Brett Anderson, WG'07
“I ended up taking seven or eight classes this past semester because I wanted to add electives in international development. I took one class that was absolutely fantastic, which took strict economic models and applied them to international development. That's another example of how I've been able to take traditional consulting and transform it to fit what I need to get out of it.”
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With the most electives of any business school, Wharton offers you the flexibility to customize your own areas of study. You can choose from nearly 200 courses across 11 academic departments, plus many more courses offered through Penn's 11 other world-leading schools.
You take at least 9 electives, five of which form a major. Students who have waived core courses replace them with electives to fulfill the MBA requirement of 19 to 21 course units taken over four semesters. MBA students choose elective courses through an innovative auction system, in which each student is given an initial endowment of points to bid for seats in our wide database of courses.
To see all electives, visit the Curriculum Resource Guide.
When choosing electives, many MBA students take advantage of the vast resources at the 11 world-leading schools at the University of Pennsylvania. For example, the Fels Center of Government, Graduate School of Education, School of Social Policy & Practice, School of Medicine, and Law School all offer courses that can be easily integrated with MBA majors, supplementing such interests as biotechnology, intellectual property, nonprofit management, and public governance. In addition, the Penn Language Center offers one of the country's largest selections of language study – more than three dozen languages from American Sign Language to Zulu. Students may take up to four courses from the other 10 schools at the University of Pennsylvania.