Wharts and All [Edit 1]

Harvard's got Year One. Stanford's got Snapshots from Hell. What's Wharton got? I'm almost of a mind to attend the school just so that I can publish my own observations on life at Wharton. I'd call it Wharts and All. As the title implies I'd need to do my best to create an objective, balanced record of life before, during and immediately after Wharton.

Boosterism threatens to confound my authorly ambitions, though. The moment a person is accepted to a school his own interests are suddenly realigned in a way that supresses his desire to write anything that might tarnish the institution. Few students or graduates dare write anything that might draw heat or controversy because they want to perpetuate the brand glow that separates these schools from the rest. Meanwhile, graduates of less elite programs hope that if they only squeeze their eyes shut and wish hard enough and never say a mean thing (ever) then they'll be rewarded with the fame and fortune that accompany a rise in the business school rankings.

Thankfulness also conspires against honesty: I already feel incredible personal allegience to Alex Brown simply because he is the face of the admissions committee that chose to baptise the next chapter of my life with an admittance from the big W. I feel obliged to return the favor. I found myself wondering whether I should add my own voice to the ranks of student diarists, thinking that I could help Alex market the school to applicants. I'm not alone in these feelings judging from the tenor of posts that gush about all things positive at Wharton but remain mum on anything that's truly critical. This form of bias also applies to bloggers at other schools. Stanford's lone truthful blogger shut her blog down just a month into the start of the program when a negative post about a classmate's cheating got her into hot water with others at the school. And Mark reads like a Harvard infomercial at times.

The result is that there are very few honest opinions being published from the inside of any of these schools. Wharton comes the closest to actually giving the outside world a real feel for what it's like on the inside (much to Wharton's credit!). Even though the Wharton bloggers who have their mundane day-in-the-life vignettes touted all over the Wharton website are volunteers, they're publishing (and are publicised) on the Wharton admissions site. Surely this comes with either implicit or explicit understanding of what's appropriate and what isn't? (I don't know if they are given guidelines or not.) How likely is it that one of them will level a serious criticism at the school when their supervisor and sponsor in these blogging endeavors is on the school staff? Not likely.

Where are the William F. Buckleys of the MBA programs? Where are the cantankerous rabblerousers who circulate flyers on campus, pen letters of protest, and chain their naked bodies to bicycle racks in order to protest cruelty against something or another? They're all too scared!

They're scared for naught. No single voice is going to change perceived reputation of the Stanford, Wharton or Harvard brands. Most MBA types have an inflated sense of the impact of their own opinions. Did Stanford beef up the quality of its instruction in response to Peter Robinson's complaints? Doubtful. Did Stanford take a dive in the rankings as a result of the book? No. Is the book even that relevant to Stanford today? Doubtful.

And so I really doubt that this piddly little blog and the eventual mega book deal--we're talking four figures easy--that comes with being a faithful and interesting blogger will do much to alter anyone's opinion of Wharton. Confident in my own insignificance, I hereby pledge to to squelch bland boosterism and tell it like it really is.

Check back with me in a year and tell me if I've kept this promise or if I've wussed out.

PS: My, how time flew today! The length of this post is inversely proportional to the amount of work I accomplished today. Luckily, I've trained my secretary to do about 90% of my job.

PPS: For the record, I don't really think there's all that much difference in quality between any of the top business programs. (There are major differences in focus, in student culture, in student and faculty attitude, however.) I mentioned Harvard, Stanford and Wharton here because these schools have managed their brands and massaged their places in the rankings game particularly well. They're top by fiat.

Edit 2: I had incorrectly stated that Wharton's student diarists are selected by the school's staff. This has been corrected.