The Wharton MBA Team-Based Discussion (TBD) Prompt 2026-2027, Explained

Wharton's admissions committee (AdCom) uses the Team-Based Discussion (TBD) as a live demonstration of how you work in a group, listen, contribute, and solve problems, much as you would in a Wharton classroom or Learning Team.

The Official Wharton Team-Based Discussion (TBD) Prompt (2026-27)

The 2026-27 Wharton TBD prompt is centered around a school-wide Wharton trek. 

Treks are a popular part of the Wharton MBA experience outside the classroom. They combine company visits and alumni events with time exploring a city alongside classmates. They give students a shared experience and connect them with employers who have relationships with the school. Most treks are organized by student clubs around a shared industry or regional interest.

This year, Wharton’s MBA Career Management team, in partnership with Wharton Alumni Relations, will pilot something different: a school-wide trek open to MBA students across all career interests. The destination will be a city with a growing economy across multiple industries, where the alumni community provides Wharton with a foundation for new recruiting partnerships. The trek has three goals:

• Give students with a wide range of career goals a valuable shared experience

• Build new employer relationships in a city where Wharton is expanding its reach

• Respond to regional alumni clubs that have asked for more engagement with current students

  
  

For the purposes of this discussion, you and a few classmates have been asked to select a city that meets these criteria and design the trek, which will take place over spring break. Wharton will handle travel logistics and costs, which are outside your team's scope. Assume a group of about 40 students and 4 days in the city.

As a team, decide on the following:

1. The destination for your trek, and why it is the right place for students with a wide range of career goals

2. A recommendation for company visits and/or meetings with business leaders, including how the mix of organizations will serve students across industries and open new recruiting relationships for Wharton

3. An alumni event or experience that gives the city's alumni club meaningful engagement with current students and builds lasting ties between Wharton and the city's business community

4. How you will measure the trek's success, and what follow-up will turn contacts made on the trip into relationships worth building on next year

   
   

What is a Wharton MBA trek?

A trek is a short, organized trip in which students visit employers and meet alumni in a city they might want to work in. At Wharton, student clubs normally run them. The prompt asks you to design something the school has not done before – a trek for the whole MBA class rather than one industry group.

How treks work: 

• Student clubs typically run them. Wharton's extracurricular listings mention treks from the Travel and Hospitality Club, the Private Equity and Venture Capital Club, the India Club and the Africa Student Association, among others.

• They are compact and company-heavy. The Media & Entertainment Club runs two a year, a fall trip to New York and a spring trip to Los Angeles. A recent Los Angeles agenda ran three days and covered ten companies, with Q&A sessions and an evening alumni happy hour.

• Alumni are woven in. The Wharton Tech Club's flagship trek is a three-day fall trip to the Bay Area, with a one-day spring trip to New York. Alumni join small dinners and happy hours alongside the company visits.

• Some trips start from a student's home region. Wharton's own admissions advice describes winter-break treks led by international students to their home countries.

• They can lead to jobs, but indirectly. One student's account in the Wharton M&E story links a trek conversation to a referral, then an internship and even a return offer. On the flip side, a trek signals serious interest to employers, and it helps Wharton build ties with companies that recruit lightly on campus.

  
  

What to Focus on in the Wharton 2026-27 TBD

AdCom will be listening for these 3 parts of the prompt:

1. "A wide range of career goals." A city that suits finance alone will not work.

2. "A city where Wharton is expanding its reach." This points away from places where Wharton's presence is already deep, and towards places where the alumni exist but the school's employer relationships are thin.

3. "Regional alumni clubs that have asked for more engagement." 

   
   

The prompt lists four things to decide, and your final presentation should cover each one. Treat that list as your agenda for the discussion.

1. The Destination

This is the decision that takes the most discussion time. What matters:

• Breadth: Does the city have real depth in finance, consulting and technology, plus at least a few other sectors such as healthcare, energy, real estate, consumer goods or public sector?

• Growth: Is the local economy expanding, so that employers are likely to hire, and are there reasons to believe more will arrive?

• Room for Wharton to grow: Is there an alumni base, but a thin pipeline of Wharton hiring? Wharton's Class of 2025 employment data shows the pattern: about 54% of graduates took jobs in the Northeast, around 19% in the West, and only about 4% each in the Southwest and Midwest, with roughly 94% staying in the US. 

• Fit with the brief: Four days, about 40 students, and travel handled by Wharton. 

  
  

Candidates from financial services make up about 38% of graduates, consulting about 28% and technology about 15%, with healthcare in the low single digits. Those three industries are likely to be the largest share of your 40 students, so a convincing city has to serve them, while also offering something for the rest of the class.

Prepare data points like these before your TBD, and be ready to say where they come from.

2. Company visits and meetings with business leaders

The prompt asks for a mix that both works for students across industries and opens new recruiting relationships. 

• Pick organizations in three groups: large anchors that everyone will find useful, mid-sized and fast-growing companies that may not recruit at Wharton yet, and one or two non-traditional choices (a public body, a nonprofit, a founder-led company).

• Name real organizations. A named company or institution is more persuasive than a sector label, and it signals research. Only name companies you are reasonably confident have a presence in your chosen city.

• Explain how 40 students move around. Shared sessions for the whole group, plus elective breakouts by interest, let you serve different career goals without fragmenting the trip.

• Mention why each visit helps Wharton. Which of them is a plausible new recruiting partner, and what would it take to convert them?

  
  

3. The alumni event

The prompt says regional alumni clubs have asked for more engagement with current students. So design the event around what the alumni get, as well as what students get.

• Involve the local Wharton club in planning. Ask what format its members would value.

• Choose a format that produces conversation, not just attendance. Seating by industry interest, small-group dinners and short alumni talks are all more useful than a large reception.

• Think about who else to invite. Leaders from the companies you visited can become a bridge between the alumni community and the city's employers.

• Consider recent graduates as well as senior alumni. They remember the transition and can speak to it honestly.

  
  

4. Measuring success and Following up

This is the part teams most often leave until the last minute. In our mock TBDs (Watch the recordings in the Vault) it was the part groups were most likely to forget. You have two tasks here: measure the trek, and follow up with the contacts, so remember to cover both.

• During and right after: a short satisfaction survey and a few specific questions, such as whether students met the people and industries they hoped to.

• Within a few months: new employer contacts with a named point of contact, new roles posted on Wharton's job board, and repeat attendance at alumni events.

• Over a year or longer: internships and full-time hires that trace back to trek contacts, and whether companies come to campus.

• Follow-up actions: thank-you notes within days, invitations to campus events, coffee chats, and a plan for who owns each relationship next year.

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What a Sample Trek Looks Like

This is one way to organize the trip. Your team may do it differently!

Day	Focus	How it helps
1	Arrival, city briefing, welcome session with a local leader or alum	Sets context for students who have never been
2	Anchor company visit for the whole group, then industry breakouts	Shared experience plus choice
3	Second round of visits, then the alumni evening	Keeps the strongest alumni touchpoint after students know the city
4	Reflection, follow-up planning, time to explore	Turns contacts into next steps and gives a natural close

The Wharton TBD format

Every TBD is held online with 5-6 applicants, randomly grouped. You will receive the prompt with your interview invitation, so you can prepare your pitch and research in advance. The session lasts 35 minutes.

Stage	Time	What happens
Pitch	1 minute each	Each person proposes an answer to the prompt
Discussion	25 minutes	The group debates, merges ideas and agrees on one plan
Presentation	5 minutes	The group presents its plan together
One-on-one interview	10 minutes	A short conversation with a Wharton representative

Plan on your group managing the clock by itself. An observer is present but silent during the discussion.

The AdCom is watching how you work with others. They want to see that you:

• listen and build on other people's points;

• bring quieter members into the conversation;

• disagree politely and accept the group's decision;

• help the team reach a decision on time, without taking over

  
  

Tips from our 2026-27 mock TBDs

This season we ran mock TBDs on the real prompt, each with six participants, a silent observer and detailed coaching feedback afterwards. These are the patterns that came up in both sessions.

The pitches covered a wide spread of destinations, including several US cities and a handful abroad. Both groups ended up choosing a large, fast-growing US city. 

Stage 1: The One-minute pitch

Log in about ten minutes early and keep the chat light. Save the prompt for when the session starts. Your pitch has to be short, so give it a simple shape that covers all four decisions in turn:

1. The city, with the country and state named in full, and the single strongest reason it fits.

2. A mix of named organizations across at least three industries.

3. One alumni event idea.

4. One way to measure success, and one follow-up action.

   
   

At a steady pace, a minute is roughly 120-140 words, so write less than you think you need. Most of our mock participants finished between about 50 and 60 seconds, which is the right range. A few extra seconds will not hurt (but be wary of running over).

Make it memorable. A short label for your idea, a named alum you have spoken to, a relevant professor, or one striking statistic all helped participants stand out. Practise out loud until you can say it without reading.

Stage 2: The 25-minute discussion

When the pitches finish, groups usually merge the closest ideas or pick one city and borrow the best parts of the others. If your idea is chosen, share your research. But remember that being chosen does not make you the “leader”. 

• Agree on how you will decide, and ask whether anyone objects before you move on.

• Offer a view early. In our mocks, people who took a clear position helped the group reach a decision sooner.

• Keep your prompt checklist and raise anything missing.

• Bring in quieter teammates by name, using something they said earlier.

• Disagree politely, and drop your idea gracefully if the group goes another way.

• Look composed on camera: plain background, smart casual clothing (a shirt, no tie), a steady connection, and a friendly expression.

  
  

Stage 3: The five-minute presentation

With 6 people and five minutes, expect about 45-50 seconds each. The usual approach is to give each person one decision. For this prompt, a sensible split is:

Speaker	Covers
1	The destination and why it fits the trek's three goals
2	Company visits and how the mix serves different career interests
3	The four-day schedule and activities
4	The alumni event
5	How success will be measured
6	Follow-up, and a short close

With five people, merge the schedule into the company visits. Some rules from our mock sessions:

• Hand over by name and topic, for example "I'll pass to XY to cover the alumni evening." Write down who follows you before the presentation starts.

• Let the last speaker flex. In one session, the final two speakers deliberately stretched or shortened their sections to make the total fit. This is good practice.

• Include everyone. If someone has no section, offer them a closing line.

• Stay close to your notes and keep to your share of the time.

  
  

Stage 4: The one-on-one interview

In the real TBD you will meet an alum or an admissions officer in a breakout room for about ten minutes. In our mocks, each participant answered one question aloud so the whole group could learn from it. These are questions that real candidates have reported being asked:

• Introduce yourself in 30 seconds.

• What did you contribute to today's discussion?

• How do you think the TBD went, and what would your team do differently?

• Do you have any updates on your application since you submitted it?

• Tell me about a time you had to make a difficult decision.

• Tell me about feedback that helped you grow, and what you did with it.

• Tell me about a time you made an impact on a small budget.

• Why do you need an MBA?

• Why Wharton?

  
  

For behavioural questions, give a clear story in the SCAR format: the situation, the challenge, what you did, the result, and a short reflection. 

For "Why Wharton", name specific classes, programmes, professors, clubs or treks, and connect each one to your goals. A strong answer ties a career goal to a named course, a hands-on programme and one thing you’d contribute back. 

You will also be invited to ask a question, so prepare one; our guide to 28 questions to ask your MBA interviewer is a good place to start.

Common Wharton TBD slips to avoid

With 6 people on a call, speaking over each other is normal and nothing to worry about. Our rule of thumb: if two people start at once, the one building directly on the last point goes first, and the one changing direction steps back with "no, you go." Aim to sit in the middle for speaking time. The strongest pattern we saw was bringing a quiet teammate in by name, for example "I think you mentioned this in your pitch, what do you think?". It earns credit.

In our TBDs, the group disagreed politely at least once. In the real TBD, disagreement is unusual, but welcome when it is handled well. If you push back on someone’s opinion, make sure you don’t cause friction and don’t bulldoze your point through. 

The most common pitfalls we saw:

• Reading your pitch. Some participants sounded scripted, and some kept glancing away at notes. Speak naturally and look at the camera.

• Speaking too fast. One participant had strong ideas but rushed. Slow down.

• Unclear locations. Say the city, state and country in full. A listener may not know the place, and a patchy connection can cut out half a sentence.

• Missing handovers in the presentation. In one session, only one speaker ended by naming the next speaker and topic. Write down who follows you and what they cover.

  
  

Overall, both groups did well. Most participants would likely have received an offer on the strength of their TBD, and nobody hurt their chances. And as always, remember that the TBD is only one part of the whole Wharton application. Good luck! 

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