<p>I'm in a similar situation as the OP (picking between Dartmouth and Penn.) I'm from an upper-middle class black family in San Francisco, so I'm used to hanging around white people very often...BUT, I've been cut off from my family and am kind of on my own now, so I have very little disposable income to waste on skiing, shopping, etc. Would I feel comfortable at Dartmouth or should I just go to Penn? (I want to go pre-med/Econ BTW)</p>
<p>ok, to be honest, the one bad thing about Penn is that the on-campus food tastes like horse ****. other than that its great</p>
<p>and mengcheng, dont forget about not telling Heinrich Himmler. he might try to kill heydrich... again</p>
<p>Dionysus--I think you should visit the campus before making or agreeing to any sort of comment about it. </p>
<p>The high rises (the ugly bldgs that were designed in the 60s)are really nice now. They have a common every two floors. The highrises are mainly upperclassmen where there is no need to have too many common spaces as they already have their group of friends, etc.
The freshmen housing has an abundance of common rooms. Hill has like 35+ common rooms and they also have common kitchens.
Most of the highrises are apartment style living so they have kitchens in the units.
Crime packed west-philly? Please! Penn is a good few blocks from the garbage of west philly. There is very good security around that area. I have seen quit a few policemen patroling the area.
I thought the campus was quite pretty. I think saying it is ugly is a matter of opinion. </p>
<p>For those who didn't know, Penn was the founder of the liberal arts education. It is also the first UNIVERSITY. Harvard is the first college. Penn has improved significantly in the past few whereas Dartmouth and Columbia have went down . Venkat posted the statistics on that. </p>
<p>I think the only think bad about Penn is its name. We don't have a cool sounding name like Harvard or Princeton. Our's is plain University of Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>And I believe JohnnyK posted that stuff a good few years ago when the renovation wasn't finish. The renovation isn't finished yet. They are still doing some renovating over the summer.</p>
<p>Columbia has gone down? </p>
<p>Columbia University Faculty have won many Nobel prizes in the last 10 years, e. g. Horst Stormer (Physics) Richard Axel (Medicine), Edmund Phelps (Economics), Joseph Stiglitz (economics-although he just came to Columbia), Orhan Pamuk (literature-new Faculty addition in SIPA), Eric Kandel (Medicine), William Vickrey (Economics-awarded 1996 now deceased), RObert Merton (SEAS grade-Economics 1997/I know this is not fair, but it's a recent one), RObert Mundell (Economics-1999), Richard Hamilton (foundation for Poincare Proof-over 40, but would have received Fields Medal otherwise with Pearlman), wow....Columbia University is def slipping...lol. What is wrong with playing of the fact that Columbia is located in NYC (the greatest city by an objective measure in the US and maybe, just maybe the world)? Part of the college experience is gaining real-world (read internship) knowledge while in college to apply to various fields. While it is true any IVY will allow one to be competitive for a Wall-Street position, most other industries require work experience prior to the entry level job, e.g. Journalism, TV, Marketing, Fashion, etc. Perhaps all students want to go to Wall Street? Also, the Columbia area has improved (due to gentrification) by leaps and bounds. The endowment investment returns have finally started growing competitive to Columbia's peer schools, e.g. 18% last year. Renovations to labs and facilities throughout campus etc...</p>
<p>^I feel like I have seen the exact statement before. Are you just posting the same thing over and over whenever you see the phrase "Columbia slipping."
Also, USNWR would agree that Penn >> Columbia and Dartmouth, but you'd be an idiot to go to a college based on USNWR.</p>
<p>alston - you could go to either school but I think you'd feel more "at home" in Philly. Not just because of skin color but because the whole urban environment will be more familiar than Nowhere, NH.</p>
<p>Those old threads creep me out - they mention Jews, Jappy, etc. a little too often. Move to Germany if you want a school that is Judenrein. The ethnic comp. at Penn is very similar to what you will be around for the rest of your life if you end up in a big city law firm, hospital, university, i-bank, etc. so get used to it.</p>
<p>oops</p>
<p>.</p>
<p>sristi, I never professed to agree with any comments made above. With that said, all of the posters who made the posts are patrons of the university, and I would wager to guess that every one of them is more acquainted with the social atmosphere of Penn than you. While it is understandable that a prospective student may feel the obligation to defend Penn, it is nevertheless wrong for you to mislead others into believing what may very well be a fool's paradise.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The ethnic comp. at Penn is very similar to what you will be around for the rest of your life if you end up in a big city law firm, hospital, university, i-bank, etc. so get used to it.
[/quote]
Perhaps, but what about those who do not plan to pursue those careers? I thought the mission of penn's diversity policy was to represent the types of people that a student would be facing in the real world, and not to model the population at the institutions of the elite?</p>
<p>My professor who is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations just gave me his personal contact info today.</p>
<p>swarthmore can go sit on it.</p>
<p>Why, Meng, so he can have you translate something?</p>
<p>Oh wait.</p>
<p>next year ill be reading chinese at a 5th grade level.</p>
<p>JCOVENEY 的腿真是太胖了</p>
<p>Campus is ugly</p>
<p>Obviously, since foreigners have smaller brains I guess that should be enough, Meng.</p>
<p>"MENG! WE HAVE AN ESSENTIAL MESSAGE THAT MUST BE GIVEN TO THE CHINESE PRESIDENT! TRANSLATE!"
"WHAt'S THE MESSAGE?"
"THE MOTHER WAS VERY PLEASED WITH THE GRADES HER SON RECEIVED IN GRAMMAR SCHOOL! MONKEY BULL TESTICLE!!!"</p>
<p>meng just totally xiao'ed at you in zhongwen</p>
<p>dionysus--How did you become such an expert on Penn?
From what I gather from your previous posts, you are a high school senior who has just finished the application process, etc. I have a feeling a) You were rejected by Penn this decision round b) rejected by Penn for some of the summer programs that they host. </p>
<p>I am not a prospective student. I AM going to Penn after having applied ED. So I have done my fair share of research before agreeing to the binding contact. So, I am not defending my school, I am showing that these are misconceptions. </p>
<p>I may be wrong, but wasn't JohnnyK accepted to Stanford (or sth) but decided to opt for penn.</p>
<p>Oh, yeah...you are also a 2011 Dartmouth admit....:thinks critically:</p>
<p>Guy, please stop putting words in my mouth. I neither made these comments nor supported them in anyway- I only quoted the penn students who did. However, it does seems as though you have romanticized a penn without fault- to an extent that you believe the experiences of current students are less reliable than those of a prospective student who has not spent up to a week at Penn. But thank you for insulting my intelligence and forming an argument on the basis of technicalities of word choice, maybe it’ll give future students a glimpse of how a penn student debates.</p>
<p>I'm probably the worst case for school turndown for Penn.</p>
<p>I've visited many schools and I do think Penn is pretty coo.</p>
<p>Then again the opinions of some cannot be trusted, especially those that loved Hill</p>
<p><em>Jco staredown attack</em></p>
<p>yeah shtir turned down ******** and ******, not to mention Oregon community college, full scholarship too!</p>
<p>yeah, turning down oregon comm. college was the hardest decision ever :D</p>
<p>rofl *** are the stars</p>
<p>EDIT: OH CRAP they edit that out. How lame</p>