Following in UChicago’s Footsteps, Wharton Removes Stock Pitch From Application Requirements

Following in the footsteps of the University of Chicago, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania has decided to simplify its admissions requirements and make them more accessible to applicants who are not finance gurus. 

"We're bullish on creativity and bearish on rigid requirements," remarked Frank Harris, Dean of Wharton Undergraduate Admissions. "We have realized that it is unfair to expect applicants to successfully walk us through a discounted cash flow analysis and a comparable companies analysis. This should only be an expectation after their first lecture of ECON 010."

Unfortunately, other brutal parts of the application are not changing any time soon. The Wharton application will continue to require a 3-hour long networking reception and an extensive test of Excel shortcuts. Moreover, in the final round, applicants will still be required to successfully pronounce the word "EBITDA". 

High school investment club founder and soon-to-be Wharton applicant Richard Liu (W '23) was relieved when he found out that this requirement had been removed. "I'm pretty good with precedent transactions analysis but honestly, my equity research skills are a bit rusty and I can't even project out free cash flow predictions effectively. I'm glad I can just spend my time practicing my "EBITDA" pronunciation instead of working on a stock pitch." 

As applications continue to become less and less demanding, we hope that Wharton students will not fall behind of their future colleagues at Goldman Sachs.