[商学院活动] Life at The Wharton School, Univ of Pennsylvania

I am still not sure whether I should make this thread all about what I see or my own personal experiences at this school. I do realize that every individual's mileage might vary in this regard and this thread wont be indicative of what you might find if you reach here

I'll try and spare you the trivialities and keep you updated on how and what and why of things here. So here you go - a guided tour into the life of the crazed one at The Wharton School

Life is a dream - a wish that is granted to you provided you hold onto that dream sufficiently long enough. When I was 18 years old, I wanted to apply to the top business schools in the world. I had no inclination of the whys and the hows, but I wanted to attend one. This coincided with the advent of the internet in India and I started browsing the websites of all the top schools of the world. This was the time before there used to be online applications for these schools! The only way to apply to the schools was by getting an application packet, which consisted of a brochure and the application forms. The school used to dispatch these to interested individuals who filled up the requisite form on their websites! Needless to say, i ended up filling the forms of the top 30 MBA institutes and for the coming months, I had collected all the brochures and application forms of the schools. I admit, one look at the brochures and hell, I wanted to study

. For almost a year, I was so consumed with the fact that I wanted to do an MBA abroad - but then ofcourse the cost consideration and yes, the figures which stated the avg. work ex, almost never were in my favour

Two companies, 5 CATs, 4 IIM Calls, 2 GMAT attempts, a whole lot of admits and a whole lot of rejects later, I landed at Philadelphia to attend the big W

I had my classmate friends pick me up from the airport, took me to my new apartment and then fed me and took good care of me. After a week of hectic shopping, furniture buying - fixing and host of issues to take care of, I almost got settled into a sweet grind

. Ok, now if only life was that easy! But I admit, it wasn't that tough either!

Before I landed up at Wharton, I was concerned about one thing - the people. I was hoping I wouldn't find loud mouthed, self serving folks here and by jove, I was lucky

Some of the most humble and helpful folks I've met in my life are right here at this school. Heck, people don't even seem to compete with each other - may be it has to do with the GND ( Grade Non Disclosure ) thingie, or may the culture is as such. Any request for help is replied to and graciously taken care of. So much so that it can change your expectations of people and their behaviour.

As I mentioned above, in addition to the furniture fixing et al, I did the first week, it was also the week where there were get togethers arranged by the Indian junta almost on a daily basis. This allowed us to meet each other at different places and this helped put a good network in place right before the schoool started. It is surprising to see how many folks are here with their significant other halves! A lot of folks have their other halves living with em, some come in every weekend, some have kids and so on and so forth. It is amazing to see people help each other to sustain their stay at the school and most of it is done by sharing or helping each other out. Although I admit, it is tough to remember the names of everyone, because there are err.. just so many of us out here!

Exactly after a week of my landing here, preterm started. What is preterm you ask? Well, preterm is a way to get you used to being back at school! Non graded courses are taught and these courses are the basic foundation courses that will help you with your course work when the real term starts. So for the last couple of weeks we have been studying Math, Stats, Managerial Econonomics and Accounting. The basics of em

. For those who know me, you would know how I abhor maths. Esp. calculus! And guess what, we have a preterm exam in Math and if you flunk it, you got to retake the exam and if you flunk it again, you might be asked to leave the school. (Ok, they might even ask you to take a Calculus course with the undergrads at Penn) .. Overall for me, it was a scary proposition. I had evaded all studies of Calculus in my 12th grade and boy was it back to bite me on my rear! Hey, when I was in 12th grade, I didnt think I would be requiring Calculus, least of all to make sure I would stay in Wharton!!!!

Math classes started and boy, even the basic stuff went way over my head. Remember, what they would teach in 3 years at an engg college was done in 15 hours here and heck, I wasn't any better for it. At this point my friends stepped in and for three days, I was taught calculus. They sat with me, sorted my problems out, answered my insane freaking questions and never lost patience. Day before yesterday, the result for the exam was announced. I had scored 60/100 and 60 was the passing grade!!!!! I don't think I was this happy when I err... made it to Wharton

. This followed with me treating my friends to a dinner, wherein I happily lost a couple hundred $$

Which does bring me back to the recurring theme I have encountered here.. people genuinely care and genuinely help each other. From arranging extra study sessions to helping someone fix furntiture to pretty much anything. I still remain surprised, but I now realize that this is the culture of this place and may be it is an indicator of how people self select themselves into specific schools.

As I ambled around the program and the course, I attended a bunch of lectures on Entrepreneurship. I soon applied to be the VP of Tech at the WEC - http://www.weconference.org/ , and guess what, i got the job

. So soon I will be working to devise the online strategies for this specific event and if I do well at that, i will be working on more stuff that will decide how Wharton's entrpreneurial activities become more public, interactive and go online for more people to be aware of. The thing about Wharton is that there are soooooooooooooooooooooooo many resources that it is humanely impossible to do everything. Forget everything, even picking up a meagre 5% of the stuff here and leveraging it could keep you busy for an eternity. So its a challenge between keeping your academics and extra curricular stuff sorted out. I love the fact that people here give you a patient hearing and usually non judgemental. I've seen it many a times and it does make me wonder if these are areas I need to improve upon

A couple of days later I ended up emailing the head of the admissions committee, Mr. Caleel for an interview for PG and he has agreed. So wait till september end for a massively detailed interview from Mr. Caleel. If you need any specific queries to be answered by Mr. Caleel, do PM me and I'll make sure it is covered in the interview.

Ok, I might have forgotten to mention this - but Wharton junta are party animals. Every night there is a party. Heck with 800 people onboard, they dont even need an excuse! Birthdays, anniversaries, weekends or err..just for no reason - the Wharton junta parties like there is no tomorrow. I've been told on an average day, there will be one party atleast everyday (except during exam times

) and on weekends, atleast 2/3 of em. I have attended a bunch of em and thoroughly enjoyed the one I attended yesterday. I danced till I was soaked & headed back home after 2 AM . It was the second time I've ever danced in public and the one before this was during a PG meet ( for those who attended it, would know

) . I think I have new found appreciation for folks who dance well

.. I must have looked like I was doing some kind of tribal dance.. but heck, I didn't care and I hope the others didn't as well

. May be I will get those dirty looks when I head back to school on monday .. ah who cares

Fine, all said and done I've not spoken about studies. Its a pretty competitive place ..err.. because everyone has studied well all their life and I on the other hand have almost never studied. So I dont have anything called a study schedule or anything. Plus I love sleeping and I am getting to sleep insane amounts of hours here.. so I aint complaining on that front either! But as all good things come to an end, with homework and stuff piling on, I am realizing that I better start sometime soon. Else I'd be left too behind and I dont want to attend classes for three years

. Did I mention that plagiarism can get you expelled? Yes, people who have plagiarized homework or assignements and have shown no remorse have been dispatched out of this school. This speaks about the strong academic ethic there.

The administration is extremely helpful. You need to go there

. Not really used to approaching the administration for problems and stuff, but heck, that is something I need to start doing once I get started on my studies and other work. But its tough - I've had it my way all my life

and now I have to study.. Booo hoooo! Hopefully I can pull this one off as well

That reminds me again, I haven't spoken about JMHH! The official Wharton building. Jon M Hunstman Hall (JMHH), the center of the MBA universe at Upenn. Great building and the good thing is that is usually the one building you need to enter in the morning and exit in the evening - except during lunch when you need to rush to the nearest food truck to rummage through some unpalatable food! I didn't like the food here as much - most of it is pretty bland! The chinese food trucks are the only source of saving grace and they do have the concept of having some spice in their food

. You can take a tour of the JMHH at http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/huntsmanhall/tour/ . Right now its relatively empty since its just 800 of us here. Come september the 2nd year folks return, adding another 800 and then the undergrads return adding a couple of thousand folks more to the list. At that point, I hear you dont get any place to sit and study

... I think we will all stop eating food by that time because the lines at the food trucks would be a mile long or more ! Plus why do we ned food .. we can sip on that latte throughout the lecture and eat that apple trying not to make any crunching noise to distract your professor who is multitasking by using multiple projectors and trying to teach you statistical correlation with err.. something

On wednesday, I will be attending a lecture on Negotiating in Tough Times - A lecture by Gilead Sher - http://www.asaa-law.co.il/Index.asp?...1&ArticleID=50 ( His profile ). Should be a great way to spend this week by attending three classes on this subject