<p>I feel randombetch is blinded/ biased by some kind of hatred towards Penn, just my opinion</p>
<p>It doesn’t work to simply count the number of Wharton students and the number of Princeton students working on a project, without actual numbers to back you up.</p>
<p>Wharton students are all going into business, while only a fraction of Princeton’s undergrad will go into business. As an example of who this doesn’t work, you could have a 2/3 chance of getting hired if you went to Princeton and a 1/3 chance of getting hired if you went to Wharton, but if Princeton has 200 Business interested undergrads, and Wharton has 800 (making all numbers in this entire metaphor up, obviously) you would still see more Wharton Alums–even though, in this scenario, it is clearly more beneficial to go to Princeton.</p>
<p>Again, those numbers are totally made up and not an effort to actually say Princeton is better than Wharton. My point is just that you can’t count Alumni, not when Wharton has far more prospective students, at least.</p>
<p>I know which is why I did not do that. I did it proportionally. According to that career services thing, 160 or so Princetonians took jobs in the financial industry -the number that want jobs is obviously much higher since 100% of Princetonians do not get the jobs they wanted. That is roughly a third of Wharton’s size of total applicants - in reality, (when you count the Princetonians that wanted jobs but did not make it) it is probably a 2 to 1 or 1.5 to 1 ratio. In essentially every case above, Wharton has more than 3 times the alumni than Princeton working at the firm (the links were for full time placement, not a specific project). For instance, if you look at KKR PE, there are 8 Wharton kids and 1 Princetonian. I would do the same at the others but that would be tedious. Plus, getting hired in the financial industry depends on networking a LOT. So having a much much larger alumni base coming out of Wharton helps you since you have contacts essentially everywhere. Some very elitist firms, like Silver lake at the analyst level, recruit only out of Wharton. </p>
<p>Look, you can do great things at either school. Both schools have their tradeoffs. Both are among the best in the world. I could very well have ended up at Princeton, and I would have been very happy as a philosophy major. (I’ll minor in Philosophy at Penn instead, and major in finance. I do not have an axe to grind with Princeton at all, unlike some with Penn.</p>
<p>I envy your son. I wanted to do Huntsman so bad, but I did not have a strong enough second langauge :(. The second language I do speak was not one of their 11 languages.</p>
<p>Princeton, definitely. I don’t think Wharton has the Wall Street placement people assume it does on the undergraduate level. HYPS, NYU Stern, U Texas, Wellsley, etc. have more presence in my son’s experience. Also, we have been VERY unimpressed with the students Penn (and Wharton) has taken from our high school, and especially compared with who they reject from our high school. It seems they don’t do a great job of selecting the cream of our crop. Princeton is in a safer area too.</p>
<p>“I don’t think Wharton has the Wall Street placement people assume it does on the undergraduate level. HYPS, NYU Stern, U Texas, Wellsley, etc”</p>
<p>This just discredited your entire post. Your son must work in some no name firm in the middle of nowhere if he believes that. He sounds very uninformed. Are you sure he even works in the financial industry? I posted a link above with the hard and cold numbers above, take a look at it. The fact of the matter is, we have no idea how true your anecdote is. So, while it is midly amusing, it holds no weight at all. Nobody, even randomtech I’ll assume, disputes the fact that Wharton has better placement than any other school on earth in absolute terms (not adjusted for the number of kids interested). At essentially every BB, Wharton is the most represented school. That is even more true for PE firms, VC firms (though Stanford also does very very well here) and Hedge funds.</p>
<p>Wharton placement:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/wharton/surveys/Wharton2008Report.pdf[/url]”>http://www.vpul.upenn.edu/careerservices/wharton/surveys/Wharton2008Report.pdf</a></p>
<p>kaf, you continue to discuss the success of Wharton graduates…</p>
<p>when you do this are you referring to students who grauduated from the undergraduate program or students that received their MBA from Wharton?</p>
<p>Because, as you know, this thread is for the discussion of the undergraduate programs at Princeton and UofPenn…</p>
<p>I am new to both Wharton and Princeton and have been doing research since my son got admission in both. Several I spoke to, so far, are of the same view as kafkareborn. That is, Wharton is considered king in investment banking placement. I am merely sharing the information I got from others (not in this forum). Probably, because while Princeton population is high only a small % prefer go to wall street? and rest in diverse sectors?</p>
<p>All the figures I was reffering to was at the undergraduate level only. Obviously Princeton does not have an MBA school, if I included Wharton MBAs that would be unfair. At the PE firms listed above, Wharton undergrads are better represented than Wharton MBAs. But, if you are looking for a job, you want to go to the school with more alums to help push you through. So Wharton gives you an advantage in that regard because you can call on alums whether they went to Wharton undergrad or to the MBA program.</p>
<p>Coolparent</p>
<p>I believe that Wharton’s placement in investment banking is very strong, probably stronger than Princeton’s (although Princeton opens numerous doors that Wharton may not). However, my main focus is whether placement in investment banking is the only outcome that matters or whether actually getting a well-rounded education is important. I find this whole conversation kind of sad, with the back and forth of how many are placed at what firm, as if that is the measure of a university.</p>
<p>Princeton offers an amazing and vibrant, undergraduate experience, where your son will thrive. It also has an excellent track record in employment, in medical school, in law school and in academia. Wharton is a great pre-professional school, but, in my judgment, your son may be a much more one-sided individual at the end of his college years and his academic experience will not be as rich. I know what choice I would make, but obviously, people will differ about this.</p>
<p>Thanks you for an excellent post midatlmom.</p>
<p>Wow, this thread turned into quite a silly contest, didn’t it?</p>
<p>CoolParent, first of all, you should be incredibly proud of your son! Both Princeton and Wharton’s Huntsman program are incredibly competitive, and he must be a talented guy to have his pick between the two. As a Princetonian, I’d be the first to admit to being a biased commenter, but as someone who’s going into private equity/venture capital after graduation, I hope my perspective is of some use to your son. Specifically, while a lot of posters here have argued on the basis of what opportunities your son will have after four years, I think you should give more thought to the nature of your undergraduate education at the two schools.</p>
<p>(For the record, I’d agree with the posters who’ve said that Wharton places more students into banking and all the other nooks and crannies of the financial world than any other school, including Princeton, Harvard, and Dartmouth, the three schools probably next most highly represented. What I would caution against is attributing this numerical advantage to some secret sauce the school confers rather than student motivation and self selection. In other words, Wharton places more people into Goldman each year than Princeton or Harvard do simply because the number of people at Wharton who really, really want to get into Goldman is markedly greater than the number at Harvard or Princeton. Remember, getting into a place like Blackstone takes more than brains, it takes an early steely focus towards finance. And by virtue of the fact that people who chose Wharton did so in no small part for its strong business education, they’re more likely to have that early focus. But (having gone through the finance job search process,) I feel comfortable saying that if you take that same focused student and teleport him to another school Blackstone considers a target (H, P both among them), you don’t cut his chances.)</p>
<p>But perhaps more to the point: your career (and life) is not a four year sprint, and winning/losing is not determined by the firm you join. It’s more of an open-ended marathon, and most 18 year olds are better served to run this marathon by having a broad, rich college education with a diverse range of peers. (The administration line on careers is that “we want to give you an education that not only prepares for any job that exists, but also for all jobs that may not exist for another two decades.”) Wharton does this too, yet I think few schools match the breadth of brilliant students and strong departments as well as Princeton does. I’m not a math major, yet I think one of my most rewarding (and brain tangling) experiences was working on p-sets in a group with national/international math champions (yes, plural). You can not only learn how to write well, you can learn to do it in fifteen person seminars with Pulitzer prize winners (again, plural). And if you’re interested in East Asia, Princeton has arguably the strongest set of language and international relations experts in the country. There’s also value in thinking about your post-college plans amidst people who have wildly different plans. 90% of my friends have no interest in going into business (half of them want to hop off to Asia and teach there), and I think reflecting on the way they think about their life after Princeton has given me much more certainty and a refined perspective on why I AM interested in going the Wall Street route. </p>
<p>Is Wharton full of finance drones? Of course not - my two closest friends from there are headed to non-profit and law school. Yet from their observations and mine (as well as the Wharton/Princeton career services reports), I’d argue that “breadth of experiences” means something different at Wharton than it does at Princeton. </p>
<p>As warned, this view is a biased one, but I hope it frames the issue as less of a “which school can get my son a good job” question and more of a “which culture suits him better” question. Ultimately, your son may decide that he wants the Wharton culture (the benefits of which some of the Wharton posters here can give better justice to), but I hope you get a sense of why, if I did it over again, I’d pick Princeton. Best of luck, and enjoy your school visits!</p>
<p>Silly Puddy, truly excellent post…</p>
<p>underscores the quality of Princeton students…</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Nope. Princeton has one of the worst track record in MD PhD JD MBA program admission.
Top graduate programs have policies of giving very strong preferential treatment to their own UG applicants and Princeton UG get no ‘home advantage’ .</p>
<p>Wharton UG always have options of applying MD PhD JD MBA programs at UPenn, which
clearly prefers Wharton UG over Princeton UG.</p>
<p>Be warned that german_car is a persistent anti-Princeton ■■■■■. Just check his post history.</p>
<p>Frankly, I think the biggest argument against Princeton might be the fact that it’s 12:32 AM EST on a Saturday night, and I’m posting on CC. 
Do you really want your son to be as lame as me?</p>
<p>■■■■■ or not he has a valid point</p>
<p>poste you say that ■■■■■ has a valid point</p>
<p>and what point is this?</p>
<p>that UofPenn students have a better record in getting accepted to UofPenn grad schools than Princeton?</p>
<p>oh…ok</p>
<p>good point</p>
<p>but who would want to go to U of Penn professional grad schools anyway, when there are better ones at Harvard, Yale and Stanford?</p>
<p>yeah there is Harvard, Yale and Stanford but Penn is right behind them! Penn has the advantage of having excellent post-grad programs if you wish to stay, at princeton this is not easy (according to germancar). Also, getting into a harvard, yale and stanford for grad degree is never guaranteed. you have greater safety at penn</p>
<p>poste, as you say, getting into harvard, yale or stanford professional grad schools is never guaranteed, but your chances are higher if you go to Princeton undergrad than Penn…</p>
<p>Its worth pointing out that this kid doesn’t have a choice between Wharton and Princeton, but the Huntsman program and Princeton. I’d probably pick Princeton over Wharton pretty easily, but the Hunstman program is a very unique and valuable opportunity.</p>