Wharton MBA Application Essays for 2023-2024
- Essay 1: How do you plan to use the Wharton MBA program to help you achieve your future professional goals? You might consider your past experience, short and long-term goals, and resources available at Wharton. (500 words)
- Essay 2: Taking into consideration your background – personal, professional, and/or academic – how do you plan to make specific, meaningful contributions to the Wharton community? (400 words)
Required Essay for all Reapplicants: Please use this space to share with the Admissions Committee how you have reflected and grown since your previous application and discuss any relevant updates to your candidacy (e.g., changes in your professional life, additional coursework, and extracurricular/volunteer engagements). (250 words)
Optional Essay: Please use this space to share any additional information about yourself that cannot be found elsewhere in your application and that you would like to share with the Admissions Committee. This space can also be used to address any extenuating circumstances (e.g., unexplained gaps in work experience, choice of recommenders, inconsistent or questionable academic performance, areas of weakness, etc.) that you would like the Admissions Committee to consider. (500 words)
Please note:
First-time MBA applicants and re-applicants are required to complete essays 1 and 2.
Wharton MBA Winning Sample Essay – 1
What do you hope to gain professionally from the Wharton MBA? (500 words)
Landing in Bangkok, you see a blue ocean of solar panels covering and powering the international airport. I co-led the financing of this solar project, winning Thai Greentech Award in 2012. Seeing my impact of enabling emerging markets to grow sustainably solidified my drive to pursue a career in clean energy.
My goal is to start my own clean technology company that is integrated from generation to consumption in order to increase energy access and consumption in emerging markets such as Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, where the feasibility and impact of disruption is higher. I desire to move into financing innovative solutions to the dual problem of generation and distribution of sustainable energy in emerging markets. Post-MBA, I intend to continue funding clean-tech deals as a senior associate and progress to senior executive level on the equity side at VCs such as Fenox Ventures, and Green VC.
Living and working across Asia, Europe, Africa and Latin America, I have devoted my career to energy financing in emerging markets. I discovered a problem with energy generation and consumption inefficiencies such as lack of distributed generation to empower remote communities, unavoidable transmission loss, increasing fuel cost, and inefficient retail metering to enable demand response; clean tech offers a solution. A Wharton MBA is the essential next step to obtaining skills around equity financing of complex project ventures so I can achieve my short and long term goal. At Wharton I will sharpen my profile by majoring in Entrepreneurial Management. I will focus my strategic and entrepreneurial management skills required by VCs via classes such as Venture Capital and Entrepreneurial Management. Joining and leading Founders Club, Energy Club and PE/VC Club will expand my alumni networks and hone my leadership skills. I will leverage my network to pursue a summer internship with a reputable VC like Fenox Ventures as well as explore existing contacts with VCs and major incubators, such as Venrock, SingTel and Plug and Play in San Francisco. As an advisor to The Co-Foundry where I serve in a consulting role, I already appreciate the essentials of venture pitching and filtering deals, which combined with a Wharton MBA, will make me an attractive VC candidate.
Wharton is also an environment where I can strengthen my leadership skills. For example, by taking the Leadership Trek to Antarctica, I will improve my teamwork skills and push the limits of my mind and spirit, all characteristics I need to be strong for a future entrepreneurial career. As I believe that extraordinary value is often generated by bringing together different viewpoints I would organize trips to Brazil or to Britanny, where I have good connections as a certified wine taster, and accomplished Salsa dancer.
I am confident that the Wharton MBA would be an enriching experience that is both timely and relevant to my long-term aspirations. Increasing efficient clean energy to sub-Saharan Africa and Asia is an attainable goal that requires all the help I can get.
What is your career objective and how will the Wharton MBA Program for Executives contribute to your attainment of these objectives? (750 words)
Cloud computing gives IT managers great flexibility to increase capacity without i1nvesting in new infrastructure. At the same time, it limits access to important information such as visibility into end-to-end service delivery, which means enterprises cannot identify problems with their services. I want to create a company that will help enterprise IT effectively manage their cloud-based services by providing truly end-to-end service delivery monitoring. Currently, enterprises don’t know if the performance is poor due to bad server performance, bad routing between cloud services and enterprises, or bad local enterprise networking. For example, NewSales.com is a cloud-based service. This service gets delivered to enterprises via layers of private and public networks. If Newsales.com performance is slow, IT and ultimately the CIO are answerable to their enterprise users. Yet IT cannot identify where the performance issues lie. There is need for a hosted service that can help identify issues in a hybrid environment and can pinpoint the cause and location of problems.
I joined Idea.Com Technologies in China, a world-renowned IT consulting firm, with the goal of learning contemporary technologies and customer interactions. This provided me with a technical foundation in networking and unified communication domains. In addition, during four years at Idea.Com, I managed a team of four in Beijing while consulting Google. While consulting, however, I realized I needed experience working at a startup where I could witness the full product cycle. So I joined Walrus Systems, an early-stage startup, in Jan. 2007; within a year, I took over as engineering manager. Trying to grow quickly, Walrus created an offshore team at Pertinent Systems in Shenzhen, China. I volunteered to manage this team so I could learn how to build a team from scratch. My experience at Idea.Com helped me bridge cultural differences and establish a process that worked for both teams. This experience will behoove me going forward as I work with larger, multicultural, multi-site teams.
My three years at Walrus were both challenging and fulfilling. Smaller teams meant everyone needed to step up. I took over additional responsibility for both the pre-sales and professional services teams. I built key client relationships with technical decision makers that led to several product sales, including the first million-dollar sale with Morgan Chase. I presented my product in front of different audiences ranging, from technical engineers to CIOs. The experience introduced me to pre-sales and illustrated the importance of building long-term relationships, which are critical to building a trustworthy business.
Upon graduation, I want to manage a multi-product portfolio in the networking/storage world as a Senior Director. I have managed teams of 10-20 engineers but don’t have experience managing larger, multi-product teams. This will teach me how to take a big project and delegate it into many smaller projects as well as how to manage supervisors. Within three years, I will join an early-stage startup as VP of Products, overseeing the engineering and product management groups. Here, I will develop skills such as business strategy, product planning and launch, annual budgeting, and building channel partners – all skills that a senior executive needs to lead a startup.
Wharton’s courses, such as “Microeconomics and Regression Analysis for Business” and “Formation and Implementation of Entrepreneurial Ventures,” will teach me finance and business analysis skills needed for product management, as well as entrepreneurial skills, such as raising capital and hiring the right team, that I’ll eventually need. “Responsibility in Global Management” by Professor David Hauck and “Corporate Finance” will give me an insight into selecting business partners and wisely spending capital. I plan to join “Leadership Learning Team” at Wharton, which will catalyze new insights, collaboration, and a lifelong network. I would love to go on an international “Global Experience” modular course and work on topics relevant to that region. These activities will give me a unique opportunity to both learn from each unique individual in a group setting and establish strong friendships and potential business partners. My desire to be a part of Wharton’s EMBA was confirmed when I attended a guest class with Professor Karl Ulrich. He used very simple real-life examples to illustrate complex concepts around patents and intellectual property.
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Wharton MBA Winning Sample Essay – 2
What is your career objective and how will the Wharton MBA Program for Executives contribute to your attainment of these objectives? (750 words)
Cloud computing gives IT managers great flexibility to increase capacity without i1nvesting in new infrastructure. At the same time, it limits access to important information such as visibility into end-to-end service delivery, which means enterprises cannot identify problems with their services. I want to create a company that will help enterprise IT effectively manage their cloud-based services by providing truly end-to-end service delivery monitoring. Currently, enterprises don’t know if the performance is poor due to bad server performance, bad routing between cloud services and enterprises, or bad local enterprise networking. For example, NewSales.com is a cloud-based service. This service gets delivered to enterprises via layers of private and public networks. If Newsales.com performance is slow, IT and ultimately the CIO are answerable to their enterprise users. Yet IT cannot identify where the performance issues lie. There is need for a hosted service that can help identify issues in a hybrid environment and can pinpoint the cause and location of problems.
I joined Idea.Com Technologies in China, a world-renowned IT consulting firm, with the goal of learning contemporary technologies and customer interactions. This provided me with a technical foundation in networking and unified communication domains. In addition, during four years at Idea.Com, I managed a team of four in Beijing while consulting Google. While consulting, however, I realized I needed experience working at a startup where I could witness the full product cycle. So I joined Walrus Systems, an early-stage startup, in Jan. 2007; within a year, I took over as engineering manager. Trying to grow quickly, Walrus created an offshore team at Pertinent Systems in Shenzhen, China. I volunteered to manage this team so I could learn how to build a team from scratch. My experience at Idea.Com helped me bridge cultural differences and establish a process that worked for both teams. This experience will behoove me going forward as I work with larger, multicultural, multi-site teams.
My three years at Walrus were both challenging and fulfilling. Smaller teams meant everyone needed to step up. I took over additional responsibility for both the pre-sales and professional services teams. I built key client relationships with technical decision makers that led to several product sales, including the first million-dollar sale with Morgan Chase. I presented my product in front of different audiences ranging, from technical engineers to CIOs. The experience introduced me to pre-sales and illustrated the importance of building long-term relationships, which are critical to building a trustworthy business.
Upon graduation, I want to manage a multi-product portfolio in the networking/storage world as a Senior Director. I have managed teams of 10-20 engineers but don’t have experience managing larger, multi-product teams. This will teach me how to take a big project and delegate it into many smaller projects as well as how to manage supervisors. Within three years, I will join an early-stage startup as VP of Products, overseeing the engineering and product management groups. Here, I will develop skills such as business strategy, product planning and launch, annual budgeting, and building channel partners – all skills that a senior executive needs to lead a startup.
Wharton’s courses, such as “Microeconomics and Regression Analysis for Business” and “Formation and Implementation of Entrepreneurial Ventures,” will teach me finance and business analysis skills needed for product management, as well as entrepreneurial skills, such as raising capital and hiring the right team, that I’ll eventually need. “Responsibility in Global Management” by Professor David Hauck and “Corporate Finance” will give me an insight into selecting business partners and wisely spending capital. I plan to join “Leadership Learning Team” at Wharton, which will catalyze new insights, collaboration, and a lifelong network. I would love to go on an international “Global Experience” modular course and work on topics relevant to that region. These activities will give me a unique opportunity to both learn from each unique individual in a group setting and establish strong friendships and potential business partners. My desire to be a part of Wharton’s EMBA was confirmed when I attended a guest class with Professor Karl Ulrich. He used very simple real-life examples to illustrate complex concepts around patents and intellectual property.