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00:00Wharton Business School. My experience and was it worth it? What is up guys? My name is Taylor Bell
00:05if you're new here and this is a video I've been meaning to make for a minute now. I've gotten many
00:09many questions about my experience at Wharton and whether it was worth it since I started my
00:14YouTube channel and especially since I gained an audience that is very interested in finance.
00:18So I am here to talk about all things Wharton today. Wharton. So let's not waste time and jump
00:24right in. First though, you know the drill. Please gently tap that like button below because it's
00:28free and because it's satisfying to watch it turn a nice crisp shade of blue. All right guys, so I'm
00:32going to break this down into categories. First I'll do kind of a background on Wharton for those
00:36who don't know. Then we'll jump into things that are more based around my personal experience. So
00:40classes I took, classes I found most helpful and which ones are my favorite because that's what
00:44you guys requested. We'll do some general Q&A based off of frequently asked questions. And then finally
00:50I will answer was it worth it? And I would recommend saying until the end for the was it worth it portion
00:55because that is what I think the juiciest part of the video where of course I go over
00:59was it worth going to Wharton slash getting an Ivy League degree. But first chapter one,
01:04some background on Wharton. All right, smooth little transition there. I am indeed in my car now. I'm
01:09trying to switch up my surroundings a little bit more in my videos. So I hope you enjoy car Taylor.
01:14And yes, I treated myself to a little starves this morning and it's delicious. It's been a great day.
01:20Like forced me to get out of the house and you don't care. Let's uh, let's get back to the Wharton
01:23stuff. All right, let's begin with some background on Wharton for those who don't know, or for those
01:27who do know, a little refresher. But I want to say in this video, I will be describing some things
01:31in very simple terms. For instance, I'll go over kind of the difference between an undergrad degree
01:35versus a graduate degree. And I'm sure that a lot of you guys watching this already know that
01:38difference. But for those who clicked on this video to learn something new or who just might not
01:42know. So I'm not trying to be patronizing if I sound like I'm really breaking it down. That's just how
01:46I like to learn new things. So, all right, cool. So background, I went to the Wharton School of
01:50Business, which is the business school that's associated with the University of Pennsylvania,
01:54which is one of the eight Ivy League universities here in the U.S. So if you hear me kind of
01:58interchangeably use Wharton and Penn, I'm referring to University of Pennsylvania. Wharton is part of
02:03Penn, UPenn. In Philadelphia, you'll get it.
02:10So I graduated from the undergrad program at Wharton this past May, May 18th, 2020, to be exact.
02:16So the structure of Wharton, which by the way, if someone wants to tally up how many times I say
02:20Wharton in this video, be my guest. I apologize in advance. But Wharton has both an undergraduate
02:25business program, which is where you earn your bachelor's degree. And this is typically the
02:29college that you go to right out of high school. And it also has a graduate business program,
02:33which is where you earn your master's degree or your MBA, master's in business administration in
02:38this case. And the graduate program is for people who have usually already earned their bachelor's
02:42degree and they've already been working for a couple of years. These people are usually in
02:45their late twenties, mid to late twenties. All right. So this next part, I'm really not saying
02:49to brag. I'm just saying it to give you some more background on Wharton and what it is for
02:53those who don't know, for anyone interested in applying. And I guess to give myself some
02:57credibility as the person making this video. So Wharton undergrad business school is the best
03:01undergrad business school in the country as far as rankings go. Wharton undergrad is usually
03:06regarded as a undergrad business program, kind of in a league of its own. Again, that's based off
03:10rankings. If you care about that kind of thing, I will give a more nuanced view on rankings and if
03:14they really matter at the end of this video, so stay until then. And for the Wharton graduate
03:18school, it is pretty much always ranked in the top three, usually behind Harvard and Stanford
03:23graduate business schools. Although I saw this year, Wharton grad school is also ranked number
03:26one. Some notable alumni you may have heard of, of Wharton school of business include
03:30elongated muskrat, Warren buffet, and Sundar pitch deck. All right. Now I'll say their names for real.
03:36So that way the closed captioning can actually pick it up and maybe the algorithm will also,
03:39I of course mean Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, and Sundar Pichai. All right. So now let's jump into
03:44the, my experience portion of the video. And I'm going to be answering questions that you guys
03:48most frequently asked me first, what classes did I take? Well, specifically at Penn, I was actually
03:53in a dual degree program called the Huntsman program in international studies in business.
03:57This program admits about 45 students per year, usually around half of them from the U S and the
04:02other half from countries all around the world. So if you're in this program, you earn both a bachelor's
04:06in science and economics from the Wharton school of business, as well as a bachelor in arts and
04:11international studies from the college of arts and sciences. I've explained this on my channel
04:14before one other time. So if this is second time hearing it, my apologies. Realistically,
04:18most students that are in the Huntsman program go for pretty much the same jobs that students who
04:23are only in Wharton go for AKA mostly jobs in finance, consulting, tech, things like that. But the
04:29Huntsman program is designed to give students a more global education. So in theory, you should be able
04:33to conduct business in other countries as well by the time you graduate. So why do I tell you this
04:38speech? Well, I'm about to show you every single class I ever took at Penn. And you might notice that
04:42one, there are quite a few of them, which is partially because I was in this dual degree program,
04:46which just required more credits. And two, you will notice some Spanish history, international studies
04:51classes, things like that, which is where the international studies portion of my education comes in.
04:55All right, now let's look at the classes. So I went on my transcript and these are all of the classes I took
05:01my four full years at Penn. I'll leave these up on the screen. You can pause it, refer back to it if
05:06you want. I will include them in the description down below as well. But I'm going to highlight just
05:09a few of these classes to answer my next question that I got quite a bit. And that was which classes
05:13were my favorite that I took at Penn and which classes that I find the most useful for the real
05:18business world. And I'm going to do this quick because I realized listening to what classes I took
05:21might be quite boring for some of you. So my favorite classes out of this whole list include
05:26leadership and communication in groups, intro to marketing, intro to management,
05:30decision processes, negotiations, management, business strategy, business statistics, too,
05:35and my senior capstone thesis. So out of these classes, you can kind of notice a trend. And that
05:40is that I typically enjoy the classes that were more based on business and strategy rather than
05:45classes that were pretty solely based around quantitative analysis, with the exception of
05:49business statistics, too. I very much enjoyed that class. And as for the most useful classes that I
05:54think carry over best into the real business world, I chose these more so based off the general
05:58concepts and kind of themes that I learned in these classes rather than, you know, if I don't use a
06:02specific formula that I learned in one of these classes on a day to day basis, I'm just basing it
06:06off of the broader concepts. I hope that makes sense. And you'll notice a lot of these are intro or
06:10101 classes. So I guess Wharton did their job in that sense. All right. So the most useful ones,
06:14I think, are intro to economics for business, intro to marketing, intro to operations and information
06:20management, corporate finance, intro to management, decision processes, principles of accounting,
06:25negotiations, and business statistics, too. So you'll notice that there's a little bit of overlap
06:29with a few of those there. And I would say those are the best classes I took if you had to really
06:33put a grade on it. So I could give you guys a little synopsis of each of these classes, like a little
06:38module. Someone actually requested that, but I don't want to bore you more than I have to. But I guess in
06:42the comments, let me know if in the future you would like to see like a little lesson that sounds
06:46silly, but like a little overview of the most important concepts and kind of things that came out of
06:50these classes. If you want to see it, I can make it. All right. Now a couple more fun questions I got
06:54about living in Philly, dorm life, stuff like that. Did I live in the dorms and were they nice?
06:59Someone asked me. So yes, all freshmen or first years at Penn live in the dorms on campus. And my
07:04experience, I would say, was a little extra special because all the freshmen in the Huntsman program
07:08actually live together on the same floor for your whole first year. So it's a pretty fun setup from
07:13the very beginning. And were the dorms nice? No, not particularly. But, you know, I know that a couple
07:17years after I was a freshman, they actually installed air conditioning. So maybe they're nicer now,
07:20but suffering through it was part of the experience. So it was a fun time. Next question was,
07:24what was my favorite part about going to school in Philadelphia? So my favorite part was the
07:28walking, which sounds kind of weird, but so Philly is a big city, but it's not as huge as New York
07:33City feels if you had to compare the two. I think Philly is honestly more homey. It feels more homey
07:38than New York. But anyway, most weekends in college, I would do a lot of walking if I didn't have to
07:42study for something. So I would walk from Penn, which is in West Philadelphia. So I'd walk from Penn to
07:48Center City, Philadelphia. And I had a favorite brunch spot in Center City called Continental Midtown.
07:52And I also had a favorite dog park that was along the Schuylkill River. I would go to the dog park
07:57and play with other people's dogs on my walk back to school. So I found like some favorite spots of
08:01mine. And I really did come to love Philly as a city quite a bit. I am super grateful for the four
08:05years that I had there. And I actually can't wait to go back and visit when the time comes. Some
08:09others asked me about adjustments from living in LA and then living in Philly. So the obvious low
08:13hanging fruit answer there is the weather, but like you just get a big jacket, you get used to the cold
08:17weather. The biggest adjustment for me was definitely being away from my family all the way across the
08:21country because that's something I had never done before. So I remember sometime my freshman year,
08:26I think in November, I would say, I started to feel this kind of weird feeling where I was like,
08:30okay, I've been here for a few months. It's been fun. Time to go home. Like it hadn't quite sunken in
08:34for me that I was in it for the long haul yet. Thankfully though, I did make some really, really
08:38good friends at Penn, partially because I was in this tight knit program. And I think that if I hadn't
08:42had that, it would have been a lot more difficult adjusting to life so far away from my family.
08:46All right. The next question was, which city do I like more after having gone to college in
08:51Philadelphia, Philadelphia or where I'm from, Los Angeles. So I don't like when people say Los
08:56Angelino or California girl in the least cringey terms. I am a Californian through and through. I
09:02always will be in no matter where I'm living. So California always, it's the best, not for taxes,
09:07but for weather and many, many, many other things. All right. So now before I answer, was it worth it?
09:12I should say that the question I got or kind of theme that I got the most besides, was it worth
09:16it? Was what did I do in high school? What were the kind of things I did leading up to college in
09:20order to get into an Ivy league university or to be prepared to go to a competitive school like this?
09:25And I'm going to save those answers for a different video because I really could expand on just my
09:30thoughts about preparing in high school and how to like best set yourself up for success. So I'll
09:34probably make a dedicated video on that. If you guys are still interested in that, probably title it
09:38something like how to get into an Ivy league or something kind of cringey like that. So
09:42keep an eye out. All right guys. So now for what I consider the juicy part, was it worth it? This
09:47is the number one question that I got. So people asked me this in various ways. One of them, of
09:51course, being, was it worth the cost? The thousand, well, we'll go over the price tag that it costs
09:55because private university in the U S is very expensive. And then two, most people actually
09:59asked more so in terms of, was it worth the knowledge that I gained? Was it worth four years of
10:04my life? When in theory, I could have found a job right out of high school and started working right
10:07away. And then a few people asked me if I could have in theory learned the same things that I learned
10:11at Wharton online. If I took an online business course or maybe something on Skillshare, could I
10:15have learned the same things without having to go to a private university for four years?
10:19All right. So let's start with the monetary cost. So instead of me going off of like my gut feeling
10:24saying yes or no, whether I thought it was worth it, let's actually look at the data. Let's,
10:27let's look at some numbers here. Penn is expensive and not just Penn, private universities in the United
10:33States charge exorbitant rates. It is so unbelievably expensive. So the full sticker price to attend
10:39Penn every year, according to Penn, including tuition, fees, housing, dining, books and supplies,
10:46et cetera, personal expenses. It is estimated to come out right to around $79,000 per year. I don't
10:53have to tell you guys that that's a lot of money to go to school. Of course, though, that is the
10:57sticker price, the full asking price. That doesn't include financial aid that Penn awards to its
11:02students on a need basis. So just some very quick stats here. Penn stats show that nine out of 10
11:07first gen students are awarded over $50,000 average per year at Penn. Additionally, students
11:12that come from families with household incomes that are less than $75,000 per year pay no tuition or fees
11:18at all. And there are other financial aid stats I could throw at you guys, but that was probably
11:22already kind of boring. But my point is that that $79,000 is a lot, but not everyone at Penn pays that
11:28full price. In fact, most do not. So that is, of course, just one piece of the puzzle. The other obvious
11:33piece that we have to look at is how much I, a Wharton grad or the average Wharton undergraduate
11:38business student, will make once they graduate. So some more stats, shall we? The average first year
11:44out of college compensation for an undergrad at Wharton is $109,811. This includes salary, sign-on
11:52bonus, and the end-of-the-year bonuses that most students get. I actually found another source showing
11:57that it was around $90,300. So the data varies a bit year to year, it seems, but let's say it's right
12:02around that $100,000 mark. Compare this number to the average starting salary for most college
12:08graduates in the U.S., which is right around $50,000. So you can do the math. We, we on average
12:13make twice what the average college graduate in the U.S. makes right out of college. So you have the
12:18numbers on the costs and the expected first year salary of a Wharton undergrad student. But what
12:22about the other factors? For me, what made Wharton so valuable had so much more to do with the
12:27connections I made over my four years, rather than the things that I actually learned in my classes or
12:32what my first year salary is going to be. So a quick anecdote to kind of illustrate this, when I first
12:36started looking at companies to reach out to for my very first internships, I went on this thing
12:40called QuakerNet because we're the Quakers. The QuakerNet is Penn's online directory that shows the phone
12:45numbers and emails of just about every person who has ever graduated from there. Very quickly, I realized
12:50how unusual it is to have something that valuable at my fingertips. As you can imagine, executives upon
12:56executives at the top companies in the U.S. and countries beyond, founders of some of the coolest
13:01startups you know. You guys, Elon Musk is in that directory. I'm not saying his personal cell phone
13:05numbers there, but he's in there. And not to mention all of the personal connections that I made with
13:09some of my professors and all my friends at the school. I mean, just to be surrounded by the most
13:13interesting and intelligent people I've ever met for four years straight. And then by the time you're
13:17looking for your big internship, the biggest and best finance consulting tech companies are basically
13:22lining up to give students interviews. That's not to say it's not competitive because you basically have
13:26a thousand students going for the same handful of jobs. But I would say that going to a top school
13:30definitely helps give you a foot in the door. Now, with all of that said, which might have sounded
13:34like me aggressively patting myself on the back, do I think you need to go to Wharton? Do I think you
13:38need to go to an Ivy League university to be successful? Absolutely not. I mean, you already know
13:43the answer. What if I got up here and said, yes, that's what I think. But for example, let's look at our
13:47finance guy and YouTube god, Graham Stephan. He talks all the time about how much he hated high school,
13:53how he got horrible grades and just couldn't stand being there every single day. It didn't stop him
13:57from hustling right out of high school until he got recognized for his hard work and got promoted
14:01and started eventually making hundreds of thousands every single year, let alone what he's doing now as
14:05a full-time YouTuber. And that's taking Graham Stephan as an example, someone who didn't go to college.
14:09What about someone who went to college, but maybe didn't go to an Ivy League university or what rankings
14:13would consider a top university? Same thing. While I admit that going to a prestigious university and what I
14:19mean by prestigious, again, is really based off rankings and acceptance rates. While I admit that
14:23going to those schools does give you a hell of a foot in the door, it is not necessary. I guess my
14:27point is it really more so comes down to hard work, elbow grease, jumping at the opportunities that you
14:32have in front of you, and of course, some luck, much more so than what school you go to. So I never
14:36answered whether I thought Wharton was worth it or not. I think you guys can tell by the way I talk
14:41about it that I think for me Wharton was a billion percent worth it. Not only did I have an excellent
14:46full-time job lined up eight months before I even graduated, it was also just honestly the best four
14:51years of my life. I really, really, really enjoyed Penn. But just because I think it made sense for me
14:56for a variety of factors doesn't mean it makes sense for everyone. I know people at Penn who really didn't
15:00like it, or at least who got really fed up by the pre-professionalism that Penn definitely emanates from
15:05pretty much day one that you're on campus. And I definitely do admit that there is quite a bit of
15:09pressure to feel like you have to get a certain type of job if you go to Wharton, specifically within
15:14finance, consulting, or tech, as I keep mentioning. And if you are looking for a more liberal arts-esque
15:19education, I would say that Wharton is not the place to go. And while a degree from Wharton or
15:23really any degree in any STEM field is a very marketable degree, if you hate it or really just
15:28have no interest in those fields, then I would say it's not worth it because you've got to love what
15:31you're doing. To some extent, you have to be interested in what you're doing for it to be
15:34sustainable. Plus, it might just make a lot more sense for someone to take a course online or to learn
15:39a trade instead of spending hundreds of thousands to go to an overpriced private university. I would
15:44obviously say that it really varies person to person. And to answer this question, pretty much
15:47all the things that I learned in my classes, you could probably find some online business courses
15:51that teach principally very similar things. It might be hard to find it in as nicely of a package format
15:56as I got. And of course, it was taught to me by great professors, which definitely helps. It also helps
16:01to have it on my resume that I learned those things at Wharton. But as far as the actual material that I
16:05learned, like I said, if you look hard enough on the internet, you could probably find
16:08just about anything you want. So no matter where you go to college, if you go at all,
16:12I would say that my biggest piece of advice, if you care, is to put yourself out there and make
16:16those genuine connections. Those connections with other people, especially, like I said,
16:20the genuine connections. I mean, I'm not advocating to go out and be annoying and ask your senator to
16:24lunch. Although it really is those genuine connections that are the most valuable things,
16:28in my opinion. All right, guys. Well, I hope that didn't get too preachy. It sounded a little
16:31preachy in my head, but I really tried to show both sides of things and how something that might make
16:35sense for one person really just might not make sense for another person. And
16:38that is totally okay. So I'll probably be making some more Wharton slash IV slash college videos
16:43in the future. So let me know in the comments down below what you would like to see in those videos,
16:46or if you guys have any remaining questions that I didn't get to in this video. Y'all know I answer
16:50just about all my comments. So go ahead and leave me one, ask a question, whatever. I will be
16:54responding. All right, guys. I'll see you soon. Thanks so much for watching. If you made it this far,
16:58peace. I hate when people say Los Angelinos. Do I have a hole there? Yeah, I do. How does that
17:04even happen? I mean, I know I've worn this shirt a lot, but like, how could that possibly get there?
17:09Did my voice crack? Am I a prefubescent 14-year-old boy? Interesting and intelligent purple.
17:14Uh, purple. Interesting and intelligent purple. In West Philadelphia, I can't bowl there.
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