Push and pull of the MBA bull run

It is about the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Wharton offers the best undergraduate business program in the United States, considered equivalent to an MBA.

Founded in 1881, Wharton has pioneered innovative business curricula and launched the business careers of thousands of Wall Street and Fortune 500 tycoons.

The School takes 500 of the world’s brightest students willing to stake a whopping $120,000 investment in their education for the next four years. We are taken through the ivied walls of Wharton into the maelstrom of the Class of 2004 recruiting season as experienced by the hearts and minds of seven seniors coming from multiple backgrounds.

It is a gripping account of their story, their aspirations, the challenges they encounter, their capacity to cope with unexpected obstacles and its collective result.

They include Jon Gantman, a ‘legacy’ student whose parents studied at Penn. About ten percent of every Penn class is usually reserved for ‘legacy’ students, Shimika Wilder, an athletic African American, who was brought up in Maryland comes next, Shreevar Kheruka, brought up in Mumbai, and Anthony Sandrik, (originally from Lebanon), brought up in Manhattan, who wanted to ‘pursue a life where borderlines rarely exist.’

Finally, Grace Yoon from Los Angeles, who soon learnt the perils of “out of the box” thinking and the nitty-gritty of interviewing.

In contrast, Regi Vengalil, is a first generation Indian American, who wanted to become the ‘master of the universe’, a common MBA dream! And Jessica Kennedy from Austin, Texas, who was born with both drive and discipline.

Wharton is a four-year marathon. It culminates in a final sprint that takes the form of a ten-week recruitment period that turns out to be more demanding than anything these tender youth have ever experienced in their lives. They work against the odds, doing with very little sleep, working long exhausting hours and yet they manage to keep their wits about them!

Burnout!

If they make it, the opportunity that awaits them lies in joining the ranks of the global financial and corporate elite! The allure of the dream is as heady as it is seductive. It means power, wealth, fame, recognition and a chance to shape history. It is an irony that stiff competition for high pay packets usually results in the recipients burning themselves out in the first five years!

This is a challenging area of research and worthy of serious attention.

Do these young graduates eventually shape up? Was it worth the effort, money, energy, time, lack of sleep and coping with the competition?

“Having met many of Wharton’s future business leaders of America”, writes the author, “I can say that Wall Street in the twenty-first century is in good hands.”

This is too pat, too neat and a little hard to digest! There will be many who will disagree at the record of corporate America.

I was strongly reminded of Swami Yogananda Paramahamsa: “Happiness does not consist in getting what you want when you want it! It consists in getting what you need when you need it!” Yet, there is no gainsaying that the book invites public discussion on how contemporary global values shape our youth in defining not only their own aspirations, but also equally, the ambitions of their respective nations in a deeply divided world.