<p>How does the engineering school at penn stack up to other ivies, like cornell and princeton? I'm interested because I like the campus and area at UPenn, but is their engineering school intense to the point where they don't care about non-engineering EC's?</p>
<p>Their Engineerining program is always in the top 20 or so, and compared to Cornell, it has received a slightly bigger endowment this year. You would be happy at Penn. I got into the Engineering Dept., and I have never won a single science fair type competition...in fact, I only entered 1 my entire secondary school career. The acceptance rate for this department is 18-20%, so you would have as decent a chance of getting in as you would Cornell. It is harder to get into Penns Engineering than it is Columbia SEAS. As for EC's outside of Engineering...I am a dancer, but I am also really good at Math(accellerated 3 years compared to my classmates).</p>
<p>Can't hurt to try.</p>
<p>Penn Engineering is an excellent program. It's strengths are bioengineering (Top 4-6), materials science/nanotechnology (Top 10) and chemical engineering (Top 10-15). The schools is weaker in mechanical and electrical engineering and "practically" non-existent in civil engineering.</p>
<p>Penn's small size limits its overall competitiveness with the giants in the field (UofIllinois, MIT, Stanford, Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon), but Penn leverages its cross-school strengths to great effect. For example, bioengineering (which is the school's largest major) benefits and leverages the #3 med school, #3 nursing school, #3 vet school, top 5 dental school and huge hospital/clinincal practices. Same for PennEngrg's other top majors.</p>
<p>Overall, relative to the other Ivies (in terms of research funding, funding per faculty member, research impact, overall reputation), IMO the ranking is:</p>
<p>Cornell (far and away superior to all the Ivies)
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Princeton (good scale, very high quality research opportunities, among the Ivies, it is unrivalled in the hard sciences which benefits their engineering school)
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Penn/Columbia/Harvard (roughly balanced; each has strengths, but lack the scale and depth of Cornell and Princeton)
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Yale
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Brown/Dartmouth</p>
<p>At Penn, students at all of the professional schools (Nursing, Wharton, and Engineering) must take many classes in in the humanities and arts. That allows significant opportunities for ECs far from the engineering realm. Penn's One University policy facilitates that as well allowing you to explore academic and service opportunities offered by most if not all schools at Penn.</p>
<p>Finally, Penn allows alot of academic freedom, so you can be creative in exploring your interests away from pure engineering.</p>