Interview with Kara Keenan Sweeney, Director of Admissions, Marketing, and Financial Aid at the Lauder Institute [Show Summary]

Kara Keenan Sweeney, Director of Admissions, Marketing, and Financial Aid at the Lauder Institute, takes us through the Lauder program: what is it, who it is a good fit for and who it’s not, and how to get in.

Learn what makes Wharton Lauder unique, and how applicants can distinguish themselves in their applications [Show Notes]

It gives me great pleasure to introduce Kara Keenan Sweeney, Director of Admissions, Marketing and Financial Aid at the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Penn Law School. Kara has an extensive background in graduate admissions, starting with her masters in higher ed administration at Columbia. And moving on to admissions positions at INSEAD, U Penn, Penn State, and now at The Lauder Institute.

Can you give an overview of the Wharton Lauder Program? There may be some listeners who aren’t that familiar with the program. [1:56]

Our students earn a Master of Arts in International Studies at the same time they do the Wharton MBA program. It is a two-year, joint, integrated program, and all of the classes are taken at the Lauder Institute. The Institute was founded in 1985 by the family of Estee Lauder, and they have been very involved in the planning and execution of the program. We have six programs of concentration. Five of the concentrations are focused on a region of the world – they are East/Southeast Asia, Latin America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. We also have a global track for those who already have significant international experience and are looking for a more macro take on global issues. There is no language requirement while in the program because they have to have those skills before being admitted. Students do both programs simultaneously, and we frontload a little bit with students starting in May. There are 70 students in each class, and they take a month of classes in Philadelphia and then do an eight-week summer immersion, so they have three months of class under their belts before the MBA program starts.

Wharton Lauder has a new director Dr. Martine Haas. I realize that she just started in July, but any idea of the direction that she’d like to take the program? [5:32]

She brings a lot of energy, and it’s great to have someone new as well as the first woman lead the institute. She is from South Africa, studied in the U.K., and has been teaching at Wharton for the last several years so she already knows a lot about our program. She continues to learn more about our program through our students, alumni, and board, and is very happy to help shape the vision for the next five years.

What else is new at Wharton Lauder since we last spoke two years ago? [6:22]

We changed the curriculum a few years ago from strict language-focused classes to a concentration focus. Those changes have been going very well with the new regional focus. We’ve added Korean as a language to our Asian track, and we also restarted our Anglophone Africa program this year. We’ve hired three new faculty members, one of whom oversees the Africa program right now. Another covers the Global Knowledge Lab. We also in the last month had a new fellow join the program, Professor Mohamed El-Erian, professor of practice at Wharton and Lauder, and it’s an amazing experience for the students to work with hi...