Wharton (Todor Khristov):

The reason why an MBA program is worth so much can be summed up in the following
three pillars:
I. Access to Information
II. Access to People
III. Access to Knowledge

To better facilitate the fulfillment of the above three goals, I have made a non-extensive
list of improvements, derived from my MBA exchange at Wharton Business School:

I. Access to Information
a. All students are required to submit their resumes once prior to joining the
MBA, and once after the completion of their summer internships. Each
resume is reviewed by the career services and posted, ​in a publicly
searchable database available to every other MBA student​.​ For e.g. as
someone trying to break into Consulting, they would greatly benefit from
the resume language of a fellow student used with prior consulting
experience. They will also be able to call and e-mail them from the contact
info on their resume. This is, by far, one of the biggest predictors of
recruiting success at Wharton
b. The career services aggressively pursues all students to accurately
provide the following:
i. Prior experience
ii. Internship company ​and​ salary
iii. Internship interview tips, company overview and prep materials
iv. Full-time offer time ​and​ salary ​and​ bonus and company
v. The above is made public knowledge to all current MBA students
c. The career services provides the following materials ​specific​ for each
industry:
i. Resume, Cover Letter, Interview, Networking
ii. List of students (alums) who went to work in this industry, with their
contact information and information gathered in point I.b.
iii. A detailed industry overview
iv. The list of industries changes depending on student interest, for
example, there is a special subdivision for Cannabis and
Micro-Mobility industries on par with Consulting and IB. This
reflects the interest of the students, the best way of gaging such
interest is through observing club activity
v. A clear, industry-specific timeline to apply for full time, and
internship positions, broken down by most popular employers.
vi. A list of courses specific to the industry of interest
 d. There is a central, standardized, organized, modern IT system for storing,
searching, and displaying the above information that everyone uses,
without exception.

II. Access to People

a. Alumni contact information is public and kept up to date and heavily
utilized by the students
b. The school “mixing” activities start a month in advance (Early August). The
class goes through weeks of activities to get to know each other, get
acquainted with the structure of the program, the path forward and start to
plan their MBA trajectories. All communication is through Slack, for which
the school pays. Everyone gets a course on Slack.
c. 2​nd​ year students actively meet with 1​st​ year students and mentor, share
advice.
i. Incoming students are paired with students from earlier intakes that
interned in their target company/industry to share their experiences.
It’s called a Coach/coachee system and you’re required to have
periodic coffee chats to help with interview prep, resume building,
networking contacts etc.
d. The Alumni outreach is unparalleled, with Alums from the MBA coming
from far away to present on their industry, all expenses paid.
e. Every week, an alumnus is invited/paid to come spend a day on campus
and takes 30-45 minute appointments with students to discuss topics of
interest to them within that alum’s field (e.g. discussing online marketing
with a partner at a marketing agency, discussing digitization of content
with an executive at Discovery Network, etc.)
f. Clubs
i. Fall under a special governing body, separate from council.
ii. all clubs charge membership fees, depending on demand. This
ensures participation, and gives the most popular clubs the biggest
budget.
iii. Some clubs are affiliated with National Chapters that give them
additional budgets, such as Net Impact and Adam Smith Society.
iv. All clubs are then left to operate independently and oversee their
1
own *​:
1. Elections
2. Trek organization
3. Budget expenditure

1*​
It is important to stress the “survival of the fittest” attitude and “independent governance” model which most closely mimics the
capitalist society we live in today. Addition of oversight from a governing body and an attempt to “subsidize” unpopular entities or
“regulate” internal processes goes against the principles we study in business school and a good example of bureaucracy as a
hindrance to progress. This is my only (unpopular) opinion and I will stick to facts from now on
 4. Events
g. During the personalized phase (electives), many of the electives are
actually courses open to not only all the students of the school
(undergraduate and graduate students, MBAs, EMBAs), but even to
students from other schools within the same university.
This has advantages and drawbacks:
i. On the one hand, it allows more networking opportunities and
getting insights and point of views from students with very different
backgrounds, it creates better inclusion (something that is often
regretted at HEC, i.e. MBAs often do not really know MiM and GE
students).
ii. On the other hand, the impression of most students is that they
arrive in a totally new environment (a lot of unknown people) for
each of their electives. That is very interesting for some of them
(including myself), but can be destabilizing for some others, who
are shyer or younger, thus generating less class participation. Also,
one of the very good points at HEC is a very strong sense of
belonging to a specific MBA class, what would be slightly diluted
with the practice mentioned above.
However, my message would be that HEC should inspire itself from
the above example only for some classes, still giving more
opportunities to MBA students to know people from other programs.

III. Access to Knowledge

a. There is a clear delineation between skills and knowledge. Things that all
MBAs should know are taught early through mostly consultants:
i. Crash-courses on Excel Modeling, Financial Modelling (LBO, MnA,
DCF)
ii. Crash courses on Case cracking, Data analysis
iii. Knowledge is taught by professors who are veterans from the
industry, The preferred method of teaching is business cases and
class discussion. Because it is assumed that Skills are acquired
early, the professors do not spend time on explaining the basics of
how to build an LBO, for example, but focus on special situations
and generally invite industry speakers as part of the class.
b. S​omething that struck me is that students each get a Name plaque, made
out of hard plastic which displays their name in large font. They are
penalized if they don’t bring it to class. Each student also ​gets stickers of
country flags​ from where they are from. The only other sticker I saw is the
LGBT sticker, but other than that, it’s an amazing display of how diverse
the class is and is a very effective inclusion method.
i. For Core/Fundamentals phase since seating is assigned, the name
tags are left there for the entire semester and then customised
phase, taken from class to class.
 c. They also have flags from all the countries represented in each class in
the hallway and some in the classrooms as well.
d. There is a no laptop, no phone policy with only tablets allowed. The only
exception to the rule is when excel is used as a teaching method.
e. There are no “specializations” and “certificates”, and instead students are
free to choose electives for a whole first and second year. Those that want
to minimize school work load and maximize recruiting are free to do so.
There is also no MBA project. The class load is much less than HEC.
i. Complete opposite in some other exchange students’ experiences;
they have specialisations in their final semester like us and the
workload is ridiculous. Almost 4 hours of prep time per class-
obviously depends on the course, but generally speaking, a heavier
workload.
f. All professors, without exception, are required to use one platform for their
course content called Canvass. This includes class schedule, quizzes,
materials, assignments. It is about 10 years more modern than
Blackboard.

Having said all this, I love HEC and wouldn’t change my experience for anything. As a
significantly underrepresented minority, HEC was one place I was able to feel included,
be myself and feel part of a community even though that community wasn’t made up of
people like me. Being here, I’m reminded constantly about how different I am (even
though people are friendly). Living in such an environment (HEC) where I didn’t feel like
I needed a periodic break to be with people that look like me or come from where I
come from, to decompress from everyday microaggressions is something that I wouldn’t
change for anything in the world. Not to mention the truly diverse perspective of various
topics in and outside of the classroom (the cases could still be more diverse and I
shared an African HBS Case with the Strategic Management professor that I hope he
includes). This diversity is something I knew was valuable, but currently being in an
environment that is not as diverse, I can really ‘feel’ the difference. So as someone who
did the MBA to really open their world, challenge their way of thinking and gain other
intangibles, HEC has nailed it. If they improve the quality of classes and our career
services, it will be such a power house!