WAITLISTED @ Wharton

Wharton Waitlisted me!. If you have ever worried about your darkest fears coming true, you know exactly how I feel now. The Wharton Waiting List was the worst decision I 'expected' from Wharton. And that is exactly what I got.

Yesterday I spent about an hour on the S2S chat with a lot of fellow applicants all travelling the same boat - D-Day wait. Today I learnt the fate of many. The most active ones got rejected. It is a sad feeling.

Wharton released the decisions in batches. People in China, Singapore and other Asian countries got calls first. I frantically tried refreshing the status page till 9:10AM. Then I was convinced that Wharton is going to let people like me, the ones in East Coast of US know the results towards the later part of the day. So I proceeded to do something else, take a friend's mock interview. This friend has an interview scheduled for one of the top business schools tomorrow. We spoke over the phone for 30 minutes. Most of the answers were good. I gave feedbacks on delivery, structure and content, wished luck to each other, and I returned back from the conference room. Out of curiosity I clicked refresh, and there it was, a decision letter link at the bottom of the application page. When I clicked on it I saw, what you can see on the upper left - WAITLIST.

Rationally speaking this is not the worst case scenario. Unlike Harvard where noone is usually picked from the Waitlist, Wharton do select competitive applications from the Waitlist pool during the next round. The aganozing part is the wait. Anyone who is serious on an MBA admission must have at least put in one year till now to make a competent R1 application. I did. Starting from the day I started serious preparation for GMAT till now it is more than an year. Though a blip in the bigger scheme of things a wait for three more months is painful. It pains even more when you know that there may not be a clear decision on March 22nd the next decision date. Adcom will consider the application for its relative strength with respect to the applicants in R2, and then may either Accept, Reject or Waitlist - Continue :-)

There are cases from the past, where R1 Waitlist has extended all the way to Preterm.

The light at the end of this tunnel be worth this bumper to bumper traffic.

I salute all those who got admitted to Wharton. Now I know for sure that you all put in a better application than I did. All the best!

For me, this decision gives an increased vigor to apply all I got to the one application I have left to do - Columbia. In adition, I will explore Stern further (I have setup a meeting with a student for tomorrow morning) to define my interview strategy. Stern is very keen in fit, and a fit I will be able to show only through enough interactions with the school.