<p>all this talk about doing dual degrees and triple majors and constantly worrying about which school/field of study will get you the best job, and people asking about the best path to ibanking or whatever. . . .I don't know. That's probably quite characteristic of the student body at Penn and it kind of annoys me. It's good in that people generally do well after graduation career-wise and what not. But it also kind of kills SOME of the intellectualism and free time that should also come with university life. I feel like things are quite busy and people are really consumed by their futures. Probably the major downside of the school if you ask me. Just thought I'd make this known since people are making admissions decisions. I think people who go to whichever school sometimes don't really give an honest picture of the school? It's great overall and has good people, but there are also negatives like this that should be known.</p>
<p>So you don't think that a substantial number of students at all the other top schools--where most kids worked their butts off for endless hours throughout high school on their school work, extracurriculars, community work, application essays, etc., just so they could get into those schools--have a great deal of ambition and concern about their futures? Sounds pretty naive to me.</p>
<p>Plus, Penn has 10,000 undergrads distributed over four different schools, the largest of which is the College of Arts and Sciences with 6500 students. Your rather narrow view of the Penn student body indicates to me that either you've never been a student there and base your opinion entirely on the limited comments you may have read on CC, or that if you are a student there, you've only gotten to know a very limited sample of the undergraduate student body.</p>
<p>actually an interesting article in the nytimes today about the increasing number of philosophy students in America and how that was really good because that meant students were more intellectual or whatever. but then the article also mentioned most of them were only studying philosophy so that they could get into law school easier, the CAS equivalent of banking</p>
<p>case in point, free tense's point holds in the CAS with soo many people studying poly sci and history to become lawyers. And you think most of the nursing school overlooked that fact that due to shortages most nurses(esp. from penn) stand to make 80,000 first year out of school? and then there's the engineering school, thought it might better to label it fake wharton with tons of enginers selling their quant skills to wallstreet right alongside the math-retarded wharton jocks and special admits. </p>
<p>I don't think its necessarily wrong they are focused on money at the moment, but they are everywhere at Penn, and probably america's other colleges too. none the less thats not nearly everyone at penn, as there are many many intellectuals here too, but the uber-career conscious are at penn, and not just wharton.</p>
<p>right on, freetense</p>
<p>I also think it's absurd to think this trend is unique to Penn.</p>
<p>College costs a bloody fortune. You had better have a plan to pay for it. This isn't the "good old days" when everyone was rich and went to college for 4 years of playtime in Harvard Yard with a transcript gilded with gentleman's Cs, and then off to run father's business.</p>
<p>My brother is at Princeton and they are every bit as obsessed over their future plans as the Penn kids.</p>
<p>45 percenter that's extremely naive of YOU to think I'm not a student. I've been there for 2 years now. Friends with lots of people from many areas. Good people, smart people, wouldn't have gone to any other school, but the hardcore career-thinking of a few does seep into the rest of the student body's consciousness and anxiety. I've talked to people who feel similarly pressured, in CAS and engineering, to think about and constantly consider internships and jobs.</p>
<p>my post was a little one sided and I think what meng describes is a more balanced view of penn. </p>
<p>I don't know that it's not the same at other top schools. I have however heard about students living a little differently at Brown and Columbia. Don't know if it's true or not but just saying.</p>
<p>And I'm not asking for people to disregard their future. I am simply saying that I think it is a little unbalanced at Penn.</p>
<p>freetense, I acknowledged in my post that you might be a student at Penn, so I clearly wasn't being naive and assuming that you aren't.</p>
<p>What I thought was naive, though, was the idea that there aren't substantial numbers of students at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, etc., who are just as ambitious and focused on their future careers, and that Penn is somehow unique in that. While the presence of Wharton (and to a lesser extent, Nursing) formalizes and raises the profile of this preprofessionalism to some extent, there obviously are significant numbers of students at the other top schools extremely focused on obtaining offers from what they consider to be the best medical schools, law schools, IB jobs, and even graduate programs in the arts and sciences.</p>
<p>Further, while Penn's preprofessionalism may be a bit more high profile (again due to Wharton), we all know that there are a substantial number of students at Penn who appreciate the academic and intellectual side of things--indeed probably as many or more than at the other top schools because of the overall larger size of Penn's undergraduate student body.</p>
<p>Actually, I think everyone in this thread is pretty much in agreement. But we who truly appreciate the school and what it has to offer need to be careful not to paint all Penn students with a broad-brushed stereotype that they don't deserve. There are enough Penn detractors around to do that. :)</p>