The University of Pennsylvania Wharton School – Ethan Baron photo
Despite a 6.7% drop in applications to its MBA program, the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School is reporting yet another increase in the average GMAT score for its incoming Class of 2020.
Wharton’s new class sports an average GMAT of 732, up two points from 730 a year earlier. The new GMAT average matches the school’s record set for the Class of 2017. Wharton’s average GMAT for the incoming students in the Class of 2014 was just 718, 14 points lower. The school received 6,245 applications, down 447 candidates, from last year’s 6,692 total.
Most of the highly ranked business schools, including Harvard Business School, are expected to report declines in application volume in the 5% to 6% range this year, largely due to a fall in international applicants and a strong economy that tends to keep prospective students in their jobs. Harvard, Stanford, Chicago Booth and many other elite schools have yet to report their class profiles.
The decline in applications at Wharton occurred in a year in which the school made major gains in several rankings, coming in first for the very first time in Poets&Quants‘ composite ranking (see Wharton Dislodges Harvard To Top 2017 P&Q Ranking).
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Wharton’s slightly higher GMAT average equals the 732 already announced at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management which bested every major school last year with the exception of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business with its 737 average. Wharton said GMAT scores ranged from a low of 500—30 points lower than a year earlier—to a high of 790.
The average GPA remained the same at 3.6, with 45% of the MBAs having undergraduate degrees in the humanities, 29% in STEM backgrounds, and 26% in business. The undergraduate mix changed a bit, with more of the Class of 2020 having degrees in the humanities, up by four percentage points from 41% last year. Students with undergraduate degrees in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fell by three percentage points from last year’s record of 32%.
The school also disclosed average GRE scores for the Class of 2020. The mean GRE verbal score was 163, while the mean quant score was 162. The average writing score on the GRE this year was 4.6. Those numbers match last year’s metrics with one exception: the average writing score slipped from 4.7.
SLIGHT CHANGES IN CLASS PROFILE FOR WOMEN AND INTERNATIONALS
Students in the Class of 2020 boast an average five years of work experience each, though the range of that experience is wide, from zero to 15 years.
Otherwise, there are few surprises in the composition of Wharton’s Class of 2020. In a year in which international applications have declined, Wharton actually increased the percentage of internationals in the class by a single percent to 33% from 32% last year. Those students hail from 80 different countries. The school was less successful on the female student front, with a tiny decine of a percent.
While USC Marshall reached gender parity and Kellogg enrolled a record 46% women in their incoming MBA classes this year, Wharton reported that 43% of the Class of 2020 will be women (see Kellogg Enrolls Record Number Of Women). Last year, Wharton and Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business had enrolled the largest classes of women among the highly ranked MBA programs, both at 44%.
Underrepresented minorities account for 33% of Wharton’s incoming students, exactly the same as last year.
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SOME 35% OF THE CLASS OF 2020 BOAST BACKGROUNDS IN FINANCE, WITH PE/VC TOPS
As you would expect, the largest single group of students had worked in finance, with that industry representing 35% of the class, followed by consulting (27%), technology and Internet services (10%), nonprofit and government (9%), healthcare (5%), consumer packaged goods and retail (3%), real estate (2%), energy (2%), and media/entertainment (2%).
In the finance group, students from private equity and venture capital topped every sector, with 13% of the class. Some 9% were in investment banking, 8% in diversified financial services, and 5% in investment management. Though consulting was up just a single percent, the 27% reflect a new record for Wharton.
Those percentages reflect only small, inconsequential changes from last year’s mix of work backgrounds. Nonprofit and government students fell by three percentage points from 12% last year. Consulting rose by a single percent from 28%. Students from investment management are up two percentage points from just 3% last year which had been a new low for that sector of finance.
MORE JD/MBA DUAL ADMITS THIS YEAR, NEARLY DOUBLING FROM A YEAR EARLIER
Of the 862 students in the new class, some 26 are JD/MBA students, a big increase from the 14 last year; 70 are in the dual-degree Lauder program, while 72 are in Wharton’s health management option. The near doubling of JD/MBA students reflects an improving market for law schools in general after a severe multi-year slump.
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