A lot of rumors and stereotypes fly around the Ivy League. Whether you applied ED, are applying RD, or are a parent/younger student thinking about it for the future, it helps to know what you’re getting into.
Background info on me:
Current freshman
Applied ED last year
Double majoring in Biological Basis of Behavior and English
White, low-income LGBT girl from Wisconsin
I have 2 cats I miss a lot
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Anyone is free to ask or answer questions in this thread. It is not the place, however, to ask for chances.
OMG you have my exact major combo. A ton of people tell me its pointless to have an English major as well, but i love english, do you have any opinions thus far?
Is penn really as social as it seems?
What is the biggest negative thing you’ve experienced so far?
How would you say being LGBT factors into admission? I know its not a major hook on any level but Penn now asks on their application if you would like to identify as a member of the LGBT community and I feel they don’t ask that question for no reason… Any input?
@vegucated26 I really enjoy having the combination. I’m a person who gets bored easily by doing one thing, and being able to switch between science and writing helps me to destress when one of the two gets too frustrating/I get stuck in a rut. If you love English you should DEFINITELY keep it; there are so many diverse English classes here with great professors, and they’ll give you a good GPA boost to balance out some of the BBB classes.
Penn is /extremely/ social, but not in an overwhelming way. I was sort of introverted in high school and preferred to make close-knit friendships, so I didn’t quite want to go somewhere where the culture was “going out three times a week with people you don’t really like.” I usually go out once or twice a week, and most of the time when I do it’s not a huge frat party but one of my friends having people over in their apartment. That being said, I know kids who do go to frat parties three times a week (the weekend can start on Thursday night IF you don’t have a morning Friday class), if that’s more your thing. Right now I’d say I probably have six people I can trust with anything and talk to all day, and at least a dozen others I willingly hang out with one-on-one.
The biggest negative for me has been the intro STEM classes and culture around them, which is also why I emphasize keeping an English major if you love it. They’re designed to weed out pre-med students who might not have the proper skill set to be a doctor. If you want to be a doctor and do well in those classes, great! If you want to be a doctor but your grades are struggling, you figure that out BEFORE med school. If you’re academic like me, you have to suffer through a semester or two of subpar grades that don’t test your knowledge. My bio professor told me last week “In bio 101, the best doctors get A’s. The best scientists get C’s.” It’s tough to get over the fact that a C =/= a failure, which is why I advise talking to your professors and to IGNORE THE OTHER KIDS. Everyone wants to put on a front that they’re the smartest kid there, but nobody’s good at everything.
@RGEJam Penn has worked hard to establish the reputation of being the most LGBT-friendly school in the United States, and one of the ways they’ve done that is by actively recruiting LGBT students, hence the question. It obviously won’t be a golden ticket in, but it’s a different way of showing the diversity of the student body. I also received an email after my acceptance from someone in the Queer Student Alliance, so the question is just as much a hook as it is a way of connecting you to the community.
@thebetterhawkeye hello! I’m also thinking of double-majoring (except in English and biology). Can you elaborate a bit more about the culture of the intro classes you mentioned? Also, do you know any pre-med students who are not majoring in a science?
@Yarnweaver The classes themselves are huge – my bio 101 class had 252 kids in it and my intro to BBB class had 170. They try to make up for the impersonal nature of these large lectures via recitations and labs, which have about 20-24 kids in them, but even in recitation there isn’t a good chance for you to show your knowledge (it’s mostly doing an experiment, going over problem sets, and asking questions; not so much educated discussion), so the only measure of your intelligence is your grades, which again are designed for people who learn a very specific way. Even if you tell yourself that you can be successful with a first-semester C, it’s hard to cancel out the noise of ~200 kids saying differently. I’ve also noticed that the sciences are filled more with kids who aggressively hide any indication that they might not be perfect or that they have to study to do well, whereas the humanities are more willing to admit “I haven’t slept in 3 days, my dinner is coffee and potato chips, and I have no memory of writing the essay I just turned in.” Humanities students and academic STEM kids tend to be more approachable than pre-meds.
I don’t know any pre-med students not majoring in a science. Med schools, from what upperclassmen have told me, tend to care about grades and course load, and it’s very hard to get all your med school requirements in without a science major – even if you could do it, at that point you would have so many credits towards the major that you might as well declare it. Within the sciences bio is the most popular pre-med major, with BBB as the runner-up that some take because it’s more fun (and 1.5x the credit requirements, so keep that in mind) and occasionally chemistry. Health and Societies is also an option, but that tends to be more for people who are interested in medicine but realize that they aren’t suited for the cutthroat nature of pre-med/medical school.
In general, I’d like to mention that I’m not anti pre-med. I have several friends who plan on going to medical school and I love them to death and know they’re in it for the right reasons. I’ve just found that it’s a very intense culture that I personally want no part in, and that there is a vocal portion of students who are clearly disinterested in learning and only want to preserve their GPA so they can get into a good medical school so they can make money as a doctor. If you are thinking of doing pre-med, you will have to deal with them. If you want to do any kind of natural science they’ll be there too.
If spending four years with kids who are willing to claw each other’s eyes out over an A doesn’t sound very appealing to you, and you want to be a doctor due to an interest in biology/medicine and not explicitly to help the sick and injured hands-on, I would suggest going into academia. You can major in biology, BBB, or chemistry with an academic intention and work a research job like I do (you’ll still have pre-meds in your classes but you can consider them more in your periphery because they’re not your grad school competition), or you can major in Health and Societies like I said above, which is more of a humanities-style major but still talks about heath and medicine for those interested.
Tl;dr just know what you’re getting into and consider your options now, or in a semester, or a year.
This is really helpful; thank you so much!! I’m a bit put off by such a cutthroat competitive culture…I’ll have to mull it over a bit more. Another question: I hear some classes (a lot of chemistry classes apparently?) are graded on a curve. Is that more common in the sciences, or does it depend on the professor?
@Yarnweaver It’s entirely up to the professor, even within the same class; I have a friend in Chemistry 101 who just announced there would be no curve, but all the other professors are instituting one. Even the type (raise based on mean or highest) and degree (mean -> 80, 85, or some other value) is up to the professor. That being said, it happens more often in science classes due to the nature of the classes. In STEM you either get the right answer or the wrong answer, and while partial credit exists it’s based on a strict rubric. Humanities are graded more on a combination of factors.
In my current courseload:
Intro to Brain and Behavior - two midterms with mean 77.5 and 80. If mean is below an 80, points are added so the mean becomes an 80; no downward curve if mean is >80.
Introductory Biology A - three midterms with means 60, 72, and 68. Lowest midterm is dropped, other two are curved and equalized (don’t ask me what this means or what my grade is, I have no answer for either of those questions, but I know it means I won’t end up with the D that my uncurved grade is right now)
Introductory Statistics - curved on a case-by-case basis. Midterm had an 89 average, thus not curved. Final might be a different story.
Comics and Graphic Novels - not curved. No midterms. 45% of grade is a final portfolio, graded against a rubric. Other 55% is a combination of classroom discussion, participation, on-demand writing, and two large pieces (a literature review and a public argument). There’s no need for a curve, I have a 98% just from improving on previous drafts.
@Yarnweaver Reminds me of being a TA at Penn back in the day… There’s a seminar once a year for all the TAs across sciences and engineering to go over protocols, standards, etc. and at one point the professor leading the room full of TAs puts an English prompt up on the projector. He asks us to think it over and to come up with a 10-point grading scale. As he starts to flip through a couple sample responses, the room laughs — of course, trying to grade a humanities assignment is purely subjective, right? He asks a couple people in the room what they gave as grades and everyone is giving wildly different scores.
Then he moves on to a simple physics problem (mass * acceleration = force) followed by four sample responses:
[]Correctly solved using the right formula and without any errors
[]Incorrectly solved using the right formula but with a minor arithmetic error that leads to the wrong numeric answer
[]Incorrectly solved using the wrong formula but by dumb luck getting the correct numeric answer at the end
[]Incorrectly solved using the wrong formula and wrong numeric answer at the end
He starts asking random people what they graded and to our surprise, people are still giving wildly different scores, which you might think is odd since it’s really just a math problem.
Well, someone raises their hand and says that he graded the four responses as follows: 10/10, 0/10, 10/10, 0/10. Seemed a bit harsh in my mind since I gave the second person a 9/10 seeing as how they applied the correct formula and the third person a 1/10.
But, this individual goes on to explain — in the real world, he says, mistakes cost lives. Imagine if that was a doctor applying the wrong dosage to a patient or imagine an engineer designing an airplane with an incorrect calculation. His class is all or nothing, to prepare his students for reality, regardless of how they ended up with the answer.
Anyway, moral of the story: everyone grades differently.
@CrisprCas9 Everyone wants to get into the Quad, which is made up of Fisher-Hassenfield, Ware, and Riepe. They are objectively not nice dorms but they’re the traditional freshman dorms, so a lot of people go there for the “college experience”. I remember hearing something like 84% of incoming freshman put a double in the Quad as their top housing choice.
Hill was renovated this year and that drew a lot of people; it’s also set up like a traditional freshman dorm but thanks to the renovation it’s a little cleaner around the edges than the Quad; fewer pests, less mold, etc. Main downside is it’s a little bit of a hike to some of the classes; Penn spans roughly 40th to 34th Street, and Quad/Stouffer (where I live) are on 37th, Hill is on 34th.
There are also suite-style dorms where 3-4 people share a living room and bathroom, and among people who want that in-room bathroom New College House is the most popular option.
Altogether I’d probably say the popularity ranking is Any Quad, NCH, Hill, Gregory/DuBois (suite-style), and Stouffer (where I live), Kings Court. If you want a single room you pretty much WILL be put in Stouffer, as all but 3 rooms are singles. Kings Court is kinda just there and I almost forgot to include it in this list.
@thebetterhawkeye I was accepted to Penn ED and I’m trying to figure out where to live. I really like NCH, but I keep reading articles about freshmen living in college houses besides the Quad feeling left out - because the Quad is where most of the freshmen live. How true is this? If I live in NCH, will it be hard to join in on the freshmen social scene?
@rmuth99 When I went to visit campus last year, the students I talked to said “if you live in the Quad you’re friends with your hall. If you live in a suite you’re friends with your suitemates.” I definitely noticed that after getting here; people in the Quad or in Hill are friends with the huge group of people in their hall, and I only know two people in NCH, both of whom carved out their social scene from clubs.
It’s worth noting that it’s REALLY HARD to get into NCH; when I did the housing lottery I put it down first because I wanted a bathroom in my space instead of having to go down the hall and obviously I did not get in. Since NCH is a four-year house, most of the beds will be filled by the time you apply, whereas since the Quad is freshman housing every bed will be available.
Hope I’m not resurrecting this post after too long. I was looking to see if I could find any chance me threads for people majoring in Biological Basis of Behavior and I found your other thread and checked to see if you got in (which you did - congrats!). I’m so stressed out about getting into UPenn right now. I’m a junior in HS. After looking into their cognitive science program I decided I probably wanted to do biological basis of behavior because I don’t think I could ever get into the engineering school.
Anyways, how did you incorporate the BBB major into your supplement? What did you say about it that made it so good? I understand that you probably had to focus on both english and BBB in your supplement, but I want to know about the BBB side of things since that’s what I’m interested in. Is there anything super special about the program that you enjoy that stands out to you? Do you think BBB is a lot like a neuroscience program at other schools or is it more of a different approach?
Sorry if I’m being confusing, it’s just that getting into UPenn has got to have made me more neurotic than I have ever been in any other time in my life.
@katnissjul I probably devoted the biggest portion of my essay to BBB, because that’s why Penn was my first choice; of the schools I was interested in, only Penn and Columbia had a major for specifically behavioral neuroscience. I had gotten a taste of what the area involved when I was working at a UW lab in high school, and I wanted something as close to my interests as possible.
What I like about BBB is that it’s an applied major. Penn doesn’t have a general neuroscience major, but you can concentrate in neurobiology within the biology minor, and the difference is that the neurobiology concentration is going to be more clinical, focused on the mechanics of the brain and nervous system. BBB is more like a middle ground between neuroscience and psychology.
One of the reasons I could never go into medicine is because I don’t enjoy memorization, and I get bored studying anatomy out of context. What I like about BBB is that it says “here’s how your brain responds to this input, and what it does in response”. It’s easier for me to get concepts when I can think “aha, the neurons in my amygdala are firing more rapidly because finals are coming up and I’m nervous”. The lecture on learning and memory helped my friend justify why she’s chronically lost.
Also, if anyone else is reading this, I have a new schedule this semester with more humanities classes! I’m taking bio, calculus, French, a women’s literature class, and a Russian literature/culture class!
@thebetterhawkeye That seems like a great schedule. Would you say balancing the BBB courseload with humanities has made it a lot less stressful for you?
@katnissjul Definitely. I’m the kind of person who has to be doing a variety of things at all times or I get antsy and bored with what I do have. Last semester got a little overwhelming because I was taking almost exclusively classes that were not just STEM, but a particular kind of “there’s no real homework, it’s all practice and note-taking for the exams”. Now I have two writing-heavy classes, two exam-heavy classes, and French is mostly speaking activities.