Talk:Wharton School/Archive 1

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Undergrad?[edit]

I'm surprised to read that Wharton has an undergrad program! If you're an undergrad, aren't you just "at UPenn"? Do people selectively claim they "graduated Wharton" or they "graduated UPenn" as the mood fits?

Do undergrads really say they "go to Wharton"? I always assumed that meant MBA! 66.3.106.1 (talk) 19:48, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]


List of Prominent Wharton Alumni[edit]

A user under the Nick of Dpbsmithhas removed a list of renown alumni from the Wharton School. He has unilateraly decided to erase some of the most prominet leader formed at Wharton but apparently do not "live near him/her".

Given the importance of the list erased I would urge a curator to 1. restore the old list and 2. eventually to create a MBA listing separately from that of the wharton school

The efforts put up by the Wharton School in establishing a sound international network of leaders is sometimes clouded by action of people who have little knowlege....

Thank you


US Supreme Court Justices(s)[edit]

While William Brennan graduated from Wharton, I do not believe Owen Roberts did, so I think the introductory statement meeds revision. Correct if I am mistaken.

Philadelphia[edit]

I have removed this generic information about Philadelphia, most of which does not bear even tangentially on the Wharton School itself. I am placing it here in case there is anything worth merging into our article on Philadelphia. Dpbsmith (talk) 21:19, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Removing some entries from "Industry" section of alumni[edit]

Most of these are probably correct, but I'm removing these because we don't have articles on them. I haven't yet checked the entries for which we do have articles, but presumably when checked they will indicate that these people do hold the positions stated and are, in fact, Wharton alumni.

These can be reinserted when, per verifiability policy, they are accompanied with source citations. These could be web links to corporate bios on corporation websites, but they ought to confirm that the person is a Wharton grad and does in fact hold the stated position. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:57, 3 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And likewise for "High Tech"[edit]

And similarly for "Media"[edit]

And similarly for "Nonprofits"[edit]

And similarly for "Finance"[edit]

And similarly for "Real estate"[edit]

And similarly for "Consulting"[edit]

Motto?[edit]

I snipped

motto = To impact the world through development of leaders and knowledge dissemination

because although this phrase does appear on Wharton's website, e.g. at http://www.wharton.upenn.edu/whartonfacts/leadership/ , it is not described as a motto.

The dictionary defines "motto" as "A brief statement used to express a principle, goal, or ideal." Usually the "motto" appears on the University's coat of arms. However, Wharton's coat of arms bears no motto. Searches on Wharton's website for motto return no relevant hits.

I don't believe Wharton has a motto. Dpbsmith (talk) 03:09, 4 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

List of Prominent Wharton Alumni[edit]

A user under the Nick of Dpbsmithhas removed a list of renown alumni from the Wharton School. He has unilateraly decided to erase some of the most prominet leader formed at Wharton but apparently do not "live near him/her".

Given the importance of the list erased I would urge a curator to 1. restore the old list and 2. eventually to create a MBA listing separately from that of the wharton school

The efforts put up by the Wharton School in establishing a sound international network of leaders is sometimes clouded by action of people who have little knowlege....

Than you —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.18.74.37 (talk • contribs)

The alumni moved off the article page were taken down because their alumni status was not cited. As User:Dpbsmith stated, setting aside any questions of individual notability, their status as alumni should be referenced in some reputable source before being put on the main page. Verifiability is a cornerstone of the entire Wikipedia project. JDoorjam Talk 18:52, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
85.18.74.37, You or anyone else can put any of these names back, but before you put a name back you need to find a verifiable source and cite it when you put the name back. In the case of CEOs of prominent corporations, in many cases the corporate website will have a page with executive bios on it. If the bio mentions they attended Wharton, that would be a perfectly good source. The source needs to be "reputable," and it needs to say two things: a) it needs to confirm that the person holds the position mentioned, and b) it needs to confirm that the person attended Wharton.
Yes, it's work, but the verifiability policy is clear that "The burden of evidence lies with the editors who have made an edit or wish an edit to remain."
If you got this entire list from somewhere on the Web, such as the Wharton website, then including a link to that web page would be very appropriate. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:27, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Notable Alumni[edit]

The term "Alumni" generally refers to graduates of a school/university. Warren Buffett did not graduate from Wharton, he attended for a year or two. He should not be included in the list of "Alumni"

  • No, the term is not restricted to graduates: the American Heritage Dictionary says alumnus means "A male graduate or former student of a school, college, or university" (and "alumna" means "A woman graduate or former student of a school, college, or university.") Dpbsmith (talk) 02:06, 15 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • I said "generally refers to"; i.e., the common accepted usage implies people who graduated from a school. It is silly to list someone who attended the school for a year or two, realized they did not like it there, and transferred at their own choosing to another school (where they did graduate from) and call them an alumnus. Wharton itself has never claimed Buffett as an alum...come on, someone else speak up, this is ridiculous!
      • Ok your comment is ridiculous. Regardless if he graduated or not, he still attennded Wharton as a matriculated student. Also why does it matter if Wharton claims him or not, thats Whartons issue. Look at Bill Gates, Gates never greduated from Harvard, yet he is still considered to be be at least associated with them. --Boothy443 | trácht ar 04:42, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • No, 12.22.82.7, your statement that it "generally refers to" graduates is inaccurate. To me it has always meant "attendance," but before I said anything, I took the trouble to double-check with a dictionary. Dpbsmith (talk) 11:01, 9 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]
      • You said: "Wharton itself has never claimed Buffett as an alum...come on, someone else speak up, this is ridiculous!" This is not true, Warren Buffett is listed in WAVE - Wharton Alumni Database. Although the story of Buffett attendance of the Wharton is not without controversy, he is a Wharton alum. Buffet's father, then a congressman from Nebraska, insisted that his son should attend Wharton School. Buffet went to Wharton undergrad for three years but then dropped out, moved back to Nebraska and got married. For years after this incident, his father barely talked to him.

"produces more research"[edit]

This statement has had a fact tag on it for a while. Recently an apparent reference was added:

According to U.S. News & World Report, Wharton produces more research than any other business school. [1]

However, the reference is not to U. S. News but to Wharton's own website, and while it confirms that Wharton has many research centers, it does not say that "Wharton produces more research than any other business school." So, I'm removing this statement until a verifiable citation can be provided. Dpbsmith (talk) 11:10, 22 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reverting by GO WHARTON (talk · contribs) and MBAguy (talk · contribs)[edit]

This has to stop. Please discuss your differences on the talk page instead of revert warring. Isopropyl 05:34, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please carefully review Talk:Ivy League business schools for a detailed account of what User:GO WHARTON is doing. Any suggestions or help would be appreciated. Thanks. MBAguy 05:37, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Propaganda from User:GO WHARTON on Ivy League business schools[edit]

User:GO WHARTON has been created (see: [2]) to create and promote content about the concept of Ivy League business schools. It appears likely that he is a sockpuppet of the otherwise well-behaved User:JDMBAHopeful, who contributed regularly (prior to the create of User:GO WHARTON, that is) to the Yale School of Management article. The question for the editors of THIS page is: should we keep his links which he littered throughout this article, or should they be condensed to the category link I left, or deleted altogether? Please let me know what you think. Thanks! MBAguy 08:09, 27 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Follow up - an administrator warned me on my talk page that it is inappropriate for me to speculate about other users. I thought User:GO WHARTON is a Dartmouth Amos Tuck School of Business Administration, Columbia Business School, Yale School of Management, or Cornell Johnson School student. I will try to not speculate about users in the future. Dc10 17:05, 12 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Brett Plant?[edit]

As far as I can tell, Brett Plant, and the Plant Organization don't actually exist. If anyone can substantiate either of these, please cite a source. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:41, 5 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Brett Plant is not listed in Wharton Alumni Directory.

List of Alumni[edit]

Hello, I happen to have this article on my watchlist because I "dab-ed" a link on it a while ago, so I have no primary interest here, but thought that I would throw out my 2-cents, in case someone who feels more ownership over this article wants some input. When I look at this article, the list of alumni really stands out, perhaps more so than you might want. The list of alumni appears to me to be about 4 times longer than the article itself. Many of the names are not linked; it seems like more than half of the links are "redlinks"; and several of the links point to either the wrong article or to disambiguation pages. Surely Wharton is more important for its own contributions than all these alumni are (in this context). Is this really how you want this article to look? I would suggest that you might want to do a large clean up of all of this, or if you feel that the list is important, split it into a new article called something like "List of Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania Alumni" and then link to it using the "main article" template. Respectfully --Brian G 17:25, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • The quoted source of [3] does not agree with the numbers (81000 vs 75000 for example) or with the list of names shown (example Deutsch, Mack, Rutstein) --Brian G (Talk) 23:59, 11 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • The list of "redlinks" may be lengthy but care should be taken in any clean-up, so as not to delete important names. Suggestions? Delasource 17:40, 24 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Merge from Wharton-SMU Research Center[edit]

An IP editor slapped a merge tag on the Wharton-SMU Research Center article last October, but didn't put one here or offer up any comments on why they should be merged. No opinion. Pairadox 22:36, 27 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I go to Wharton (2nd year MBA), and even went to Singapore on a Wharton trip. I've have never heard of the Wharton-SMU Research Center before this. They are very different things, and the topics should not be merged. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.211.147.31 (talk) 23:10, 13 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]


Rankings[edit]

Although the rankings look attractive in tabular form, are they really recent? Is the data really appropriate for an encyclopedic entry? The word "recent" can be taken in many different ways. In any case, how about presenting the rankings just as one would normally do with stocks? The latest three years of rankings, a running three-year average ranking and the change from last year's ranking. I think the analogy with stocks should ring true to most people who visit this institution's page.

I imagine people that actually do care to look at these rankings are interested (a) in attending the school or (b) seeing how their old school is doing. Those two reasons likely account for most of the eyeballs on the section! Potential applicants likely care about their future investment of time and money. I think that they will appreciate the proposed format. Are eight-year old rankings even important to anyone? Alumni may well want to see how their school stacked up the year that they graduated. So, too, might their potential employers. What I am proposing is not necessarily an either/or matter. Keep the table,... but let's discuss possible improvements.

For sure, I see self-interest being attached in so many different ways to these rankings. Are countries ranked? No. Are hamburger chains ranked? No. MBA programmes certainly make much of their rankings in their self-promotion efforts. These schools are self-interested, too. Wikipedia always links to an institution's page, doesn't it? Advertising belongs there. Is Wikipedia the place for promoting institutions? That's a clear "No".

The ranking info is normally all true, verifiable and may well have been uploaded with the best of intentions. All the same, lots of other editors with agendas want to manipulate Wikipedia pages. How objective is an editor who is full of school pride? How bitter & envious are the students from other closely-but-lower ranked schools? Doesn't this ring true, too? Present company is excepted, of course!!

So, let's talk about reorganising the rankings sections on MBA pages (Incidentally, I have added this post elsewhere, as well). Maybe the convention should be for schools to put all rankings on a separate rankings page, and then link to it. Perhaps, the rankings should have separate sections for comprehensive apples-vs-apples rankings versus the specialised, more-narrowly-focused ones. They are proliferating these days! Maybe this information should not even be on any Wikipedia page. Anyhow, it seems to me that future, current and former students all benefit as their school's fortunes rise and vice versa. Conflict of interest are three nasty words that I see all over these MBA pages of ours. Let's talk about improving what we have (or are we already at the peak?). Let's start a precedent. COYW 23:24, 2 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Vandalism[edit]

Today user 199.94.1.161 added a vandalic "amateur" to the first paragraph, with the edit summary "clarified nature of student body served". The first paragraph was then:

Since the 1990s, the popular press has repeatedly ranked Wharton as one of the top institutions for amateur business education in the world.

I removed "amateur", but since this user already has a warning for vandalism on his talk page let's watch closely. UltraEdit (talk) 03:49, 6 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the section on the "D-bag factor" by 128.143.224.67, which was for some reason taken down and then re-inserted by Milksfavoritecookie.Sccampion (talk) 23:22, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Alumni network[edit]

This list is way out of proportion to the rest of the article and most of the listings are redlinks. I can see no discussion on this talk page that indicates what criteria is being used to confer "notability." A separate article, List of Wharton School alumni, already exists. Ultimately, my question is Why is this massive, largely uncited, and redundant list here? Pairadox (talk) 01:15, 19 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's about time someone posed that question. The Tuck article on the main page right now only has one short paragraph for the alumni section. Only the most notable names should be listed here.-DMCer™ 08:41, 19 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I've just cleared it out and left a link to the list, per WP:SUMMARY. Let's see what happens. Pairadox (talk) 01:26, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Good call.—DMCer™ 02:20, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Trump at Wharton[edit]

Donald trump did not graduate with a degree in Real Estate he and daughter Ivanka gradutated from the Wharton School of Finance, Donald has made his Billion in Real Estate but his degree is in Finance. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.170.54.169 (talk) 21:48, 4 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]


Lack of analysis and balance[edit]

This reads like an advertising prospectus, with a list of graduates attached. It should give an informative and critical description of the history and current programmes of the school. There is a lot of work to be done here.

For example, is there any relevance to Wharton in Engwall's remark that for the many philanthropists who funded early business schools "their intention was primarily to raise the status of business men" rather than to raise the quality of management. Or what about Chris Grey's remark that it is not just coincidence that Frederick Taylor worked for Bethlehem Steel? Deipnosophista (talk) 20:19, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Information about the Wharton Leadership Conference[edit]

It would be good to have some information about the leadership conference, which is apparently of high quality and includes speakers such as Jim Collins, Helen Greiner, Mike Useem, David Breashears and Roberto Canessa. Natebailey (talk) 08:57, 8 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cleanup needed[edit]

Claims are made in the article with citations to the Wharton website, but those facts do not appear on the referenced pages. This article needs to be cleaned up and the prose toned down. This is an encyclopedia, not a recruiting piece. Racepacket (talk) 12:35, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

So fix it. Esrever (klaT) 13:59, 5 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wharton_School/Archive_1&oldid=1150493120"