About

The Wharton Moneyball Academy is a three-week residential program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania for rising high school juniors and seniors who want to study sports analytics at a serious quantitative level. Sponsored by the Wharton Sports Analytics and Business Initiative (WSABI) and taught by Professor Adi Wyner — a tenured Wharton statistics professor and chair of Penn's undergraduate Statistics and Data Science program — the Academy goes substantially beyond what students encounter in AP Statistics, applying advanced statistical reasoning, probability theory, regression analysis, and statistical programming to real sports data and decisions.

The curriculum covers graphical and numerical data summaries, basic probability, correlation and regression, statistical reasoning, and an introduction to R, the statistical programming language used by professional sports analytics teams. Guest speakers from across the sports analytics industry are a signature feature of the program and regularly draw professionals from major leagues and analytics organizations. Students complete a final sports analysis project, and standout work may be featured in the Wharton Sports Analytics Journal. Teaching assistants are Penn undergraduate and graduate students who hold office hours and facilitate small-group work throughout the three weeks.

Admission is selective — approximately 75 students are chosen — and need-blind. The application requires a transcript, two essays, two letters of recommendation (the first must come from a mathematics or computer science teacher), and a $100 application fee with waivers available. International students are welcome. Students with less statistical background can consider the one-week Moneyball Training Camp or the four-week online Moneyball FLEX as entry points, both of which serve as explicit feeders into the full Academy.

For a high schooler who loves sports and wants to understand how data actually drives decisions in professional athletics — roster construction, in-game strategy, player evaluation, injury prediction — the Moneyball Academy is one of the only programs in the country that teaches that intersection at genuine depth, taught by a faculty member who is actually doing the research.