History Major at Penn?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Pennsylvania
1

Hello, everyone! I’m considering applying to Penn ED this fall as a Pre-Med History major. I know that History is one of Penn’s largest majors, so I’m hoping someone would be willing to answer my questions.

  1. What’s the daily/weekly workload like?

  2. What’s the typical classroom atmosphere?

  3. What are some Study Abroad opportunities?

  4. Is History a very time-consuming major compared to like English or Psych?

  5. What are the research opportunities like?

  6. Does Penn offer an interesting variety of classes?

Thank you!

2

I neither took a history class nor know much of the department, so I’m not the right person to answer your questions but just want to say that Histoy is not one of the largest majors. I only know one student who majored in history. I did have a friend who picked up a history minor though, which I believe was only 6 credits.

3

On the Penn History department’s web page, it says that History is one of the largest majors on campus. I was a bit incredulous as well when I read that.

4

History IS, in fact, one of the larger majors in the College of Arts and Sciences. For example, in the Class of 2016, there were at least 47 History majors, and probably more than that. The 47 History majors was reported in the College Career Plans Survey Report for the Class of 2016, which had a 79% response rate:

http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/files/CAS_CPSurvey2016.pdf

So I’m pretty sure that the total number of History majors per class is in the neighborhood of 60 or so. It’s definitely one of the larger majors in the College, along with English, Economics, Political Science, Biological Basis of Behavior, Psychology, Biology, etc. Also, Penn’s History department is generally ranked among the top 10 or so in the country. For example, US News recently ranked Penn’s graduate program in History at #11:

https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-humanities-schools/history-rankings?int=a58a09&int=a06908

5

One thing to know is that for a History major the Penn Museum is unequalled by any other University.

6

A few points - first, while @“45 Percenter” is correct in saying that history is one of the largest majors in the college, that statement doesn’t capture how much larger the biggest majors are. For instance, in the Class of 2016 survey, 47 responders were history majors. In contrast, a whopping 141 responders were economics majors, 111 responders were biology majors, 91 were poli sci majors, and even 55 were Phil, Politics, and Economics (PPE) majors.

So, yes, history is in the top ten largest majors in the college, but it’s dwarfed by the popularity of some of the really “big” majors. (Econ, bio, etc.).

Re the OP’s questions, read this site comprehensively, first: http://www.history.upenn.edu/

You can see the range of courses, faculty, major requirements, etc.

One notable point about the dep’t - they are fairly cross-disciplinary, and have associated faculty hailing from a range of other U. of Penn schools. For instances, Profs Sarah Gordon, Sophia Lee, Wendell Pritchett, anand Serena Mayeri all hold joint appointments with UPenn’s Law School, and many others hold appointments at Penn’s other departments - like Poli Sci, Romance Languages, English, etc.

It’s a very good department. Also, like Penn’s English department, it tends to fly under the radar for its prominence. English and History are perhaps two of UPenn’s finest departments, but it doesn’t get nearly the attention or enrollment of econ, bio, etc.

7

There are several other departments in the College that also fit that description, some with significantly fewer majors than even English and History. For example, Penn’s Anthropology, Art History, French, Linguistics, Music, Psychology, Religion, Sociology, and Spanish departments have historically been ranked among the top 10 or so in the country, and all of those have substantially fewer majors than the departments with the largest numbers of majors.

8

Yes I agree with all of that, @“45 Percenter” - especially anthropology - which is perhaps top two or three in the country, but barely has ANY students who major in it.

It’s why, as I’ve said before, johns Hopkins and upenn have similarities - their big brands might be in med or business, but some of their very finest offerings are in subjects like history or art history. These majors don’t get nearly the interest of other perhaps even “weaker” subjects.

(One could argue, for example, that Penn’s most preeminent department is its anthropology department - but biz and med totally dwarf this proud little department.)

9

@Cue7 I wonder, though, how the relative numbers of majors in these departments compare to the numbers of those majors at the other Ivies and top schools. I wouldn’t be surprised if the numbers were fairly similar.

10

@“45 Percenter” - The numbers actually aren’t that similar. Penn’s numbers in “non-bankable” (for lack of a better term) majors are still a little low. Remember, CAS itself is rather large - with about 1600 CAS students per class.

Here’s Princeton, as a counter example, which only has about 980 non-engineering students per class:

https://registrar.princeton.edu/university_enrollment_sta/Degrees-Conferred.pdf

At Princeton, about 80 students per year major in history. 80/980 = 8% of the class

At UPenn, probably about 60 students per year major in history. 60/1600 = 3.75% of the class/

At Princeton, about 30 students per year major in Anthropology, which is a very good but not absolutely preeminent department at Princeton. 30/980 = 3% of the class.

At Penn, about 20 students per year (20/1600 = 1.2%) major in Anthropology - which is absolutely, no-argument, one of the top 2 or 3 Anthro departments in the country. Penn Anthropology is probably the finest department at Penn - and this includes the standing of Wharton, Med, etc. BUT, only about 1.2% of students major in this subject, compared to 3.75% of Princeton’s class.

Interestingly, economics, which is a very good but not top 5 department at Penn sees nearly as much interest as economics at Princeton (which is probably one of Princeton’s finest departments).

At Princeton, about 125 students per year major in econ - so 125/980 = 12.7% of the class.

At Penn, about 180 students per year major in econ - so 180/1600 = 11.2% of the class

So the numbers actually aren’t too similar - some of Princeton’s departments get 2X or 3X the interest in comparison to UPenn.

(And note, I’m actually underestimating Penn’s universe of eligible students, as it’s possible someone from Wharton or Engineering looked to double major with a BA/BS in history or anthro or something. So the real target number of potential candidates at Penn is probably closer to 1800-1900, NOT the 1600 I mention. Viewed in that light, maybe only 3% of potential candidates at Penn majored in history, and maybe only 0.9% majored in anthro. These numbers are lower than their peer schools, for sure.)

11

And I should add @“45 Percenter” - the total undergrad size should be a factor as well. So, if you are 1 of 30 history majors out of a total class size of ~1200, or maybe a group of 200 or so students serious about history out of a total undergrad size of 5000 (at Princeton) that’s quite different than being 1 of 20 out of a total class size of 2500, or a group of 100 or so with a total undergrad size of 10,000 (at UPenn).

It feels different, given the differences in size and the pursuits of the student bodies.

12

@Cue7 I’m not sure what you mean by “non-bankable” majors, but I think you’re characterization of Penn’s numbers in those majors as being a little low is a bit misleading and erroneous. By my quick review, the largest major in the College is Economics with 141 majors. I’m not sure how “bankable” Econ is, but I have no doubt that it’s one of the most popular majors at most top schools, as you pointed out with Princeton. Beyond that, I think it’s inaccurate to characterize the next most popular majors in the College as “bankable,” or as more popular at Penn’s College than at most other liberal arts schools. Also, your analysis fails to take into account the popularity of interdisciplinary majors in the College, which by definition touch on several traditional liberal arts disciplines. Again, based on quick review, I found the most popular majors in the College based on the Class of 2016 Career Plans Survey Report to be the following, with number of majors in parentheses:

Econ (141)
Biology (111)
Biological Basis of Behavior (108)
Political Science (91)
Psychology (62)
English (58)
Health and Societies (58)
Communications (57)
Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (55)
International Relations (54)
History (47)
Biochemistry (33)
Cognitive Science (32)
Math (26)
Computer Science (22)

Those majors account for 955 of the Class of 2016 respondents, and if we extrapolate from the 79% response rate, we can assume that about 1,210 out of the 1,600 members of the Class of 2016–or about 75% of the class–majored in those 15 areas. And again, taking into account that the popular interdisciplinary majors–BBB, Health and Societies, Communications, PPE, IR, and Cog Sci–span several traditional liberal arts departments such as biology, psychology, history, political science, philosophy, economics, sociology, anthropology, math, etc., I’m fairly confident that you’d find that similar proportions of liberal arts undergrads at other top schools tend to major in those and similar fields. Sure, one can point to individual examples of, e.g., 30 Anthro majors at Princeton vs. 20 at Penn, but I suspect that at most comparable schools–other Ivies, Duke, Stanford, Northwestern, and some school on the south side of Chicago whose name I forget ;)–you’d find a similar mix of majors (and component majors in the case of Penn’s interdisciplinary majors) among the most popular majors chosen by 75% of the liberal arts students.

13

@“45 Percenter” - all good points, but if you truly account for Penn’s interdisciplinary nature (and noting that, say, a Wharton undergrad could also major in history), I think the best way to assess the popularity of the major is to note the full size of the class.

So, accounting for interdisciplinary majors like PPE or Communications, and noting how UPenn is quite flexible in majors across schools (like Wharton and CAS), let’s say, when viewed in the most favorable light, that about 90 students per year are pursuing a history major (or taking a lot of classes in it).

90/2500 = 3.6% of the class at UPenn
That’s still demonstrably lower than the 8% of Princeton undergrads majoring in history

Also, many top schools have overlap in most popular majors - as you say. What differentiates Penn (and, similarly, Northwestern and Cornell) is it’s one of the only top schools with many undergrad divisions, all mixing and mingling together. You’ll never find as high a concentration of history majors at Penn than Princeton because UPenn has 4 undergrad schools, and Princeton has 2 (the liberal arts college and engineering).

Now, some schools may be more STEM focused (like Stanford) or more Humanities heavy (like Yale), but Penn, Northwestern, and Cornell are somewhat distinct from the other (non-technical institute) schools because they have more undergrad schools. It changes the complexion of these schools, and makes comparing, say, UPenn and Princeton, or Dartmouth and Cornell, a limited exercise.

It’s why, when deciding whether to study undergrad history at Penn, a paramount consideration is the structure of its undergrad program - in a way that’s different than deciding to study history at, say, Yale or Princeton or Columbia or that school on the south side of Chicago that I criticize often on another board (all these other schools have fairly similar undergrad structures).

14

@Cue7, a Wharton student CANNOT major in History, or any other of the liberal arts fields housed in the College of Arts and Sciences. In fact, a Wharton student cannot even major in ECONOMICS, despite the name of the Wharton undergraduate degree (BS in Economics). Wharton undergrads USED to be able to major in Economics when that department was actually housed within the Wharton School (as were Political Science and Sociology, believe it or not), but those departments were moved from Wharton to what was then the Faculty of Arts and Sciences–now the School of Arts and Sciences–more than 40 years ago. And the ability of Wharton undergrads to major in Economics subsequently disappeared. In fact, Wharton undergrads don’t MAJOR in anything at all at this point, but rather have “concentrations” in Wharton departments (Management, Finance, etc.) that require significantly fewer courses than do “majors” in the College (typically only 4 courses required for a Wharton concentration, if memory serves, compared to the 8-10 or so required for a major in the College). So the only valid Penn undergrad population for comparison of numbers of liberal arts majors to those in undergrad liberal arts populations at other schools, is the 6400 undergrads in the College of Arts and Sciences. While Wharton undergrads can TAKE COURSES in liberal arts departments, they can’t MAJOR in those fields, unless they are pursuing dual degrees in both Wharton and the College. But the number of Wharton undergrads pursuing uncoordinated dual degrees in both Wharton and the College is so small as to be insignificant for this comparison.

I know you did graduate work at Penn, @Cue7, but with respect to your understanding of the undergraduate schools and curricula at Penn, I think this time you got a bit too far out over your skis. :wink:

15

Pardon @“45 Percenter” - but can’t wharton undergrad design their own dual degree program?

See here under “additional dual degrees” - https://www.wharton.upenn.edu/academic-programs/

In any case, and while my knowledge of the undergrad is now 10+ yrs old and doesn’t match your position on the vanguard, wharton undergrad can certainly still minor in history, no? Unless this has changed, this puts the undergrad in a very different position than Princeton or Columbia, where, no matter how hard you look, you can’t find undergrad business students also intensely studying history.

Relatedly, the number pursuing this path may be small, but the fact it exists and given the strong vein of interdisciplinary study at Penn means using 6400 is far tio narrow.

Again, I’m not saying this is a good or bad thing - it just places upenn in an arena dissimilar to many of its peers. And it makes it difficult to use 6400 as the number to find those interested in history.

16

@Cue7 I think you may be missing my point. First, only 30% of Wharton undergrads pursue dual degree programs, and that includes the coordinated dual degree programs with all 3 of the other undergrad schools–CAS, SEAS, and Nursing. So at most, there may be 200 or so Wharton undergrads pursuing uncoordinated dual degrees at any given time and, of course, only a portion of those are with CAS. Which means we’re probably talking about 100-200 Wharton undergrads pursuing uncoordinated dual degrees with CAS. Given that there are 6300-6400 undergrads in CAS, that additional 100-200 Wharton uncoordinated dual degree students is really negligible for purposes of this discussion. And even if we include them, for purposes of their liberal arts majors, they’re essentially CAS students since they must complete the entire CAS curriculum to earn a BA. So it’s not as if the 1800 or so Wharton undergrads, and for that matter the 600 Nursing undergrads and 1700 SEAS undergrads, all have the option of pursuing a liberal arts major such as History. Only the 6300-6400 CAS students have the option of pursuing a liberal arts major, plus perhaps a couple of hundred dual degree students from the other undergrad schools who, as I said, are essentially CAS students for the purposes of pursing their liberal arts majors and degrees. So again, when we analyze the relative popularity of various liberal arts majors at Penn, we’re looking at a population of about 6500 undergrads who can and do choose from among those majors, just as similar numbers of students at Brown, Harvard, Duke, etc. choose from those and similar majors. And to compare the popularity of certain liberal arts majors at Penn with their popularity at other schools, it’s only the 6500 liberal arts students at Penn who are relevant. Including Wharton, SEAS, and Nursing students in the denominator just doesn’t make sense, since they cannot even CHOOSE those majors (with the exception of the relatively small number of dual degree students). That would not be an apples-to-apples comparison.

17

So @“45 Percenter” - when I did my apples to apples comparison between upenn and Princeton in post #9 of this thread (using a 1600 class size for Penn and a 980 class size for Princeton), Penn’s numbers still came out a little low (e.g. 3.6% of CAS majors in history, compared with 8% at Princeton).

This aside, are you sure it’s possible to even do an apples to apples comparison between Penn and Princeton, or Penn and Harvard? Again, these other top schools don’t have four undergrad schools, and, no matter what you use in the denominator, having schools of business or nursing - along with liberal arts and engineering - fundamentally change the complexion of the school.

It’s why no comparison is perfect, but Harvard Princeton etc seem like especially poor comparators to upenn, whereas cornell and northwestern are better.

18

@Cue7 I think you’re making this more complicated than it needs to be. Remember that this began as a discussion about liberal arts majors, and whether the more popular liberal arts majors at Penn are significantly different than what are the more popular liberal arts majors at other top schools. So it’s really quite simple: just disregard the non-liberal arts undergrad schools at Penn, and you’re left with the College of Arts and Sciences and its 6300-6500 undergrads. Determine which majors are most popular in the College, as I did in post #11 with the majors chosen by about 75% of students in the College, and compare those to the list of most popular majors in the undergraduate liberal arts component of school X. Obviously, if the total number of liberal arts undergrads is significantly different at school X than the 6300 or so at Penn, the actual numbers would vary accordingly. But my point has been, and remains, that the most popular liberal arts majors at Penn’s peers (Ivies plus), will not differ significantly from the most popular liberal arts majors at Penn. In other words, I doubt that at most of those schools you’d find that there generally are more majors in fields like Classics, Art History, Religion, Music, Anthropology, Physics, Astronomy etc., than there are in Economics, Political Science, Biology, History, English, Psychology, etc. And actually, schools like Harvard, Brown, Duke, etc. make very good comparators to Penn, given that they have roughly the same number of liberal arts undergrads as Penn.

19

So I made that one apples to apples comparison as you indicate, @“45 Percenter” by comparing CAS to Princeton. And the numbers differed there. They may differ at other top schools, or they may not - I don’t have time to do analysis on Harvard, duke, etc.

In thinking about it more, however, I think the comparison - at bottom - can’t really be done. You simply cannot “disregard the non-liberal arts schools at Penn,” because they fundamentally change the experience of being a history major at this school. When you add in the possibility of those from other schools minoring in history, it further changes the experience. (And remember, dual degrees are still possible too.)

The OP asked about being a history major at upenn - and I was actually remiss in even trying to make a comparison without looking at the undergrad overall.

The most accurate analysis is that, at Penn, maybe 2% of the undergrad population studies history avidly, and you’re surrounded by peers who may have interest in this subject, but are also pursuing subjects like accounting or nutritional science or communications/marketing. At Princeton, maybe 8% of the population studies history avidly, but you don’t have such breath in applied and pre professional studies.

Simply saying the percentages are similar between upenn and other top schools does a disservice to the atmosphere/environment at UPenn, and doesn’t accurately portray what being a liberal arts major is at this school, at least from what I remember of my interactions with students there, although this was a while back.

20

@Cue7, having a child who graduated as a Humanities major from Penn within the past couple of years, having attended there myself as an undergrad a few decades ago, and having known many liberal arts majors in the College through both my own and my child’s experiences at Penn, I really think you’re exaggerating how different the academic experience of a liberal arts major is at Penn compared to other top schools. Yes, at many of the other top schools a liberal arts major can’t supplement his curriculum with a course or two in Wharton, Nursing, or the Law School, and he may not have Wharton, Engineering, or Nursing students in some of his introductory classes, but a Penn liberal arts major will still be taking a good number of more advanced courses in his major field that are populated almost exclusively by fellow majors or majors in related fields. And in the case of the more popular liberal arts majors, he’ll be in a fairly large group of fellow majors in the Junior and Senior classes (anywhere from about 40 to about 280 students in the 15 most popular majors using the numbers in post #11), and have a selection of a significant number and variety of faculty and courses in his major. And his liberal arts experience in general, and in his major in particular, will be no less rigorous, intense, or comprehensive than it would be at any other peer school. And just as he may have some Wharton, Engineering, or Nursing students in some of his more general or introductory classes, so too will an English or History major at Brown, Harvard, or Princeton have Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, or Math majors–many of whom are pre-med, pre-law, pre-MBA, or even, especially in the case of Wall Street feeders like Harvard and Princeton, pre-investment banking or management consulting–in his introductory or more general classes.

The academic experience is just not that much different for one of the 200 or so Biology or Political Science majors, or the 100 or so English or History majors, who are in Penn’s College at any given time. And the economic realities and employment prospects of life beyond their current undergraduate liberal arts curriculum are just as pressing and influential for English and History majors at Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Duke, etc. as they are for English and History majors at Penn, irrespective of whether they have Bio, Physics, Math, Econ, Engineering, or even Finance and Nursing majors in their introductory classes and extra-curricular and social activities. At least that’s been my experience based on my own and my friends’ and classmates’ time at Penn, as well as that of my child and her friends and classmates.

I think the bottom line is that each top school has its own unique atmosphere and “vibe,” although all of these schools are large, diverse, and complex enough to provide a wide variety of undergraduate experiences. And certainly the atmosphere at Penn is colored by the presence of Wharton and Nursing and Engineering, and the additional extra-curricular activities and on-campus recruiting that those schools bring. But an English, History, Biology or Sociology major at Penn–or even an Anthropology, Music, Art History, or Cinema Studies major at Penn–can submerse herself in a rich environment of numerous and diverse faculty, classes, research opportunities, extracurriculars, and graduate school, internship, and career opportunities, all in or related to her liberal arts major, and be surrounded by tens if not hundreds of fellow majors doing the same. Just as vigorously as she could at Harvard, Brown, Princeton, or Duke. And many Penn liberal arts majors do just that.