<p>Thanks Chrisw. I know I will be applying ED to Penn next year so the West Philly thing isn’t a make or break factor for my decision by any means, but I’m interested in it. I have started brainstorming for my Why Penn? essay (or whatever the essay will be) that I will write next year, and I thought about writing about how I plan to extend a certain charity organization I have been working for to West Phili. The charity organization offers free tennis lessons and tennis camps to underprivileged kids, so I thought it might be a good idea to talk about how I can give back to Penn and West Phili by extending the charity to West Phili, with the help of the Penn club tennis team and my (future) Wharton management skills. Do you think this is a good idea? I realize my description is very vague, and I can go into more detail if you think it would be necessary. Thanks again!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>To get in, you need to be great at high school math.</p>
<p>A lot of the kids in Wharton aren’t really strong at math, though. Most kids start in MATH 104 (calc BC equivalent) or STAT 101 (AP Stat equivalent). And they don’t really excel at the classes either. I’m hugely generalizing. Basically, unless you’re at a tech high school, you probably need to be one of the top math students in your school to get in. But once you’re there, you’re not really expected to be amazing at college-level math.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m so glad someone else knows of Koch’s! A month or so ago, I woke up craving good nova, so I went on Google Maps and saw Koch’s. I decided to check it out with a friend on a total whim. I absolutely love this place, and I’ve been getting all of my friends to go.</p>
<p>It is not in your best interests to tailor an essay toward the admissions committee; this strategy is transparent and will scream of “typical” to any readers. Your essay doesn’t need to be this perfect specimen of academic prowess, quick wit and incredible desire to go to Penn; it just needs to explain why you want to go. In my essay, I talked about how everyone in my life was pushing me around, pressuring me to go to all these different types of school, and how they forgot that my say mattered, too. That was the base, and it was easy to write an essay basically complaining about how irritating it is to have everyone tell you what you want to do!</p>
<p>Creativity is rewarded pretty much anywhere. Even in the corporate world, as I’m learning daily.</p>
<p>Oh, and yeah Koch’s is just the best. I personally always got the honey turkey club. And I CALLED to order every time, cuz it’s a guarantee you’ll be waiting forever if you order in person. It was always fun to have a sandwich that was lunch AND dinner :-D</p>
<p>Also, if you have the chance to head west, Marigold Kitchen is one of the better restaurants in Philadelphia (BYOB too!). Great place if you’re ever looking to take someone on a date.</p>
<p>Thanks Chrisw, I see your point. I bet the adcoms get (literally) thousands of essays that are meant to impress them. Through my activities I have demonstrated a passion for tennis, so I think it would be good to somehow incorporate that into my essay. I suppose I could talk about how people expect(ed) me to play in college but I will give up my potential college tennis career to get the chance to go to Penn (this is in the future). It’s kinda based off your idea, but with a little twist.</p>
<p>I have a quick question! I’m a junior and I’m in 4 APs (APUSH, AP bio, AP Psych and AP English Lang) and 2 honors courses (anatomy, precalc), I have straight A’s (and I’ve always gotten straight A’s) except for in AP Bio (my teacher is majorly screwing me over)! 
Do you think that a B will ruin my chances?</p>
<p>It won’t</p>
<p>10chars</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice on Koch’s, and thanks for this recommendation! Although to be honest, no BYO will beat how much consistent fun I have at Don Memo.</p>
<p>This is probably a stupid question, but I’ve been reading this thread and I had a few bad grades, b-'s and such… haha pretty low. Anyway, how exactly do you explain your bad grade?</p>
<p>Well it depends. For me, I had a big disagreement with a math teacher and ended up getting a C for a semester my sophomore year. I retook the class (with a different teacher) the following year, in addition to my normal math class. I aced the class this time. So in my application I explained how that grade (C) was not representative of my knowledge of the material. I also said that how I gave up an elective to retake this class showed my determination in bettering myself and etc.</p>
<p>I got a C in Math my 2nd semester of 10th grade too! But, the next year, I tutored in Pre-Cal, and I borrowed a book and etc. so that I could help others in a class that I struggled in, while learning it myself. Should I address that in my “additional info”?</p>
<p>Yeah, definitely.</p>
<p>I’ve heard that the atmosphere at Penn is overwhelmingly pre-professional. As someone who takes a slightly less practically-minded approach to education, would I be extremely out-of-place? I would be applying as a transfer interested exclusively in humanities-related fields.</p>
<p>Penn has some fantastic humanities and social sciences courses. Even in more “practical” disciplines in the College, you can certainly study high theory and find plenty of people interested in similar things to you.</p>
<p>Presumably, if you are so dedicated to academia, you would want to pursue a Master’s or PhD after undergraduate. One of Penn’s selling points is that the One University policy allows you to get a head start on that. If you find yourself absolutely enthralled by a department, to the point that you want to get an advanced degree, you can relatively easily submatriculate into a master’s program, and although it is more difficult, it is certainly not unheard of for undergrads to submatriculate into PhD programs.</p>
<p>Pre-professional gets a bad rap… being pre-professional at Penn means that you have resources at your disposal to help you pursue interests beyond your undergraduate years; whereas many of my friends were lost when trying to figure out what/how to do after college, my friends at Penn had the support they needed to apply to jobs and schools alike.</p>
<p>You would not be out of place… it’s impossible for 20,000 students to ALL have the same aspirations, thank goodness.</p>
<p>^ All true. And people tend to forget that Penn’s College of Arts and Sciences is not only–by far–the largest component of Penn with 6,400 undegrads, but is also one of the largest undergraduate liberal arts schools in the Ivy League (and among all of the top privates). And the College has many top-10 and top-20 liberal arts departments (including the humanities), with an extensive amount of ongoing academic research.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for the responses! I didn’t know anything about the One University policy, I will look into it since I definitely want to go to graduate school. I definitely see your point about it being impossible for 20,000 undergrads to all have the same interests, although it sometimes feels that way at NYU…</p>
<p>^ It’s 10,000 undergrads (and another 10,000 grad and professional students). But still large enough to encompass a wide variety of interests and career plans.</p>
<p>And if you want to learn more about some examples of the vibrant humanities environment for undergrads at Penn, Google the following along with “University of Pennsylvania”:</p>
<ol>
<li>Philomathean Society</li>
<li>Kelly Writers House</li>
<li>Penn Humanities Forum</li>
</ol>
<p>And of course, there are many more examples. :)</p>
<p>My mistake. Thank you for the info! The Philomathean Society in particular looks amazing. :)</p>
<p>Thank you for doing this Negoblle2. I have a few questions regarding AP credit. </p>
<p>I’m planning to major somewhere in the sciences in CAS although I put Biological Basis of Behavior as my intended major. That being said, I’m taking many AP classes this year, but I’m unsure if I’ll take the exams in May. Do you recommend taking the following exams for credit: English Literature, English Language, Calc BC, Physics B, Chem, Environmental Science?
I just don’t want to waste time and money for these exams since money is an issue. I’m also a little confused about the English exams since they give the same credit. Thanks!</p>
<p>BBB is very popular - and very difficult. You cannot get credit for English Language (well, five years ago you couldn’t), so it may be worth skipping that one. Otherwise, having some AP credits could help you out in a couple ways. If you test out of Calc BC, you will be qualified to enter into either MATH114 or MATH115 (depending on how much you like calculus), which puts you ahead in the math sequence required for science majors. </p>
<p>If you decide to do BBB, you will need 18.5 credits for the major, plus an additional 17.5 credits outside of BBB, which could (i dunno) include certain course prerequisites. There are 14 College requirements you need to fulfill, though one can be fulfilled from a major course, and you can double count some others… realistically you will probably need 10 or 11 courses outside of your major in order to fulfill requirements, though that number can be raised if your foreign language skills are not strong (you need to pass the fourth level of any foreign language sequence in order to pass the language requirement).</p>
<p>That means that you have, most likely, ten-ish courses that can be just completely free electives. AP credit, even though it doesn’t count toward requirements or majors, will help you fulfill the electives requirements to get you to your graduation threshold. The significance of that is that if you can get, say, four AP credits (that’s being very, very generous, since it is pretty damn hard to get 5s on those tests), you will only need 32 credits to graduate, meaning you can take fewer courses every semester (4-5 instead of 5-6).</p>
<p>If you want to double major, then AP credits are relatively meaningless, in my experience</p>