Wharton MBA Class Of 2025: Apps Fall Again, But Penn Reaches Parity For A 3rd Straight Year
The first major business school’s MBA Class of 2025 profile has been published, and it’s chock full of interesting data — starting with what it tells us about the popularity of full-time MBA programs.
For a second straight year, applications to the full-time MBA program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School are down, dropping 2%, or 125 apps, from the previous cycle. Wharton’s 2022-2023 application total of 6,194 is down 15.6% or 1,144 apps in two years, a precipitous decline from a school record of 7,338 for the class that enrolled in fall 2021.
Cause for concern? Certainly. A harbinger of the state of the graduate business education landscape? That remains to be seen.
Wharton prefers to focus on the positive — and there’s plenty of positives in the MBA Class of 2025 profile released by the school today (August 7). Foremost on that list: Wharton’s MBA program has once again achieved gender parity, becoming the first top U.S. business school to maintain 50% or more women for three consecutive years.
WHARTON MBA CLASSES BY THE NUMBERS: 2015-2025
MBA Class | Average GMAT | GMAT Range | Applications | Enrolled | Women | International |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
2025 | 728 | NA | 6,194 | 874 | 50% | 31% |
2024 | 733 | 530-790 | 6,319 | 877 | 50% | 35% |
2023 | 733 | NA | 7,338 | 897 | 52% | 36% |
2022 | 722 | NA | 7,158 | 916 | 41% | 19% |
2021 | 732 | 540-790 | 5,905 | 856 | 46% | 30% |
2020 | 732 | 500-790 | 6,245 | 862 | 43% | 34% |
2019 | 730 | 530-790 | 6,692 | 863 | 44% | 33% |
2018 | 731 | 570-780 | 6,679 | 851 | 44% | 32% |
2017 | 732 | 620-790 | 6,590 | 861 | 43% | 32% |
2016 | 728 | 620-780 | 6,111 | 859 | 40% | 31% |
2015 | 725 | 630-790 | 6,036 | 837 | 42% | 35% |
BLACK STUDENT NUMBERS UP, ASIANS & WHITES DOWN
“As we do every year, we made a conscious effort to ensure female applicants felt wanted and welcomed at Wharton, and showed them the many resources and communities in our program where they can connect, collaborate and feel supported,” Maryellen Reilly, deputy vice dean of the Wharton MBA program, said in 2021. “Diversity, equity and inclusion are central to our efforts, and while we are extremely proud to welcome this record number of women to our MBA community this year, we do hope that equitable gender representation soon becomes the norm among business schools, rather than the exception.”
In terms of class diversity, Wharton happily highlights two other fast stats: At 11% of the new class, LGBTQ+ representation reached an all-time high, up from 8% in 2022 and 7% in 2021. First-generation students also comprise 11% of the new MBA class, equaling last year’s cohort.
The Wharton MBA got more racially diverse this year, as well, with Black students comprising 9% of the Class of 2025, up from 7%, and Hispanic students comprising 7%, up from 5%. (See table below.) White and Asian students each dropped by 2 percentage points, the former to 27% and the latter to 21%.
WHARTON MBA CLASS U.S. RACE & ETHNICITY: FEDERAL GUIDELINES REPORTING
Race | Class of 2025 | Class of 2024 | Class of 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|
White | 27% | 29% | 28% |
Asian | 21% | 23% | 20% |
Black | 9% | 7% | 8% |
Hispanic | 7% | 5% | 7% |
Did Not Report | <1% | <1% | <1% |
SOME NOT-SO-GOOD NEWS: INTERNATIONALS & GMAT SCORES DROP
Wharton’s MBA program took a big hit in another diversity metric: International student numbers are down significantly, shrinking by 4 percentage points to 31% of the class, while the number of countries represented dropped to 70 from 77 in fall 2022. Eighty percent of the class attended U.S. undergraduate programs, while 20% went to non-U.S. schools. Countries represented in the program are down by 13 since 2021, when the Class of 2023 that graduated this spring was 36% international.
Meanwhile, another notable number is the new class’s Graduate Management Admission Test average, which dropped 5 points in one year, from the school-record 733 Wharton had reported in both 2021 and 2022 to 728 this fall. Wharton admits’ performance on the other main admission test, the Graduate Record Exam, remained the same as the previous two years: 162 on both the Verbal and Quant portions of the test; and the school reported the identical undergraduate GPA as well, 3.6.
57 STUDENTS JOINED THROUGH WHARTON’S DEFERRED ADMISSION PROGRAM
There continue to be lots of ways to join the Wharton MBA program. In the school’s 2025 class, 16 students are part of the dual-degree Carey JD/MBA Program, 70 are in the Lauder MBA/MA Joint Degree in International Studies, and 73 are in the MBA in Health Care Management. Fifty-seven of this year’s students came to the program from Wharton’s Moelis Advance Access Program, which offers both undergraduate and full-time master’s students in their final year of study a pathway to the Wharton MBA after pursuing two to four years of quality work experience.
Speaking of work experience, the average of the Wharton MBA Class of 2025 is once again 5 years, same as last year and the year before. More than a quarter of the class (27%, same as last year) hails from the consulting industry, while 14% come from private equity/venture capital, 12% from tech (same as last year), 10% from nonprofit (down from 11%), 9% from investment banking (up from 8% but still down from 14% in 2021), 7% from finance, and 5% from health care.
Twenty-seven percent of the new class majored in business in undergrad, down from 32% last year but even with the 27% in 2021; 40% majored in the humanities (up from 34% and 39% in 2021), and 33% majored in STEM (down from 34% and even with 2021).
See Wharton’s new MBA class profile here.
DON’T MISS LAST YEAR’S STORY ON WHARTON’S MBA CLASS OF 2024 and MEET THE WHARTON MBA CLASS OF 2024
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