Electives
With the most electives of any business school, Wharton’s unmatched scope offers you the flexibility to customize your own areas of study. Drill deep within a specialty, or pursue a wider sweep – whatever your individual goals require. You can choose from nearly 200 courses across 10 academic departments, plus many more courses offered through Penn's other 11 other world-leading schools.
You take at least nine electives, five of which form a major. Students who have waived core courses replace them with electives to fulfill the MBA requirements. Beginning in 2012, you will have additional flexibility to take some core courses in the Second Year, enabling you to choose electives even within your First Year.
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.
Nearly 200 Electives
Wharton offers the largest set of electives of any business school. Student choices will provide "market signals" for future course offerings, and students can actively work with the faculty and administration to develop new courses that respond to developing needs. For customized interests, students often partner with faculty and businesses on individual advanced study projects in their majors.
Examples of Wharton Electives
- Advanced Corporate Finance
- Advanced Real Estate Investment and Analysis
- Competitive Strategy
- Consumer Behavior
- Entrepreneurship and Venture Initiation
- Fixed Income Securities
- Health Care Field Application Project
- Information: Industry Structure and Competitive Strategy
- Innovation, Change, & Entrepreneurship
- International Development Strategy
- Negotiation and Dispute Resolution
- The Political Economy of the Public Sector
- Political Environment of the Multinational Firm
- Private Equity in Emerging Markets
- Privatization: International Perspective
- Probability Modeling in Marketing
- Seminar in Leadership: Power, Influence, and Transformational Leadership
- Speculative Markets
- Urban Fiscal Policy
- Urban Real Estate Economics
- Venture Capital and Private Equity Finance
- University Resources
One of Wharton and Penn's main strengths is integrating knowledge across traditional academic disciplines. 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 11 schools at the University of Pennsylvania.
