Perennially ranked among the top business schools in the world, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania appears to be best known for its reputation in finance—as its original name, the Wharton School of Finance and Commerce, would indicate. Nevertheless, the school seems to pride itself on its breadth and depth of expertise in a multitude of business areas.
For instance, consider these facts about Wharton’s highly regarded marketing program:
- Wharton has “the largest, most cited, and most published marketing department in the world,” according to the marketing department’s Web site.
- The school’s marketing department was ranked #2 in the 2012 U.S. News & World Report MBA rankings by specialty.
- A Wharton marketing professor developed conjoint analysis, a tool that has helped shape 20th century marketing practices.
- The Marketing Club’s annual conference brings together approximately 300 students, faculty members, alumni and leading marketing experts each year to explore various themes central to the industry. In 2011, the conference—whose theme was “The Evolution of Marketing: New Decade, New Advances”—featured keynote speeches by the chief operating officer of Colgate-Palmolive and the vice president of strategic industries marketing at SAP, a leading applications software company.
Indeed, to dismiss Wharton as simply a finance school would be a mistake.