<p>Hi guys. As May 1st approaches, I find myself stuck in a bad situation. I STILL can't decide where to go for college.</p>
<p>I've done the customary visiting of the schools (btw, the schools I'm choosing between are UPenn and Wellesley), and I fell in love with both schools. What makes it so hard to choose is that they are sooo completely different!</p>
<p>Any thoughts/suggestions. Thanks so much! I really have no idea what to do.</p>
<p>I'm not sure if this will help, but my guidance counselor (who was part of the Harvard admissions committee on one occasion, and is very qualified) swears by Wellesley. He sees it as equivalent to any Ivy League school, and better than Penn. In the end, though, it all comes down to personal preference. What appears to be a good school for you may not necessarily be so for someone else. They're both excellent schools, though, and either way, I don't see how you could go terribly wrong. Best of luck! :)</p>
<p>I don't really know much about UPenn (besides the fact that it's a good school) so I can't really help you there, but I had a really hard time deciding last year, too... I guess it comes down to which one you think you'll regret not going to more?</p>
<p>GOOD LUCK! :)</p>
<p>You only have one chance to go to a small, liberal arts school like Wellesley. You can always do UPenn (or another large university) for grad school.</p>
<p>I second Lisa G on the liberal arts college/graduate school path. I have actually visited both schools and found the large student population of UPenn overwhelming. The students walked past each other without any word or look of acknowledgement. It's just not a personal, warm, and cohesive student body. If you like anonymity, perhaps UPenn would be good for you. Otherwise, choose Wellesley. In addition, I didn't exactly find the school's location particularly impressive. If you drive one block down the road from the main Quad, you are in a pretty bad area of Philadelphia. Wellesley, on the other hand, is located in a very safe suburb of Boston. While it may not be the most interesting of towns, the great city of Boston is a cheap bus ride away. Personally, I also think Boston is a more interesting city than Philadelphia, but that's just me. It depends what type of undergraduate college experience you want to have. Grad students will probably receive priority in Penn since it is a primarily grad school driven institution. You will not get the small class sizes, the small student/faculty ratio, the professor accessibility, the discussion-based classes, etc.</p>
<p>Actually, to add a little more, perhaps I can comment directly on UPenn. (I live nearby in NJ.) I took a class there last semester through a program they ran for HS students, so I got to experience the campus, the classes, and the students first hand.</p>
<p>I agree with most of what Coquettish said. The UPenn campus itself is very nice, but the neighborhood of West Philly is certainly not a place in which you would want to travel alone. To delve into the culture of Philadelphia (the city, in my opinion, is pretty comparable to Boston), you'll need to take a bus or train there anyway, just as you would at Wellesley. I also didn't find the students at UPenn to be very friendly (or at least, not as friendly as I found the people at Wellesley). There was little conversation taking place before class, during breaks, or after class. Like Coquettish said, everywhere you looked students were walking alone. I just spent two days at Spring Open Campus and found the students at Wellesley to be immensely more friendly and engaging. I talked to more people in two days at Wellesley than I did in an entire semester at UPenn. The class I took at Penn was International Politics, and I sat in on a similar class at Wellesley to compare the two. I found the class at Wellesley to be about the same size (~25 students). The professor was just as (if not more so) engaging than my professor at Penn, and just about every student in the class participated (as compared to the same 3 or 4 people in my UPenn class).</p>