@Penn95
I first present my opposition to your view, and, second, present scholarship/literature that flies in the face of your contentions.
I.) Useless Comparisons:
You’ve encouraged me not to compare Penn to other schools, and, in this case, I encourage you to do the same.
How many other top 10-12 colleges have an elite undergrad business school attached? None. Can you study the impact of having an elite undergrad b-school at any other top college? No.
In this case, it’s actually best NOT to compare, and instead look at the impact of a top ugrad b-school at the ONE school where this exists: Penn.
The career outcome reports alone don’t present enough data. Just because Penn has numbers similar to “other ivies,” might not in fact capture the sentiment/impact on the ground. Further, we have no way of knowing that if, say, Wharton didn’t exist, what impact that would have on the % of CAS students going into finance. If Wharton did NOT exist, would the CAS % to fin/con be lower? Similarly, does the existence of CAS actually depress the # of Whartonites going into fin/con?
These are interesting questions, but we have no way of knowing! Further, as no other top school has a top ugrad b-school, comparisons between such schools are ill-founded. It’s not a difference in degree - it’s a difference in kind.
On a related note, your posts imply this: If you want a liberal arts experience similar to the “other ivies” Penn CAS has it! If you want an elite u-grad bschool experience embedded in a “one university” school, Wharton has it! Further, any interactions between these two schools just enhance the experience!
Such a theme again ignores some of the deeply complicated interactions that take place when you have schools with very different missions and educational approaches sitting right next to one another. This analysis also doesn’t go into the possibly pernicious consequences of this setup.
II.) Scholarship/literature that contradicts you:
There are some good ethnographic studies/investigative literature that flies in the face of the portrayal you present. For interested parties, I encourage a reading of Karen Ho’s “Liquidated: An Ethnographic Study of Wall Street.” https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00EHNU5R4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
(You can also google it and find the full text in PDF form.)
(Interestingly, in opposition to your statement about Penn CAS recruiting strength, Ho argues: “investment banks do not recruit as heavily from the general [UPenn] undergraduate population as a whole, although ugrads and grads from Penn’s renowned Wharton School are among the most highly sought-after recruits. Some college seniors said it was difficult to find investment banking and consulting opportunities without a Wharton pedigree.” Ho p. 63)
Kevin Roose’s “Young Money: Inside the Hidden World of Wall Street Post-Crash Recruits” is good too.
(To investigate wall street recruiting practices, Roose states: “When looking at schools to visit, I singled out Penn for a reason… ‘Penn, and especially Wharton, is in a league of its own,’ one hiring manager at a top Wall Street firm told me. 'It’s the only place where you go to campus and it’s already done and dusted - it’s a matter of WHICH financial services firm students want to go to, not WHETHER you want to go into finance.” Roose p. 16-17)
(Roose even quotes Penn’s head of career services, Patricia Rose, as saying: “To come to Penn is to, at some point in your undergrad years, ask yourself ‘Should I think about investment banking?’” Roose p. 17)
I also refer back to the excellent Brandeis study on Penn undergrad culture, that had 1000+ survey participants. That study can be found here: https://www.brandeis.edu/ssri/noteworthy/upenn.html
Penn student response to the study can be found here: http://www.thedp.com/article/2016/12/brandeis-story-responses
Here are a couple quotes that the Brandeis researchers thought were representative and salient of the 1000+ survey respondents:
“The climate is best suited for people from urban, relatively apolitical, affluent backgrounds who are career-
oriented and very self-motivated toward particular careers. It is alienating for most people who do not fit that model, including students who would prefer to experiment with diverse interests and those who value learning over success. (Junior, White Jewish Male)” (p. 44 of the Brandeis study)
“Biggest note about campus climate is that it is a diverse array of cliques. Frat vs. non-frat, Wharton vs. college, on-campus vs. off-campus, Asian vs. White and perhaps most importantly rich vs. poor. These are all factors that very quickly encourage students to self-select in to homogeneous groups with almost no interaction amongst each other. (Senior, South Asian male)” (p. 44 of the Brandeis study)
Yes, as @Penn95 will say, these are just the views of two students, but the quotes provided further illustration of the results the researchers found. For instance, Wharton ugrads felt the highest sense of “belonging” at Penn (81%, compared to 73% of CAS, and 73% of the nursing school).
Per all of the above, it very much looks like fin/con holds disproportionate impact at Penn, and the influence of the Wharton school makes Penn differently situated than it’s peers, and therefore NOT a good subject of comparison.
To quote again the Wall Street hiring manager, who says Penn, especially with Wharton, is “in a league of its own,” cuts against @Penn95 attempt to compare Penn to “other ivies.” The hiring manager, in fact, does not find it useful to compare Penn to other schools - it’s a difference in kind.