy them?
I think it’s very important to realize that, each person is very unique and there is no such thing as the typical Indian applicant. If you gave me five typical Indian engineer applicants, I could talk to them and show you five very different unique individuals who’ve done very different things in their lives. People get a little caught up with how do I compare. Whereas they should be thinking of is, how do I tell my story? How do I show the Admissions Committee who I am? So what I would say to the first applicant, your stereotypical IT engineer, talk about your strengths, why you’re going back to school, where you see Wharton benefiting and helping as you move in your career. One question from most Indian applicants is that what if I already have a MBA? We know that the educational system in India is a little different and that’s fine. We have many admits every year from India who already have an MBA.
In terms of the less traditional applicant with a 600 GMAT, people get very caught up with the GMAT. What I always stress on is that last year we denied over 2,000 candidates with GMAT 700 and higher and almost 800 applicants with GMAT of 750 and above. So the GMAT and your undergraduate academic performance only tell us whether or not you can handle the academic rigor of the program. So if someone comes to us with a 600 in GMAT I’ll ask him a very simple question, which is, is that the best you can do? And if it is the best they can do, then we need to look at their transcript, and get very comfortable with the fact that maybe they are not a good standardized test taker. We have engineers who can barely make 600 on the GMAT. And so each person is treated as an individual and I think that is very important. One thing I really want to stress is that we talk about individuals. I know there is a concern that since we do the application online, there is some kind of an algorithm that goes into application review.
So let me just take you through the process of application review. Once you submit your application, there is nothing fancy done on it. What we do is that we print your application and stick it in a manila folder. At that point, the application is read by a second year student. Now these are not just second year students off the street. We hire 70 second year students every year through very competitive processes to be selective. We train them, we pay them, and they are members of the admissions committee. They read your application cover to cover and write notes on a sheet. Your application is then read by a fulltime member of the admissions committee and they make notes. The applications then come to my office and they are marked as ‘deny without interview’ or ‘invite to interview’. We invite about 45 percent of our candidates to the interview. I would then read all of the ‘deny without interview’ files and some of them I’ll pull up to interview and some of them I’ll agree to leave as denied. I would then scan the invite to interview, and same thing, pull some out and leave some in. The applicants are then interviewed. There are three ways to interview. You can interview on campus with one of the trained second year students. You can interview with a hub interview, where one of the admission committee members comes in and in India we do at least two cities for the hub – New Delhi and Mumbai. Or you can interview with one of our alumnus. I talked about our commitment to fairness and equity earlier. It extends to our interviews and I can guarantee you that there is no difference between any of these three ways. You can interview with me, or a hub interview or with an alumnus and it is absolutely the same thing. Once the interview is done, the interview notes are placed in a file, the file is read by a fulltime member of our admissions committee. Then I go in and read all of those files and if necessary I’ll go back to the admissions committee. So each person is treated as an individual. So I always push people away from asking ‘this is my GMAT and this is my background, what are my chances?’ There is much more to it. What have you done? What risks have you taken? What challenges have you overcome? How have you pushed yourself? What impact have you made? What do you do outside of work? What did you do outside your classes when you were an undergrad? Why did you get that graduate degree?
What kind of recommendations do you value? What are the kinds of recommenders that you think can do justice to an applicant’s case?
This year we’ve added something new. We’ve always asked for two recommendations from people who know you the best and usually we encourage work related recommendations. This year we’ve included a third recommendation that’s optional, the peer recommendation. It could be anyone that you work with or associate with or do extra-curricular activities with. So I can’t stress this enough, that the best recommender is someone who knows you the best. I am and my (Admissions Committee) team is absolutely 100 percent not impressed when you get a recommendation from the Chairman of the company saying that you’re a great guy and they’ve known your family for years and they think you’ll do a good job at Wharton, that’s not very positive for you. I dont care who it is writing the recommendation and it is a very common mistake, more common than you would imagine. We want the person who works with you side by side. We want the person who knows what you’re like at 2 in the morning when everything’s going wrong. Do you keep your cool, how do you interact with your people, what leadership potential do you have? Those are the kind of things that only someone who works closely with you can know. I don’t care if they’re Assistant Vice President or an associate. The title is not important. What’s important is the depth of the insight they can provide.
Does it have to be somebody senior in the organization?
It should certainly not be somebody who is a peer in the organization or who is a subordinate. Many Indian applicants work in their own family owned businesses. It is never a good idea to have a member of your family write a recommendation. If you are in a smaller family-run company or you report directly to a relative, we urge you to get a recommendation from a client or the lawyer or banker who’s seen you work in a variety of situations.
It has been a long-time myth, but does one need to apply in round 1 to have a serious shot at an admit at Wharton. How true is it?
It is absolutely 100 percent not true. Both rounds, round 1 or round 2 are completely equal. What’s important is to apply when you are ready.
How much do you value work experience and what kind of work experience is best suited for a Wharton admit, especially in the Indian context?
When I was appointed the Director of Admissions and Financial Aid last year, we had a standing policy that we needed at least four years of work experience. I looked at that and I thought it didn’t make a whole lot of sense because we’ve been accepting sub-matriculates from our undergraduate business program since 1935 and we’re out on the road telling people tell us your story. So it didn’t make sense to add a caveat at the end of it and say, ‘Oh, unless you haven’t had four years of work experience. So we said we really should open this up and see what happens. So as of last year, we’ve opened up the process. If you’re coming with 0 to 2 years of work experience, that’s fine. We encourage you to apply. Now I want to stress something. Over 85 percent of our applicants are academically viable for our program. So just doing well in your undergraduate program is not enough. All that does is get you to a consideration level. What you need to do is to have made an impact both at and outside your school. Have you done summer internships or lead organizations in your undergraduate institution? That’s where we separate out the truly exceptional candidates from the very good candidates. So work experience, we look at quality and the impact that you’ve made. So people ask me, how can you possibly evaluate someone with no years of work experience against somebody with nine years of work experience? The answer is, somebody can bump around in a job for nine years and not get much done, and we both know that. So the question is, what impact have you made, and really at the core you can see it. Someone who’s made a difference will make a difference no matter how many years they’ve been in an organization.
Have there been Indian applicants who have gotten into Wharton without any work experience?
Not yet but again, I’ll stress that we only started this last year. So it will take time for that process to work out. If you look at our website, you’ll see that 3 percent of our class has 0 to 2 years of work experience and what’s important to know that in the last 15 years that number was less than 1 percent. We look forward to increasing that number in the future. We certainly will not be shifting the entire age down to 23, but what we’re doing is opening the possibility to younger candidates.
Can you give us an example of such a candidate?
Certainly, we have one young lady coming to us from Princeton. She has been a very active member of the community. She also had real internships during summers. She helped in a startup company, she worked at Lehman Brothers during some financial analysis, and she co-founded a chapter of a woman’s organization at Princeton. Just a very involved and dynamic young lady with outstanding academic credentials. A woman who had brought a new organization to Princeton, started it up and ended up with several hundred members. Likewise, a young lady, a Harvard undergraduate who started a chapter of Harvard undergraduate women in business, raised funds for and started a large conference for undergraduate women. These are the type of people who have really made a difference beyond their academics and left a legacy.
We have a very young man coming to us from Turkey, who was truly exceptional, had done some summer internships with his family business. But for right now, last year was a developmental year for us. We did have a young man from the US, originally from Central Europe who founded several Internet businesses, who had done venture funding from some very prominent Silicon Valley venture capitalists. The stories are very different. As this message goes out, I’m looking forward to this year when we’ll have some exceptional young men and women who are young.
What are the three biggest cardinal mistakes people do when they write their essays for the Wharton application?
It’s quite simple really. There is no right answer to these essays. We have no answer in mind. Because your story is your story and so the mistake that most people make is to think that we’re looking for an answer. And even though I will fly here to Mumbai, give a reception and tell them over and over that there’s no trick and we’re not looking for anything specific, they will second guess themselves and go on the chatboards. Somebody on the chatboards will tell them that what Wharton is really looking for is this. And for some reason they’ll believe some anonymous stranger on a chatboard instead of me. All we want you to do is write your story. The big mistake is writing what you think we want to hear. It’s not taking the time to sit down and be clear about your goals. This is a big investment of time, money and energy. So ask yourself the basic questions. Why do I even want to do this? Why now? Why is Wharton the right school for me and how does it help me achieve my short term and long term goals? And unless you can answer those questions, that why do you even want an MBA, why am I leaving the country, or why do I want a one-year or a two-year program. Why do I want to be in the US or do I want to go to one of the very good programs in India or Australia or Europe. I think a lot of people just get the application and start writing and without answering the questions. We can see it because they lose direction in their essays. The final big mistake people make is that they get too much input into their essays. They write it, somebody else looks at it, they edit it, somebody edits it, and in the end we lose their voice. Now for example you’re a journalist and you know how it is to lose your own voice and message in the story if too many editors get in with their red pens. So the most important thing that I tell people to do is to think through, answer those questions, ask someone you trust and give you feedback on your essays. Then sit down and write it yourself. Because we can see when you are not clear or when you haven’t answered the questions in your own mind before you answer them for us.
How much does the brand name of the company where the applicant has worked matter to Wharton? Do you value big-name company work experience more?
Whenever I do receptions, I get a certain percentage of the audience raising their hand and saying, ‘Oh, I wish I worked in a large company so that you would value my work experience’. Then I get the other percentage of the audience saying, ‘Gee, I wish I worked in a small company so that I can differentiate myself’. There is an old saying that the grass always looks greener on the other side of the fence. Don’t worry about where you work, do worry about what you do where you work. I myself worked and co-founded a small mid-sized company which nobody has ever heard of before I went to Wharton. We get people from Fortune 100 or Fortune 500 companies, and we get people who’ve started small companies. Really, the question is what you’ve done within that organization and how you’ve maximized your time.
What are the key mistakes Indian applicants make most in their Wharton applications?
I would remove the word ‘Indian’ from that question. Honestly from my perspective, there are just applicants. Some common mistakes are, not getting the right people to write your recommendations, not giving them enough time to write their recommendations, not taking the application seriously. We get a lot of people who’ve spent months on the essays. And then login on the last day and fill out the rest of the application. What I can promise you is this. I read every application. There is nothing on that application that is superfluous. If we ask something on the application, you can be pretty sure it’s important. So take your time, review it and write, write again, write again. Mark Twain, one of my favorite authors said ‘I would have written you a shorter letter but I didn’t have the time’. We know its hard to fit the answers (within the word limit) to the question, we know it’s hard to come up with a concise explanation of what you did. But that’s part of the exercise and the thought process. So take your time, plan early, wait if you’re not ready in round 1, and dont throw in a half done application when you can wait till round 2. Don’t obsess about GMAT.
Any essential DOs for the Wharton application?
I think self-awareness is a big thing and I know that I get very frustrating for a lot of our applicants. And I’m sure there are many readers of this interview who’re shaking their heads right now and saying that ‘I wish he would just give a straight answer’. What I think is that a lot of candidates ignore our basic advice which is being yourself and being self-aware and understanding what it is you want out of the MBA process. They rush pass all of that and say, ‘Wharton is just a great program and if I get in I’ll be very happy there.’ But certain personality types will not be very happy at Wharton. Wharton requires a very entrepreneurial kind of a student, one who is comfortable in a big, fast moving environment, who likes to take active control of their education. If that’s not what you like, don’t come, because you will not be happy. And if you’re not happy you’re not going to be successful in the program and you’ll just really waste a lot of time and money.
Are women applicants looked at differently in your selection process?
They are looked the same as everyone else. This year we have a very high percentage of women at 36 percent and I’m comfortable with that number going higher or lower. We treat all of our applicants the same and anyone who’s admitted deserves his admit.
How do you look at re-applicants and what do the successful re-applicants do right when they get into Wharton?
We actually encourage and like re-applicants. We have different main essay question for them, we provide a limited number of feedback slots for re-applicants where they can call and get a 15 minute session with a member of the admissions committee. They read your file and give you notes on your application and give very specific feedback. What will make a re-applicant successful, to be honest with you, is if they listen to our advice. A lot of times people hear just what they want to hear and many times they’re looking for that one magic answer. They’re looking for ‘if you do X and Y, Z will happen’. And we know from what we’ve been talking about, that it’s not the case. What I would say to re-applicants is, be self-aware, listen to the advice we’re giving you and don’t assume that it’s a question of should I take a higher GMAT score or should I take another class, but really be introspective. Be persistent and be tenacious. There’s a member of our class in Wharton who’s a five time re-applicant.
Can you share a rather humorous moment that you had while conducting the admissions process?
Last year, I was in China and I asked the first applicant of the day, ‘Tell me about your greatest weakness.’ And this lady said, ‘it is lack of international exposure but I’m hoping to remedy that at Wharton.’ I thought that was a pretty good answer and I was impressed. The next person came in and I asked him what his greatest weakness was. He said it was lack of international exposure and he hoped to remedy that at Wharton. I said okay, and after about three days of this same thing, I used to start by saying, tell me about your greatest weakness, apart from lack of international exposure. You could see the panic in their eyes because they had rehearsed that answer. So do your own original thinking in interviews. If you get your answers from a chatboard, it’s never a good thing.
Who do you consider your peer schools and to whom do you lose your students to? How are you working to maximize your yield?
It’s hard to answer that question because each of the top schools is very unique. If you look at the traditional competitive set it would be Harvard, Wharton and Stanford, but when you really get inside and get to know the schools, there really is no competition between the three because they are so different. Harvard and Wharton are large schools, but Stanford is much smaller. So that itself is a differentiating factor. But if you look at Harvard and Wharton, Harvard has a set curriculum, you’re not able to waive classes and they use the case method exclusively. Wharton allows you to waive classes, we balance the case method with lectures and simulation, hands-on learning and it’s a very different educational experience. There are overlapping pools of applicants, but if you get down to it they’re all very different.
Wharton has the image of being a finance-oriented school? How much of it is truth?
Wharton has a very analytical framework. You will work very hard at Wharton and a lot of it would be around analytical thought. We have 43 Finance professors and they are exceptional. No matter what school you go to, you will read and study from textbooks and cases prepared by Wharton professors. We have 40 management professors. So I think what people lose sight of a lot of times is that we’re a huge school. Yes, our finance department gets tremendous press. But our marketing department for example is if not the most then one of the most published marketing departments in the world. So people need to dig a little and move beyond the Wharton is finance, Stanford is entrepreneurship and Harvard is management. And because at Wharton we have both undergraduate and graduate set, so there’s tremendous depth and breadth. So if you’re interested in real estate, we have eight real estate professors. That’s huge.
Wharton has a one month long preterm program. How did that start and why did you feel the need for it? Also, what is the student and faculty feedback with respect to the preterm?
Wharton has a culture that demands participation from its students. We bring in active students who show up and say, this is a wonderful place and I feel fortunate to be here, but I’m going to leave it better than the way I found it. So preterm is a students initiative. Students came to the school and said listen, we’ve been working for four or five years on an average and this whole studying thing is something we have not done for a while. So could you give us a couple of courses on basics of accounting and finance and marketing and get us prepared? So what happened is that we now have a one month preterm. During preterm you take basic introductory courses like microeconomics, or the math camp to build your quantitative skills or the waiver classes if you’re planning to waive a course. But preterm is also a lot of fun. You can take simulations or courses like history of business. There are social events to get you know your classmates. So preterm is a really good introduction for the absolute rigor of Wharton and is a lot of fun. Your courses, recruiting, extra co-curricular activities, social events, they all hit you at once. By the end of it you’re moving at a pace you never thought possible and in the first semester you never seem to be able to come up for breath. And once you’ve mastered the first semester of a business school like Wharton, you can do anything. Because the first semester of business school is overwhelming.
What is the exact status of GND (Grade Non-Disclosure) at Wharton and how are you opening up the policy? Was it a long thought out process?
GND was brought into being in 1994 by the Wharton Graduate Association (WGA) which is the student body. It’s a voluntary policy that students brought it which said that we elect not to share our grades with recruiters. That policy was in effect when I was a student and the idea was that GND would allow for greater collaboration. But the faculty came back and said that in theory we understand that, but it’s led to a little bit of laxness, a little bit of loss of focus in classes. One of the things we stress on at the Wharton School is developing expertise. Companies hire you as a Wharton graduate not because you’re a Wharton graduate or a fancy diploma, but because they know that youve undergone one of the most rigorous training programs of the world and so you’re good. And if we lose that sharpness or that edge then we’re in big trouble. So on one hand it was an incentive to get students back into the classroom and focus on the learning experience. On the other hand, we’ve always hand some form of grade disclosure. So if you were on Director’s List, you could disclose that to the recruiter. And I think we’re taking steps in conjunction because the main concern is recruiting. Because some of the main recruiters came to us and said, that you dont hire people based on their GMAT and we don’t recruit them based on their GPA. And if you think about it, grade disclosure is actually helpful for some people. So for example if you’re an IT engineer and you want to move to investment banking, then you have very limited number of ways to prove to a bank that you can handle the rigor of the workplace. But if you can show them that look, I have an A in finance and I have spent the time and effort needed to be god enough to do investment banking, it actually helps you.
There are two things that have happened. The WGA has reconfirmed the GND policy. At the same time the faculty have come out and said that GND is not sanctioned by the school and they encourage recruiters to come out and ask for students’ grades. So really, we wont know what’s happened until the first recruiting cycle. At this point we are all waiting to see what happens.
If GND goes completely, how does the Wharton School plan to encourage students to take risky courses?
What’s interesting is that if you speak with Dr Anjani Jain who’s our Vice Dean, he’ll tell you that initially it was put forward that if we introduce GND, students will begin to challenge themselves and take up really difficult courses. What he saw in reality since 1994 is that class patterns have not changed. Wharton students are bright, ambitious, they want to do the best and they will always take the hardest courses. We have introduced opportunities to students of courses that are either pass or fail. So if you want to take an Advanced Derivatives class you can take it as pass or fail if that’s outside your major. But I think Wharton students don’t shy away from challenges and they won’t do so if you remove GND.
Being from The Wharton School yourself, how would you advise current and incoming Wharton students to make the best of their time at Wharton?
I think it’s very important to be open-minded. It’s very easy in a fast moving culture like that of Wharton to stay in your comfort zone. What you must do in your two years is take every opportunity to move outside of your comfort zone. You spend two years comfortable of Wharton, shame on you. Because you have wasted one of the best opportunities you will ever have about to learn, to know about yourself and capabilities of other people than you ever will.
What is your view of business school rankings?
Wharton does not participate in business school rankings and it stopped student names and email addresses for the rankings several years ago and we applaud that. I think to rely on rankings is lazy. It is okay to use rankings in order to know which schools are available but to use them to find out which is the right one for you, it doesn’t work. Let’s take the hospitality industry. If you’re interested in the hospitality industry, Cornell might be an excellent choice for you because they have the best hospitality management programs in the world. Don’t worry about their rankings, but do what is best for you. I think there is a lot of faulty methodology used in the way rankings are compiled.
Mr Caleel, thank you very much for the interview.
It’s been my pleasure, thank you very much for giving us this opportunity.
A Wharton 2003 alumnus himself, Mr Thomas Caleel took over as the Director, MBA Admissions and Financial Aid in March 2005 after working at Cagan McAfee Capital Partners, a Silicon Valley private equity firm. Through his capacity as a co-founder of BCI Private Capital, a holding company in Denver, he served as managing director of international development for Caleel+Hayden, a start-up manufacturer, marketer, and distributor of premium skincare products. As a successful entrepreneur, venture financier, and chief executive, Thomas Caleel’s professional experience has been wide ranging and internationally diverse.